PORT MORESBY, PNG ---The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Coastal Community Adaptation Project (C-CAP), a new five-year project that will build the resilience of vulnerable communities across 12 Pacific Island countries to climate change.
Current US tuna treaty negotiations have stalled because Pacific Islands Parties and the United States have failed to agree on various elements of a new treaty. The Pacific Islands Parties, however, have extended to the US a temporary treaty to cater for extended talks.
AUCKLAND, New Zealand --- Multi Olympic and world discus champion Valerie Adams is the special guest when the Pacific Showcase returns to The Cloud on Saturday February 2.
A decade of sustained upward trends in the market value of metals found in seabed mineral deposits and considerable advances made in subsea technologies have reignited interest for offshore minerals exploration.
It’s no mean task to address the collective Pacific Islands’ $1billion trade imbalance with New Zealand.
Minerals, such as rare earth metals, are increasingly becoming an important commodity in a resource-constrained world economy. As a result new frontiers both onshore and offshore, to the depths of the ocean, are emerging around the world.
Minerals, such as rare earth metals, are increasingly becoming an important commodity in a resource-constrained world economy. As a result new frontiers both onshore and offshore, to the depths of the ocean, are emerging around the world.
They say the value of a community cannot be measured until it is put under pressure, and the last month has shown that the Solomon Islands community is as strong as ever.
A verbal warfare is developing between the Pacific Network on Globilization (PANG) and regional organisation SOPAC over its role in the drafting of the controversial new laws on seabed mining.
Observer training programme could be axed, fisheries meeting heard
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat with support from the European Union funded Pacific Integration Technical Assistance Programme (PITAP) has commissioned a project to assist the Pacific ACP States to identify and prioritise their Aid for Trade needs.
AUCKLAND, NZ ---- A European Union Commissioner says moving to renewable energy will give the Pacific Islands a stronger moral mandate to pressure larger countries to follow suit as well as saving them significant amounts of money by reducing dependence on diesel.
SUVA, FIJI --- New Zealand companies injected $342million (US$191 million) into the local economy from 2005 to 2010, adding mileage to its third spot ranking as one of Fiji's top five investors behind China and Australia.
An organization that has represented the rights and voices of people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the Pacific for over a decade is closing.
This month Ministry of Health representatives and stakeholders from across the region will come together to determine the future direction of the response to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the Pacific.
NADI, Fiji --- The Pacific region can take appropriate actions to advance human development, as outlined in the 2013 Human Development Report—The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World.
The public readily engage in a heated debate on politics, while ignoring changes silently taking place in something as mundane as the "public availability of information". Yet the latter can be far more important for our people's welfare than exciting politics.
In July 2013, in a global first, the two main regional conferences on climate change and disaster risk management (DRM) will convene a joint meeting of the Pacific Platform for DRM and Pacific Climate Change Roundtable in Nadi, Fiji.
Following the 2007 Australian federal election, the new government moved rapidly to re-invigorate Australia’s engagement with the Pacific islands.
It’s been a moment two years in the making, but the rising of the PIANGO phoenix from the ashes of its own implosion in 2009 may have finally arrived. The regional grouping of civil society national umbrella organisations has been conspicuous by its absence for the last few years as ...
Although last year produced agreement about how much money will be paid for US vessels to fish in the Pacific, there are still many hurdles to leap before a new US Pacific tuna treaty arrangement can be approved, say fisheries officials in the Marshall Islands.
The tourism industry in the region believes that courses offered by regional institutions are not tailored to meet the vast needs of the industry.
At the start of the 15-year journey towards the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), the absence of relevant and reliable statistical benchmarks was the norm rather than the exception in most Pacific Islands Countries.
February and March are two months that have become important months for many things Pacific—particularly arts, crafts and culture—in the islands’ two big industrialised neighbours, Australia and New Zealand. Being the first significant events after the extended year-end holiday period, they bring with them a certain freshness and a sense ...
Now that the apocalypse some believed would happen on December 21 has come a cropper, we can now be bold to make some prognosis for this year in our neck of the woods. Here are a few glimpses from Islands Business' crystal ball.
CRGA 42—the forty-second annual meeting of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s governing body—ended with a sense of renewed dynamism for the region’s principal technical and scientific agency.
‘Many of the Pacific Islands countries have already cast their lot with China and by extension most things that China has to offer, including telecommunication technologies. If the standoff between the west and China on the issue of telecommunications security continues, it could quite easily lead to a trade war ...
How do we as a region tackle huge challenges —such as ensuring food security, preventing non-communicable diseases, adapting to climate change—which cut across almost every sector and often feed into each other?
The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) has been actively working on climate change in the Pacific for almost 25 years—long before climate change became a household word of global interest and concern.
Some 300 delegates turned up for the meeting which the Vanuatu Government intended to demonstrate its ‘happiest country’ nickname.
Some Pacific Islands countries are so geographically challenged that they will always depend on aid and at least 10 will not have a viable private sector, facts that need to be accepted and understood before expectations are heaped on development in the Pacific region.
Strong literacy and numeracy skills are the critical foundation for learning and for a lifetime of success.
This year PNA (Parties to the Nauru Agreement) celebrates 30 years of sub-regional co-operative fisheries management.
In the past few years, the Pacific region has witnessed the meteoric rise of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, comprising the four Melanesian Pacific Islands nations of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu (the FLNKS —Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, the militant socialist pro-independence alliance of political ...
Pacific nations are largely reliant on aid, trade and investment from traditional partners like Australia, New Zealand, United States, France and Japan. But in recent years, there has been increasing interest in finding new sources of development assistance, economic and political support.
Funding, infrastructure and human capacity for delivering basic services are continually under pressure in developing nations including those in the Pacific Islands region.
For the first time in the Pacific, a dedicated trade exhibition of regional exporters and global buyers will take place in June in Fiji.
Most of the Pacific Islands region continues to be one of the least women-friendly places in the world.
Sexual and gender-based violence is a huge problem in the Pacific region, affecting around two in every three women.
Last month, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Fiji. There has been much speculation about the purpose of the visit, but this needs to be contextualised so we can make sense of its significance.
If there is something Dr Jimmie Rodgers -- the longest serving Director-General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) -- wants to see as the organisation celebrates its 65th birthday this year, it’s for the 22 Pacific Islands member countries to really use the SPC to their advantage.
Energy plays a critical role in the development efforts of the Pacific region. For instance, access to affordable and sustainable sources of energy has strong linkages with the reduction of hardship and poverty.
Domestic shipping services in many Pacific islands countries are far from adequate.
Around 7 million out of the 10 million people living in the Pacific Islands countries and territories still do not have access to any form of electricity. Therefore, the region has largely concentrated on generating extra electricity.
An Auckland bar, with young Asian women in white mini-skirts. Two Russian men light up a fat joint
Seabed mining, the new buzzword in the Pacific, may have created quite a storm of protests in minerals-rich Papua New Guinea but for the rest of the region, it is slated as a rare opportunity for the development of a mining industry that otherwise would never have been made possible ...
SPREP has an active marine species programme focused on three groups of marine animals: dugongs, marine turtles and cetaceans (whales and dolphins).
Small to medium enterprise hotel owners in the South Pacific need to keep abreast of internet technology and how it has revolutionised industries like tourism.
Increasing online banking and spill-over effects from the ongoing mild recession in Europe will induce major Australian-owned banks in the Pacific to tighten lending, slash jobs and cut back on slow-performing branches this year.
If there is one best kept secret in the region, it is the appointment of the new chief trade adviser (CTA) to replace Dr Chris Noonan at the Office of the Chief Adviser (OCTA).
For more than two decades, Pacific governments and community organisations have used global summits to highlight the link between economic growth and environmental sustainability.
A conference last month in Busan, Korea, heard a range of views on improving aid effectiveness from officials, experts and government functionaries on the subject of international aid. The discussions centered on a number of important concerns including transparency on the part of both the aid agencies and recipient governments.
Forecasting the shape of the economies in 2012 is tough and particularly so given the volatile global markets.
Ten years of negotiations with the European Union for an economic partnership agreement and the Pacific members of the ACP group still haven’t got a permanent deal.
This year will be a crucial year for fisheries as islands nations would need to finalise their fishing treaty with the United States as well as firm up on a regional strategy on fisheries for the equally important economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations with the European Union.
Much of the world continues to plod through the global financial crisis with not much of a clue on how to steer the global economy towards any signs of recovery.
Pacific Islands Parties and the United States will go for another round of negotiations on January 12 for a successor fish agreement after the US rejected the Pacific’s proposal.
Two forces are driving the perception that is being increasingly grasped by Pacific islands elites—that the international community is back, taking a big new interest in the region as 2012 dawns.
Pacific nations are under a good deal of pressure to sustain their fish resources and maintain a vital source of food. Now climate change poses a fresh challenge.
Clean Pacific—two powerful words that evoke images of the environment our forefathers enjoyed and the kind of environment our children and grandchildren by right should enjoy. Two simple words, yet they embody the aspirations for all Pacific people.
Climate change poses immense risks and dangers for our region. It is thus no surprise that the Pacific Islands countries and territories were well represented at the recent Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in December in Durban, South Africa.
The Pacific and Central Asia share a peculiar similarity. They are the only locations not covered by a regional human rights mechanism, such as a human rights commission or court.
Two years after it was feared Pacific artists would get “lost in the crowd”, the annual Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards—the only national Pacific arts awards to celebrate artistic achievement across all art forms in New Zealand—continues to survive.
From July, workers from eight Pacific countries as well as Timor-Leste will be able to travel to Australia under a permanent programme for seasonal workers.
As Australia warms up with the United States with the recent visit of President Obama to Canberra, a word of caution has been sounded to the Gillard government to not neglect the islands states of the Pacific.
Free school skipjack tuna caught in waters of eight Pacific countries grouped under the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) will soon carry the prized Marine Steward Council certification (MSC), following a final decision made in London last month by an independent adjudicator in the arbitration leg of the certification ...
The world’s climate leaders managed to avoid a confrontation between blocs of countries at last month’s talks in Durban by agreeing to postpone any drastic action by at least another decade. The climate talks finally concluded more than 36 hours after the scheduled closure after much debate that threatened to ...
For a small islands nation, Fiji has too many universities that are creating waste and un-necessary duplication of roles and courses, a Fiji-born lawyer and former diplomat has said.
ACP–EU relations have been in existence for quite a while but what great gains has it achieved, for at least one of its small islands member in the Pacific, Palau, asks its former Vice President, Sandra Pierantozzi.
What would New Zealand rugby be without its star players of Pacific Islands origin? For decades now, the Pacific Islands have provided Kiwi rugby teams with a continuous stream of talent that has given them an undeniable cutting edge. This has often come at a great cost to the national ...
“Athletes will be King” those are the words of Pacific Games Council President Vidhya Lakhan of Fiji as we countdown to the 14th Pacific Games to be held in Noumea, New Caledonia, from August 27-September 10, 2011.
