American Samoa Coastal Management Program

Cumulative and Secondary Impacts Program

American Samoa faces several challenges in its wake to sustain our population and balance development with protection of resources. Development projects proposed on island are generally considered one project at a time. Cumulative and Secondary Impacts address the sum of development impacts on an area, including water quality, air quality and human infrastructure.

 The Cumulative and Secondary Impacts Program addresses the need to look at effects of population growth as it relates to development in the Territory, how this impacts our local resources over the long term and how to avoid unplanned loss of coastal resources. This program’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive planning process for the Territory – looking at the big picture of how to plan for the sum of developments, address impacts and minimize these on the limited coastal resources on island.
 For American Samoa, this is done in numerous ways such as:

1. Territorial Comprehensive General Plan – when completed this will be a planning document which will guide future development in American Samoa. It will contain polices and guidelines for all types of developments so that coastal resources are protected.

2. Public Education Program – this component of the program intends to make the public more aware of why it is important to protect resources and it will give information on what cumulative and secondary impacts are and how they affect development decisions.

3. Development of an Information System – to visually track population growth in the Territory, an information system is proposed to produce maps and provide updated data on where growth is occurring on island.

For further information on this, please contact the Department of Commerce/American Samoa Coastal Management Program at 633-5155