Category Archives: Pacific islands

Forget GDP, ‘vulnerability index best gauges aid’ to small islands

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Commonwealth research says UVI is better measure of small island states’ aid needs, especially on climate

Small island nations on the climate crisis frontlines have been overlooked in overseas aid, according to a new index.

Urging a move away from the current benchmark of using gross domestic product (GDP) to measure aid allocation, researchers from the Commonwealth secretariat and the Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development (Ferdi), a French thinktank, have developed the universal vulnerability index (UVI) as an alternative. GDP, they claim, fails to reflect the realities nations face, particularly on climate.

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Not a lone shark: bull sharks may form ‘friendships’ with each other, study finds

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The apex predators show preferences for certain individuals and avoid others, according to new research on sharks in Fiji

They reach 3.5 metres long, weigh more than 200kg and are an apex predator. But even apex predators need friends. And, according to new research, bull sharks may be capable of making them.

A recently published study from Fiji shows that bull sharks develop companionships – with some sharks showing preferences for certain individuals and avoiding others.

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Why the world’s most fertile fishing ground is facing a ‘unique and dire’ threat

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China’s Pacific fishing fleet has grown by 500% since 2012 and is taking huge quantities of tuna

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

Since long before the steel-hulled fishing boats from foreign countries arrived in the South Pacific its people have had their own systems for sharing the ocean’s catches.

In the New Zealand colony of Tokelau, in the middle of the region, the 1,400 people living on its three atolls practise a system called inati, which ensures every household gets fish.

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The island with no water: how foreign mining destroyed Banaba

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The Kiribati island survived droughts due to sacred caves that captured rainfall but rampant phosphate extraction ruined this precious resource

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

The last decent rain on Banaba was more than a year ago.

Without rain, people on the isolated central Pacific island, which is part of the country of Kiribati, have been forced to rely on a desalination plant for all their water for drinking, bathing and growing crops.

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Plans to build Papua New Guinea’s first casino trigger fears over social problems

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Critics say PNG does not have adequate governance or welfare systems to deal with problems casino may bring

Plans to build Papua New Guinea’s first casino in Port Moresby have sparked criticism from transparency advocates and experts who say the country’s industry regulator has undermined its independence with the deal and fear it could worsen social problems.

The agreement to build the US$43m venue was signed on 28 May by Paga Hill Development Corporation and the National Gaming Control Board (NGCB), drawing immediate condemnation from Transparency International.

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How a tiny Pacific community fought off a giant mining company – video

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A proposal to mine 60% of a tiny island of Wagina in the Pacific was met with outrage by locals and became a landmark case in Solomon Islands.

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The little island that won: how a tiny Pacific community fought off a giant mining company

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A proposal to mine 60% of Wagina for bauxite was met with outrage by locals and became a landmark case in Solomon Islands

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

When a mining company arrived on Wagina nearly a decade ago with a proposal to mine 60% of the island for bauxite, resistance was swift and resolute.

“I was in the group that went and physically stopped the machines that landed on the site behind this island,” says Teuaia Sito, the former president of the Lauru Wagina Council of Women.

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From a forest in Papua New Guinea to a floor in Sydney: how China is getting rich off Pacific timber

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China is the major buyer of wood from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

An illegally logged tree, felled in the diminishing forests of Papua New Guinea, may well end up becoming floorboards in a Sydney living room, or a bookcase in a home in Seattle.

Illegal logging contributes between 15% and 30% of the global wood trade, according to Interpol. China is a major buyer of the world’s illegal timber, according to environmental groups, especially from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging.

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Want more international students? Look to the Pacific | Edward Cavanough

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Instead of just bringing in Pacific Islanders to pick fruit, the government should focus on tertiary education

In a budget filled with winners, there were a few notable losers.

There was our university sector. Already languishing, the government dealt our unis the twin blows of a sustained “fortress Australia” – prohibiting a revival of the international student market – and a reduction in funding.

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Fiji seals off major hospital and quarantines hundreds after Covid death

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Hospital closure comes as the Pacific country tries to contain a second wave of the virus with lockdowns

Fiji has closed its second largest hospital amid fears that a patient who died of Covid-19 may have infected multiple staff members. The 53-year-old man was only the Pacific country’s third Covid-related death since the pandemic began.

More than 400 patients, doctors, nurses and other medical staff were being quarantined at Lautoka hospital as of Wednesday, after a doctor who had treated the man also tested positive for the coronavirus.

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My father works for the company that sells weapons used in my partner’s homeland | Izzy Brown

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I had never imagined how horribly the company my father works for was entangled with the story of my West Papuan partner

​They make great trucks. That’s what my father says whenever I ask him: “What do they make? Who do they sell them to?” “Only to the good guys,”​​​​ is his standard answer, and the topic changes quickly. But what he calls “trucks”, most people call “tanks”. And ​I am always led to wonder, “What kind of ‘good guy’ drives a tank?”

My father works for Thales, one of the richest weapons corporations in the world. Before heading up security for Thales he worked for Asio, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

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Sorcery-related violence should be thought of as profoundly modern | Miranda Forsyth

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The attacks in Papua New Guinea may look like a barbaric relic from the past but have to do with poverty, inequality and the normalisation of violence

News broke last week about the horrific attack on two women in Port Moresby after they were accused of sorcery.

Senior leaders and police in Papua New Guinea expressed outrage that such violence was occurring in the nation’s capital. But as a researcher who investigates this type of attack, these stories are frustratingly familiar and predictable.

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‘Chilling’: Vanuatu libel bill prompts fears for free speech

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Bill placing libel under criminal rather than civil law could see journalists jailed for three years for ‘misleading’ content

Journalists and social media moderators in Vanuatu could face up to three years in prison under a new bill that broadly criminalises threatening words, gestures and the “reckless” sharing of false statements.

Changes to the criminal libel and slander provisions of the South Pacific country’s Penal Code Act mean that Ni-Vanuatu could now face imprisonment for “any representation that is untrue or misleading” on public platforms including “television, radio, internet websites, social networking sites and blog sites”.

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If it’s safe, dump it in Tokyo. We in the Pacific don’t want Japan’s nuclear wastewater | Joey Tau and Talei Luscia Mangioni

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Japan’s plans to discharge radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean is a callous act that would do catastrophic harm

Earlier this month, the Japanese government announced plans to discharge 1m tonnes of radioactive wastewater accruing since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 into the Pacific Ocean.

To Pacific peoples, who have carried the disproportionate human cost of nuclearism in our region, this is yet another act of catastrophic and irreversible trans-boundary harm that our region has not consented to.

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The typhoon that hit my island didn’t make the news. This is what the climate crisis looks like

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Palau was hit by Typhoon Surigae last week, but even the typhoons that don’t claim lives or flatten cities are devastating for those who live through them

My adopted home country of Palau, in the northern Pacific, was hit by a typhoon last week. Thankfully no one died here, though it did lead to deaths in the Philippines.

The impact on Palau of Typhoon Surigae didn’t make headlines overseas and this might be the first you will have heard of it. Compared to other natural disasters and other cyclones or typhoons in the Pacific, it was a relatively “good” one. But it left me shaken, exhausted and our community rattled.

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Police warn of ‘all-out war’ as tribal violence in Papua New Guinea kills 19

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High-powered weapons, as well as a hand grenade, were used in fighting near Kainantu Town in Eastern Highlands province

Police are warning a “all-out war” could erupt in Eastern Highlands province in Papua New Guinea, after 19 people were killed in tribal violence late last week.

High-powered weapons, as well as a hand grenade, were used in fighting on Thursday and Friday near Kainantu Town in the east of the country, causing 19 deaths, with many more people unaccounted for, and properties destroyed.

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Closed borders and Cyclone Harald showed that locals are the best first responders in a disaster | Jill Aru

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When the storm hit Vanuatu last year, the lack of international support gave local aid workers a chance to be heard

If someone had told me this time last year that Vanuatu was about to weather one of the worst cyclones of our recent history with our borders closed, I may not have believed you.

After Cyclone Pam in 2015, hundreds of aid workers rushed in from overseas, eager to deliver lifesaving aid to communities who had lost everything.

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Miss Papua New Guinea stripped of her crown for TikTok twerking video

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Lucy Maino faced intense online harassment over clip in incident that critics say highlights misogyny in PNG

Miss Papua New Guinea has been stripped of her crown after sharing a video of herself twerking on TikTok, with critics saying the incident reveals a deep-seated culture of misogyny in the country.

Lucy Maino, 25, who has also served as co-captain of Papua New Guinea’s women’s football team, faced intense online harassment after she shared a video of herself twerking on the video-sharing app TikTok.

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Palau to welcome first tourists in a year with presidential escort

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Palau is opening up to visitors from Taiwan under strict Covid-safe measures, but locals still have doubts

On Thursday, 110 people from Taiwan will be able to enjoy the thing so many around the world have been dreaming of since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic: an international holiday to a tropical island paradise.

The tiny Pacific country of Palau, in the north-west corner of the Pacific with a population of around 20,000 people, will this week begin welcoming tourists from Taiwan as part of a travel bubble.

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