Climate change … along with depleted fisheries and savage storms, this is one of the great challenges facing the Pacific. Image: Fiji Times

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Michael Sergel and Finian Scott

Rising sea levels, falling fish stocks and more extreme storms have proven destructive and deadly, Pacific leaders told a Wellington forum at the weekend.

New Zealand Green MP Kennedy Graham launched an apology to delegates at the Pacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum on behalf of New Zealanders who disagreed with the government’s decision not to sign the Copenhagen Agreement on reducing carbon emissions and alleviating climate change.

Other delegates spoke of the threat that rising sea levels posed to low-lying islands, the effect of overfishing and environmental changes on the Pacific fish stock, and the recovery efforts after severe storms in Samoa, Tonga and other countries. Read more »

Pacific politics delegates in the parliamentary chamber in Wellington. Image: Michael Sergel/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Michael Sergel and Finian Scott in Wellington

Pacific political leaders agree that action needs to be taken on gender equality in the region, although they disagree with the urgency of measures.

Delegates from 17 countries addressed the Pacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum in Wellington on Friday.

For a Palauan politician, Senator Rukebai Kikuo Skey-Inabo, gradual change was not good enough. Read more »

Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses holding the West Papua Morning Star freedom flag flanked by the visiting West Papuan delegation. Image: Vanuatu govt

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Godwin Ligo in Port Vila

If Vanuatu national leaders, and some top brass in the opposition, mean what they say of the support to the West Papuan cause towards self-determination, Indonesia will likely be voted out and West Papua voted in as observer to the Melanesian Spearhead group at the June MSG Meeting in New Caledonia.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses has assured a West Papua delegation during a meeting in his office that he will support a West Papua request to grant and admit the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region as an observer in the meeting in Noumea.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Ham Lini has already pledged his support in the last government to move for Indonesia to be stripped off MSG status and West Papua to be granted MSG observer status instead. Read more »

A protest against the Vietnam War in 1972. Image: © John Miller

From the anti-Vietnam war protests of the 1960s, the anti-apartheid and nuclear free movements of the 1970s and 1980s, indigenous land struggles of Māori, to more contemporary issues like the use of genetic modification and the sale of state-owned assets, John Miller has been a constant recorder of our turbulent times.

Pacific Scoop:
Asia-Pacific Journalism Report – By Karen MacKenzie

Documentary photographer John Miller of Ngapuhi descent has been capturing pivotal events in New Zealand’s contemporary history since he first picked up his uncle’s camera and photographed an anti-Vietnam War demonstration as a 16-year-old schoolboy in 1967.

Addressing a public gathering last week, hosted by the Pacific Media Centre at AUT University, Miller talked of some of the highlights of his 45-year career documenting political dissent and significant events in New Zealand.

He has been described as the most significant Māori photographer in the country. Read more »

Noumea’s Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes … being sold to three local businessmen. Image: David Robie/PMC

Local journalists and foreign observers are watching carefully as the controversial sale of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes continues to unfold. On Monday, new negotiations will begin over the process of transfer of assets.

Pacific Scoop:
Asia-Pacific Journalism Report – By Jamie Small

Journalists at New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper have called off their industrial strike this week.

They have been concerned about the impending sale of their newspaper and – perhaps more importantly – the rights of journalists in the politically uncertain future of the French Pacific overseas territory.

On December 6, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes published an article announcing that its parent company, Groupe Hersant Média, had put the newspaper up for sale. Read more »

Photographers John Miller and Gil Hanly chat at the nuclear-free Pacific photographic seminar at AUT University. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Daniel Drageset

Social justice photographer John Miller believes his work brings alive issues for young people today and is a critical historical record.

Outlining the origins of the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, he spoke at a public seminar about the 1985 Rainbow Warrior bombing, the hikoi and how the NFIP song Ngā Iwi E became a popular waiata in New Zealand.

Ngā Iwi E was written originally for the Fourth Pacific Festival of Arts in New Caledonia, but that was called off in solidarity with Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) protests against French colonial rule. Read more »

Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and former Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare (right) at the MSG conference at the University of the South Pacific. Image: Atu Rasea/The Fiji Times

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Salaseini Tawake in Suva

Fiji should not be pressured into creating a constitution simply to please development partners or suppress criticisms from big foreign countries, says Papua New Guinea’s founding prime minister Sir Michael Somare.

The grand chief said this during the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Melanesian Spearhead Group yesterday.

The three-day event began on Monday at the University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus, in Suva, Fiji. Read more »

The free West Papua concert in Port Moresby marking Benny Wenda’s global tour. Image: Masalai blog

Pacific Scoop:
Commentary – By Airi Ingram and Jason MacLeod in Port Moresby

Melanesian support for a free West Papua has always been high. Travel throughout Papua New Guinea and you will often hear people say that West Papua and Papua New Guinea is ‘wanpela graun’ – one land – and that West Papuans on the other side of the border are family and kin.

In the Solomon Islands, Kanaky, Fiji and especially Vanuatu, people will tell you that “Melanesia is not free until West Papua is free”. This was the promise that the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu’s first prime minister made.

Ordinary people in this part of the Pacific are painfully aware that the West Papuan people continue to live under the gun. It is the politicians in Melanesia who have been slow to take up the cause. Read more »

Two flags flutter above the French High Commission administration in Noumea – the Tricolore and the Kanak ensign. Image: David Robie/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Special Report – By Nic Maclellan

New Caledonia’s next Congressional elections will not be held until May 2014, but it seems like the electoral campaign has already begun.

In recent months, politics in the French Pacific colony has been hotting up as supporters and opponents of independence prepare for next year’s electoral contest.

Since the Noumea Accord was signed in May 1998, there has been a gradual transfer of authority from Paris to Noumea. But the Congress elected in 2014 will have a major decision. Read more »

Kanak environmentalists from the anti-mining ecology group Caugern take to the streets in Noumea last November to protest against the southern Goro nickel mine that they claim will cause extensive environmental damage. But the Koniambo development in the north is owned by the Kanak-controlled local government and is strongly supported. Image: Indymedia

Pacific Scoop:
Special Report – By Nic Maclellan

New Caledonia’s nickel industry is being transformed as new joint ventures and exports to Asia challenge France’s control of the strategic minerals sector.

New Caledonia holds more than 25 percent of the world’s nickel reserves, as well as other strategic metals. The mining, processing and export of these ores are central to New Caledonia’s political as well as economic future, as the country moves to a new political status after 2014.

The FLNKS independence movement sees the control of the islands’ major industry as a key part of their struggle. Read more »