Pacific Islands

“I’m so worried for my life because I know I’m too heavy,” he tells SBS Dateline. “I’m so worried because I really love my wife and my kids and my family.”

Tavita is from Apia, the capital of Samoa, where there is an obesity crisis.

A former taxi driver, he would drink two litres of sugary soft drinks each day and regularly eat mutton flaps, a cheap cut of fatty meat imported from New Zealand.

Gerry Brownlee made this comment after attending the Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit in Apia, where he was standing in for New Zealand's prime minister Bill English.

He told RNZ that the Pacific Islands' leadership is well focused on interacting with other countries to improve living standards for their own people.

The online centre will be run by the Pacific Meteorological Council, which says a regional perspective will enhance the prediction of long term weather patterns that can cause droughts and cyclones.

The council's chair Andrew Tait said the centre would enable countries to share weather data and improve long-term forecasts.

The Cotonou Partnership Agreement provides the base for the EU – ACP Partnership, and was signed in June 2000 at Cotonou, Benin.

However, the agreement will expire in 2020, with a successor partnership agreement expected to take its place after its expiry.

The EU-ACP Partnership has contributed to a number of developmental programs amongst its ACP partners.  Ranging from Development Financing, to Trade Agreements like the EPAs, Climate Change Programs, as well as, the European Development Fund programs (EDF). 

The bill would have required the ABC to restore its shortwave transmission services which the broadcaster ended in January this year.

This move was described in the bill as having deprived communities in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and other parts of the Pacific of access to reliable emergency broadcasting.

Submitters of the bill questioned the ABC's assertions that very few listeners accessed Radio Australia's shortwave service.

The community's water security coordinator David Hebblethwaite conveyed the message to a conference of the Pacific Water and Wastewater Association, currently underway in Apia.

Mr Hebblewthwaite said the success of projects in atoll countries like Tuvalu and Kiribati could be shared with bigger nations.

"Sharing approaches to drought management, to drinking water safety, to ground water management and management of rain water harvesting, we're hoping that can continue broader than just in the atolls and to some of the smaller communities in the larger countries too."

The deal was signed in June, but three of the region's largest countries - Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu - refused to join, saying it would harm their economies and was imbalanced towards Australia and New Zealand.

The negotiator, Tessa Te Mata, said PACER Plus was about building on existing regional trade agreements and adding to the dynamism, economic integration and trade in the region.

She said the countries that refused to join needed to work out how PACER Plus would work for them and what they wanted from it.

The academy's assessment, prompted by last year's decision by CSIRO to axe as many as 100 of 140 climate scientists, identified 77 extra research positions that should be created in the next four years.
 
Australia now has about 419 climate researchers, or less than 1 per cent of the 50,000 in public science. The additional tally includes 15 staff announced by the Turnbull government last year for the CSIRO after a public outcry forced the agency's chief executive Larry Marshall to reverse most of the planned cuts.
 

The discussions will advance the implementation of the USAID Institutional Strengthening for pacific island countries to Adapt to Climate Change (ISACC) and DFAT/GIZ Climate Finance Readiness in the Pacific (CFRP) projects.

Both projects are implemented jointly, to provide countries with integrated approaches.

The countries gather to share project milestones, challenges and lessons learnt and these experiences will be aligned to peer-to-peer exchanges which will be facilitated and supported by the two regional projects.

New Zealand is sending more than $US2.6 million dollars to the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering as part of a five-year plan to crack down on financial crime in the Pacific.

Mr Brownlee said terrorism financing would also be cracked down on as part of the group's efforts.

He said Pacific members would be provided with legislative and technical assistance, including training staff of institutions and law enforcement officials on dealing with financial crime.