But the Marshall Islands is hardly alone in low academic achievement in its public schools. The Federated States of Micronesia and other island countries are experiencing similar challenges in their government schools.

When the United States government halted funding for school lunches three years ago, the Marshall Islands government largely eliminated the feeding program, although some funding for school lunches was included in the budget for the new fiscal year that started October 1 — and some local vendors have filled the gap by offering discount price plates and snacks on or next to local school campuses.

Meanwhile, several local primary and secondary schools in the Marshall Islands have over the past several years engaged their students in school gardens that provide produce for the feeding program operated by the private schools, while providing vegetables for the students of the public schools. The correlation between the lack of a school lunch program in most public schools and academic under-achievement should be obvious. Less obvious is the lost opportunity for student learning about nutrition, island foods and food culture for lack of a feeding program linked to school gardens and school curriculum. Marshall Islands schools — and indeed, probably many around the region — are missing a golden opportunity for integrating learning, nutrition, and cultural values into their ongoing programs.

A visit last month to the Sanya Elementary School in the Suginami section of Tokyo offered serious food for thought on the matter. Sanya is showcasing a many-layered program of nutrition education and action that engages students in grades one through six in planting, managing and harvesting vegetables in the school garden, teaches them to cook using this produce, has them studying the nutritional value of the foods they are eating, and learning cultural food etiquette. The school also engages many parents in the nutrition and cooking program. What is significant is the result produced through the holistic nature of this integrated learning activity.

Perhaps most important, the eating habits of the students are being shifted to a more traditional Japanese diet, known as ‘washoku’—which is to say, healthier fare. They are enthusiastic about the result, as a meal of fish, rice, miso soup, and mixed vegetables with Sanya fifth graders demonstrated.

As fifth grade students served food to their fellow students, one student rose to explain the day’s meal and its nutritional value. Next, another student stood to lead everyone in expressing appreciation for the meal and everyone involved in its preparation, using the Japanese expression, “itadakimasu.” As soon as the thanks were delivered, everyone dived into the meal. At its conclusion, another student led the group in a closing thank you, “gochisou sama.” Barely a grain of rice remained on the plates of the 25 or so students in the classroom as the lunch concluded.

‘The gardening helps with emotional stability and well-being of the students,’ Principal Kazuyoshi Yamagishi told a group of island journalists visiting his school last month. ‘Most important for the students is through gardening, they learn to appreciate life.’

In the Pacific islands, people are flooding into the urban centers, where community stability and food availability provided by cultural practices in the rural areas are withering as fast as you can say ‘corned beef’. This Japan school program is taking totally urban children, most of whom born and raised in Tokyo, and reinventing their appreciation of food, culture and learning activities.

The school combines a variety of physical activity, gardening, learning about nutrition, and teaching dental hygiene. The school lunch program cost is shared by parents, who pay a monthly fee for their children’s meals, and the government, which pays the salaries of the school’s kitchen staff.

‘A healthy body contributes to sound academic development,’ said Yamagishi. While the school is not at the top of Tokyo elementary schools academically, ‘our school is above the city’s academic average,’ said Yamagishi. At least as important, from Yamagishi’s standpoint, is that as a result of participating in gardening, food preparation, and learning Japanese food customs, ‘fewer children have a frustrated attitude. Surveys show the children enjoy farming and the participation contributes to students’ life in a positive way.’

The school is now mid-way through a one-year pilot project supported by the Ministry of Education to demonstrate the potential for this unique food education learning program.

The integrated program doesn’t stop at the school gates, or limit itself to students learning to cook. Every year in the spring, fifth graders travel for an overnight visit to a village near Mount Fuji, where they plant rice in a sizeable plot. Later in the year, they return for the harvest that generates 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of rice that is used for meals during a special ‘harvest week’ the school celebrates late in the year, bringing parents and community volunteers together for meals and activities with the students.

Sixth graders are taught the custom of washoku including the arrangement of bowls, plates and chopsticks in the traditional style of their elders. As the students gain experience in the gardens and kitchen, they begin to differentiate between imported and local foods, said Yamagishi. ‘The students pay attention to domestically grown foods and prefer them,’ he said. ‘I hope (through this program) the students will learn to love their country’s own food.’

The permutations of this food education program at Sanya Elementary are limited only by the imagination of the teachers and students.

One wonders what opportunities such a program could offer urban schools in the region, particularly those in cities like Majuro and Ebeye, where private vendors offer dollar plates of greasy fried chicken and rice to students.

The Sanya elementary teaching program is surely relevant to the Marshall Islands and other Pacific islands, particularly in the urban centers where child nutrition has deteriorated as people shift from a diet of locally grown and caught food to store-bought processed foods. An epidemic of diabetes and other non-communicable diseases is now sweeping through the islands, causing a high level of sickness impacting the workforce and placing a huge financial burden on already cash-strapped hospitals. This school-based food education program is an innovative way of getting students and parents learning about island food culture and preparation, nutrition, and ways to improve their health.

Sanya elementary offers a model that could be exported as part of Japan’s technical assistance to its island allies or through a sister school approach. The Japan International Cooperation Agency already supplies dozens of math and science volunteer teachers to schools around the Pacific, in addition to its export of volunteers in medicine and other areas of expertise. Exporting the Sanya school food education model would be a brilliant extension of cooperation between Japan and the Pacific. Island schools, of course, could simply launch their own integrated food learning programs. But since Japan has developed a model that could easily be hybridized, it offers the opportunity for a culturally appropriate and sustainable intervention that portends improvements in health, academic performance and appreciation and understanding of customs that have governed life for generations but ones that are being lost to urbanized youngsters.

Caption: Fifth grade students at Sanya Elementary School in Tokyo leave nothing behind from their lunches, which are prepared with student participation as part of a food education learning program that integrates gardening, nutrition, cooking and culture. Photo: Giff Johnson.

I believe this as a citizen of this planet. After all, I am really just a fisherman trying to protect his corner of the Pacific Ocean for his family and his country—no different from what my forebears have done for thousands of years. Our people have always understood that we are stewards of our rich and beautiful natural environment, and that Palau’s past, present and future are inextricably tied to the health of our natural resources, particularly the ocean.

Our traditions and culture date back many generations to when our ancestors first voyaged across the vast Pacific to settle these far-flung islands some 3,000 years ago. The foundation of our culture is respect, not just for one another, but for nature as well. Without respect for our Mother Earth, we would have never survived the journey—and the same holds true today. It is with this value of respect that our local traditional chiefs, without any institutional knowledge of the science we have today, developed conservation practices that have led our people to live in harmony with the environment. This is the heart of our culture, as depicted in the Palauan flag: a full yellow moon against a deep blue ocean. The combination of the moon and the ocean is a metaphor for nature’s balance and harmony.

When resources were under threat, the chiefs declared a “Bul”—what today we refer to as conservation moratorium. Reefs would be deemed off limits during spawning and feeding periods, or when fish stocks had become depleted, so that the ecosystem could replenish itself and marine life would remain abundant and in equilibrium. The customary rules in Palau are simple: think about tomorrow; take what you need from the environment and no more. A decade ago, when Palauans recognized that industrial commercial overfishing and rapid development were threatening the sustainability of our fragile marine ecosystems, we did not hesitate to act. In 2003, through extensive dialogue between government and community stakeholders, we passed the Protected Areas Network (PAN) Act, which set up a framework for a national system of protected areas. This collaborative conservation approach was necessary to ensure that local communities benefit directly from this national legislation.

In 2006 I issued a call to the Pacific Region—known as the Micronesia Challenge—to protect at least 30 per cent of their coastal waters and 20 per cent of their terrestrial resources to give biodiversity a safe haven. When we saw that sharks, which are key to a healthy marine ecosystem were being hunted to extinction, we established the first shark sanctuary in the world and were followed by many other nations.

More recently, we have come to understand the devastating impact that large-scale industrial commercial fishing has had on our ocean, and we have responded by proposing the Palau National Marine Sanctuary. With the passage of Sanctuary Law, Palau will effectively end all industrial foreign commercial fishing in 80 per cent of our Exclusive Economic Zone and create a domestic fishing zone in the remainder to meet local and tourism needs. We are doing this to allow our battered fish stocks to recover and to enhance our own ecotourism economy.

The goal of our latest and largest conservation effort is to help restore the balance between humans and nature. It is preserving the best of our environment and helping to restore the rest.

The national policies that we pursue today—the PAN Act, the Micronesia Challenge, the Shark Sanctuary and the Palau National Marine Sanctuary—are simply modern versions of our traditional conservation practices, the “Bul”. The work we do nationally will need to be amplified and augmented by work at the international level to make a difference. The unified nature of the ocean—and the importance of it being healthy, productive and resilient—is a key reason why Palau and the Pacific small island developing states (SIDS) advocated a stand-alone goal on oceans in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and a robust oceans component to the SAMOA pathway, approved at last years international conference on SIDS.

As a group, the Pacific has called on the international community to recognize the central role of oceans and seas in supporting food, jobs, health, and culture. We have similarly advocated for the means of implementation necessary to ensure that we can achieve our ideals: combating illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing; halting ocean acidification; addressing marine pollution; ensuring coastal management; supporting the creation of marine protected areas; building the right infrastructure for responsible tourism; ensuring sustainable fisheries; and recognizing special requirements and aspirations of developing states, particularly SIDS, and the least developed among them.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) proved that we can make historic gains by marshalling resources around a common cause and bringing stakeholders—governments, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities—together. Even the most cynical among us must marvel at the millions that were educated, vaccinated, and raised out of poverty as a result of the MDGs. The same success is needed for oceans.

Investment in sustainable ecotourism, domestic fisheries, marine resource management, data collection, monitoring and enforcement and surveillance of our waters can make a generational, transformative impact. These objectives—environmental health, food security, and economic prosperity—are the very essence of our sustainable development and the foundation of the future we want for ourselves and to ensure our children’s future.

This article was first published (March 2015) on OurPlanet, the official website of the United Nations Environment Programme – http://89.31.102.21/ourplanet/

Photo: Ben Bohane / wakaphotos.com. Palau patrol boats are enforcing the ban on commercial fishing in Palau waters.