Pacific Islands

The Pacific Community has just released PacFishID, an app which draws on data previously used by fisheries officers, but now opened to a wider digital audience.

The group's Fisheries Information Officer, Aymeric Desurmont, said the coast had been overlooked because of the focus on policing offshore fisheries.

In addition to coastal erosion, rising sea levels are expected to negatively impact economic output and employment and could aggravate inflation and cause an increase in government debt, according to the study, A Blue Urban Agenda: Adapting to Climate Change in the Coastal Cities of Caribbean and Pacific Small Island Developing States.

“Caribbean and Pacific coastal cities are on the frontlines of climate change,” said Michael Donovan, Senior Urban Specialist at the IDB, co-author of the study.

Sir Don McKinnon last night delivered the latest in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Lecture series at New Zealand's parliament in Wellington.

In his lecture 'Dark Clouds Over Democracy', Sir Don said democracy was facing big challenges but that it still offered a system everyone could participate in.

Stressing that developing democracies in the Pacific should be given time to find their feet, he said developed democracies should not adopt the approach of wielding a big stick.

Preparing for and responding to natural disasters as they affect access to food for millions of people in the Pacific Islands, was of the major themes at the meeting.

50 representatives from governments, non-governmental and UN organisations, jointly hosted by Food Security Cluster co-lead Coordinators: the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

The three-day event was designed to foster collaboration, coordination and the sharing of ideas and experiences amongst members.

“New Zealand and Australia are being accused of pushing a trade deal to advance their own commercial interests at the expense of Pacific Islands’ national interests,” Green Party trade spokesperson Barry Coates said.
 
“The fact that the Pacific’s two biggest economies, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have opted out is a warning sign that Australia and New Zealand have demanded too many concessions. Their absence from PACER Plus will undermine the existing Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) and Pacific regionalism.
 

An expert on China's foreign aid programme, Denghua Zhang, said the Te Mato Vai project in the Cook Islands was helping China learn about aid delivery and monitoring.

According to his research, about four percent of China's total aid spends goes to Oceania, most of that in soft loans for new roads and other infrastructure.

Mr Zhang said China was increasingly teaming up with traditional donor countries and agencies like the UN Development Programme and it saw the Pacific as a good testing ground for such co-operation.

As part of this effort, SPC is developing a coastal inundation forecasting tool for the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Coastal Inundation Forecasting Demonstration Project (CIFPD) in Fiji.

This tool will be demonstrated in the Coral Coast before being replicated in other areas within Fiji including the Nadi River catchment.

This project has been established at the request of the Fiji Meteorological Service (FMS) and made possible with donor funding from the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) in 2017.

The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company which was actually established in 2007 as a pilot initiative currently covers Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands and the Marshall Islands.

Donor funding for the initiative comes from the UK, the US, and Germany and Japan.

Already two of the countries have received payouts from the initiative: Tonga, ten days after Cyclone Ian in 2014; and Vanuatu seven days after Pam in 2015, worth a combined total of US$3.2 million.

Gerry Brownlee met his Fijian counterpart, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, at a South Pacific defence ministers' meeting in Auckland yesterday to discuss issues including maritime surveillance.

He said an inshore patrol vessel will be deployed to Fiji for six months in May to combat the widespread problem.

According to Mr Brownlee, the increase in illegal fishing vessels from Vietnam, also known as "blue boats", required counter-action.

This was a key message by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature at the first Oceania Ecosystem Services Forum in Brisbane held 27-31 March 2017.

Pacific island people rely heavily on ecosystem services and natural resources to support their national economies and community livelihoods.