Category Archives: South Pacific

Plastic pollution kills half a million hermit crabs on remote islands

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Experts fear species decline after huge number of deaths on Henderson and Cocos

More than half a million hermit crabs have been killed after becoming trapped in plastic debris on two remote island groups, prompting concern that the deaths could be part of a global species decline.

The pioneering study found that 508,000 crabs died on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean, along with 61,000 on Henderson Island in the South Pacific. Previous studies have found high levels of plastic pollution at both sites.

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‘Plain cruel’: Vanuatu stops newspaper chief boarding plane home after China stories

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Dan McGarry of the Daily Post told at Brisbane airport the Vanuatu immigration service had barred him from flying back to the island country

The media director of a Vanuatu newspaper whose visa renewal was refused this month has been barred from flying home to Vanuatu from Brisbane with his partner.

Dan McGarry, who has lived in Vanuatu for 16 years, applied to have his work permit renewed earlier this year but it was rejected. McGarry believes his visa was refused due to articles he had published about China’s influence in Vanuatu.

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Vanuatu has cancelled my work permit; it’s a dark day for media freedom | Dan McGarry

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Vanuatu’s Daily Post has always held the government to account and will continue to do so, with or without me as editor

On Thursday, the Vanuatu government issued instructions that after 16 years living here and, despite having a Ni Vanuatu spouse and children, I will have to leave the country.

As the media director and publisher of Vanuatu’s only daily newspaper, a newspaper that has repeatedly held the government uncomfortably to account, I believe the government refused my application to renew my work visa to silence me and warn other journalists in the country not to speak out.

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‘Attack on the media’: Vanuatu newspaper boss has work visa refused

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Dan McGarry believes visa was rejected because of his paper’s critical coverage of government

The Vanuatu government has refused to renew the work permit of its largest newspaper’s long-serving director, Dan McGarry, in what he said was a “straight up attack on the media”.

After 16 years in Vanuatu, McGarry’s application to renew his work permit was refused on Thursday, meaning that McGarry, whose spouse and children are from the country, will have to leave Vanuatu.

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Sailing trio voice relief after P&O cruise ship rescue in South Pacific

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Seasoned sailors were picked up after their boat sank off the coast of New Caledonia

Three sailors who were rescued by a cruise ship when their yacht went down in the Pacific Ocean say they are relieved to have made it back to dry land.

Seasoned Newcastle sailors Chris Doran, his cousin Kevin Doran and Ben Johnson, from Vanuatu, had spent months in the South Pacific and were headed back to Queensland when their boat, Liberty, struck a discarded mooring line about 5.30am on Thursday and began to sink.

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Scott Morrison says Australia’s record on climate change misrepresented by media

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PM trumpets his country’s achievements in address to UN general assembly

Scott Morrison signalled that Australia is unlikely to update its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris agreement before a speech to the UN in which he declared that the media was misrepresenting the country’s climate change record.

During a press conference before his UN speech at a recycling facility in Brooklyn, the prime minister said he wouldn’t characterise “misrepresentations” about Australia’s climate stance as fake news.

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‘Save us, save the world’: Pacific climate warriors taking the fight to the UN

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Frank Bainimarama, Enele Sopoaga and Hilda Heine hope their urgent demands for action will save their island nations from the rising waves

It is the final night of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu and the Fijian prime minister is explaining how to drink kava.

“You clap first,” says Frank Bainimarama, as the smooth wooden bowl is passed around the circle. “Then you have to gulp in one go; then you clap again – one, two, three.”

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In troubled waters: telling the story of fish in Vanuatu theatre – in pictures

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Fish play a big role in the lives of people in Melanesia; coastal fisheries are not just a source of food and income, they are also central to cultural identity. The Wan Smolbag Theatre Company, from Vanuatu, travels to small fishing villages and performs a play called Twist mo Spin, which tells villagers about the challenges fisheries face across the region and about sustainable fishing

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Vanuatu will host the next Pacific Islands Forum. We want to know if Australia really wants a seat at the table | Ralph Regenvanu

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Scott Morrison should bring strong climate commitments to next year’s forum to avoid a repeat of this year’s summit

Last week at the close of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu I described the leaders’ discussions as frank and fierce. It is now well-known that the leaders debated the text of the Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now for many hours. I do not want to comment on the tone of the debate, as many others have done that already.

Instead, as incoming Pacific Islands Forum chair, Vanuatu has a message for Australia: we ask that Australia prepares well ahead of the next forum meeting in 2020 and comes to the table ready to make real, tangible commitments on climate change.

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Revealed: ‘fierce’ Pacific forum meeting almost collapsed over climate crisis

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Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison came under fire from Tuvalu’s leader Enele Sopoaga

Critical talks at the Pacific Islands Forum almost collapsed twice amid “fierce” clashes between the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and Tuvalu’s prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, over Australia’s “red lines” on climate change.

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s foreign minister, who was part of the drafting committee of the forum communique and observed the leaders’ retreat, said there was heated discussion over the Australian delegation’s insistence on the removal of references to coal, setting a target of limiting global warming to below 1.5C and announcing a strategy for zero emissions by 2050.

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Australia coal use is ‘existential threat’ to Pacific islands, says Fiji PM

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Frank Bainimarama appeals to larger neighbour to ‘more fully appreciate’ climate risks and reduce carbon emissions

The prime minister of Fiji has warned Australia to reduce its coal emissions and do more to combat climate change as regional leaders prepare to gather in Tuvalu ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum this week.

Speaking in Tuvalu at a climate change conference ahead of the forum on Monday, Frank Bainimarama appealed directly to Australia to transition away from coal-powered energy and asked its government “to more fully appreciate” the “existential threat” facing Pacific nations.

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‘Fight for our lives’: Fiji calls world leaders ‘selfish’ as it lays out climate crisis blueprint

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Minister says archipelago in grave situation through no fault of its own as he unveils plan for net zero emissions and village relocation

Fiji will introduce one of the world’s most ambitious legislative programs to tackle the climate crisis, and has labelled the global community’s decision to set aside the call for global heating to be capped at 1.5C “grossly irresponsible and selfish”.

In a speech to the Fijian parliament on Wednesday morning announcing the upcoming climate change act, Fiji’s attorney general and minister for economy and climate change, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called global heating “a fight for our lives and our livelihoods”.

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Australia giving ‘serious consideration’ to US request to help it confront Iran

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Mike Pompeo hails ‘unbreakable’ relationship between Washington and Canberra as he urges Australia to join coalition to protect shipping in the Gulf

Australia’s defence minister Linda Reynolds says the Morrison government is giving “very serious consideration” to a formal request from the Trump administration to join a US-led coalition to protect shipping in the Gulf from Iranian military forces.

Reynolds told journalists on Sunday after annual security talks between the Australian and American foreign affairs and defence ministers that the Morrison government was deeply concerned by the heightened tensions in the region, and strongly condemned the attacks on shipping in the Gulf.

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Henderson Island: the Pacific paradise groaning under 18 tonnes of plastic waste

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Rubbish has been washing up on its isolated beaches in the Pitcairn chain at a rate of several thousand bits of plastic a day

Henderson Island, uninhabited and a day’s sea crossing from the nearest sign of civilisation, should be an untouched paradise.

Instead its beaches, which were awarded Unesco world heritage status in 1988, are a monument to humanity’s destructive, disposable culture.

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Australia must prepare for a Chinese military base in the Pacific | Hugh White

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The cost of keeping China out of the region is too great, we must build forces that could counter its operations instead

Let’s be honest: Australians have never had much time for our South Pacific neighbours.

The island nations that lie to our north and north-east, stretching from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to Vanuatu, Fiji and beyond, may be close to us geographically, but we have not found them especially interesting, important or profitable.

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Pacific nations are ‘victims’ of Australian and New Zealand appetite for drugs, experts say

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Australia urged to take action to stop cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking from Latin America through Pacific region

Australia and New Zealand have been urged to do more to fight the drug trade across the Pacific and take responsibility for the fact that the demand for drugs in cities such as Sydney and Auckland was having devastating effects on small Pacific nations.

Drug traffickers transport cocaine and methamphetamines through Pacific nations from the US and Latin America to Australia and New Zealand, where drug users pay the highest price per gram (about A$300 or £180) for cocaine and have the highest cocaine use per capita in the world.

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The new drug highway: Pacific islands at centre of cocaine trafficking boom

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Explosion in number of boats carrying cocaine and meth from Latin America to Australia is causing havoc for islands on the way

• Cocaine used as washing powder: police struggle with Pacific drug influx

It is the drug route you’ve never heard of: a multibillion-dollar operation involving cocaine and methamphetamines being packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported to Australia via South Pacific islands more often thought of as holiday destinations than narcotics hubs.

In the past five years there has been an explosion in the number of boats, sometimes carrying more than a tonne of cocaine, making the journey across the Pacific Ocean to feed Australia’s growing and very lucrative drug habit.

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Vanuatu to ban disposable nappies in plastics crackdown: ‘We had no choice’

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Nation suffering disproportionately from climate emergency to phase in ban, believed to be world first, by December

It is but a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean, but the island state of Vanuatu is leading the global fight against plastic waste. The nation, which has already introduced one of the toughest single-use plastic bans in the world, is believed to be the first to propose a ban on disposable nappies, to be phased in at the end of this year.

At a meeting in London this week, chaired by Patricia Scotland, the secretary general of the Commonwealth, Vanuatu was hailed as a “champion” nation, one of 12 who are forging ahead in tackling ocean and climate emergency challenges.

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Mungau Dain, Tanna star and ‘Vanuatu’s Brad Pitt’, dies after untreated leg infection

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First-time actor, who starred in Oscar-nominated Australian-Vanuatu film, remembered as a ‘gentle soul’ and ‘deep family man’

Mungau Dain, who starred in the Oscar-nominated Australian-Vanuatu film Tanna – his first acting role – has died in Port Vila following an untreated infection in his leg.

The film’s co-directors, Bentley Dean and Martin Butler, and script editor Janita Suter, spoke to Guardian Australia after conversations with people on the island about Dain’s death.

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