The Pacific region is the focus of cooperative waste management projects, including innovative recycling programmes, which are beginning to resolve long-standing waste problems in the region. This was revealed byKenichiro Koiwa of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Environmental Management Group during a presentation to journalists at the JICA Head Office in Tokyo Monday. The […]
Category: Our region
Climate warming promises frequent extreme El Nino events
El Niño events cause serious shifts in weather patterns across the globe, and an important question that scientists have sought to answer is: how will climate change affect the generation of strong El Niño events? A new study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by a team of international climate […]
Not just climate but legal challenges looming
Samoa Supreme Court Justice Vui Clarence Nelson is looking ahead to a future when climate change starts to pose legal challenges, not just environmental ones. While groups of children take entire countries to task over climate change inaction, and students are turning to the International Court of Justice over climate change and human rights, here […]
Marshall Islands declares climate crisis
The Marshall Islands has declared a national climate crisis. The country’s Nitijela, or Parliament, last month passed a resolution making the fight against climate change its top priority. Resolution 83, made public today, says the Marshall Islands continues to struggle to finance a response to the climate crisis. Passed by the Nitijela on 26 September, […]
‘We need support’: Pacific Islands seek help and unity to fight climate change
In recent weeks, children marched, nations made promises and teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg scolded world leaders for “failing us.” But while one of the groups most vulnerable to climate change, the Pacific Islands, may have received fewer headlines, it was among those making the strongest calls for action. Pacific Island government officials in New […]
Reports on gender participation in agriculture launched
Reports on country gender assessments of agriculture and the rural sector for Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu have been launched in Samoa. The reports were compiled by the Pacific Community(SPC) in collaboration with Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and strives to improve understanding of gender perspectives of agriculture and […]
Ocean at ‘breaking point’: Pacific angst at latest climate report
For 74-year-old Teaga Esekia, a chief from the Tuvalu island of Vaitupu, the ocean is a lifeblood. “Tuvaluans, they have different types of months, not like January to December,” said the elderly but agile man, who still climbs coconut trees every day. “They have their seasons according to fish and planting. We tell the time […]
Saving Pacific Islanders from geoengineering
Geoengineering will save us from the climate crisis, its champions insist. By using technology either to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or to deflect some solar radiation away from the Earth, they claim, we can undo the damage wrought by humanity’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But while it certainly sounds like […]
Pacific region shows leadership and ambition in its national climate efforts
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are key to sustainable development and are the building blocks for low carbon development (LCD). Reflecting on the commitments of Pacific Leaders to net-zero emissions and resilient societies by 2050 at the Pacific SIDS High level breakfast event in New York, Climate Analytics managing director, Dr Bill Hare said by implementing […]
Cook Islands calls for immediate and full replenishment of Green Climate Fund at the United Nations
Cook Islands has called for immediate and full replenishment of Green Climate Fund at the United Nations. Speaking at the United Nations in New York Tuesday at the Commonwealth Minister’s Dialogue on climate change, resilience building and ocean action, Deputy Prime Minister Mark Brown said “nothing less than full replenishment of the Green Climate Fund […]