Properly managed pearl farms offer real opportunities for development to individuals and communities living on small islands in different global locations, said Tiffany Stevens, President of CIBJO’s Ethics Commission at a recent United Nations meet in New York.

Addressing the 2019 Global Multi-Stakeholder SIDS Partnership Dialogue, which focused on opportunities available to a group of 57 small-island developing states, she said that such projects would be beneficial both from an economic perspective and in terms of protecting the marine environment.

She added that for a cultured pearl farm to become an economically sustainable asset, it is essential that it also be operated in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Stevens, who represented CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri at the meet is additionally President and CEO of the US-based Jewelers Vigilance Committee.

The UN forum discussed the opportunities available through multi-stakeholder partnerships to the 57 small-island developing states spread across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean, Mediterranean and South China Seas. It also introduced a “Tool Box” which includes a set of policy tools for designing, monitoring and reviewing SID partnerships.

The 2019 HLPF theme is "Empowering people, ensuring inclusiveness and equality.”

Stevens stressed that properly managed pearl farms can continue producing quality products indefinitely and will serve as a resource for national development through the taxes and royalties it provides. She emphasised that at the local level it would also be a source of gainful employment and community development, both directly and through the secondary economies its nurtures.

She said that over the years, projects related to cultured pearls have demonstrated that environmental, social and economic sustainability are inexorably linked.

Citing the example of a project that Dr. Cavalieri was involved in several years ago, sponsored by the Government of French Polynesia, she said it was possible to reverse what had become a downward spiral in the average quality of pearls being produced there. He discovered that farmers working under economic distress had few incentives to invest in producing a better product and cut corners in ways that were detrimental to the quality of the product and the environment.

Later, the lessons learned from the Polynesian experience were also applied when CIBJO consulted with the Government of Fiji and the country’s Fiji Pearl Farmers’ Association to create a national plan to increase the size of the island’s pearl sector, while optimising the benefits provided to the country and its people.

Speaking to the gathering, the Ambassador of Fiji also referred to CIBJO’s support of sustainable pearl farming, insisting that all partnerships matter and no small-island developing states should be left behind.

Pic caption: CIBJO Ethics Commission President Tiffany Stevens at United Nations Headquarters in New York on July 10, 2019. The pearls she is wearing were provided courtesy of Original Eve Designs.

Pic courtesy: CIBJO

***