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Thursday 25 February 2021

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
Deep Sea Mining (DSM) of polymetallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean is not essential for a renewables revolution. There would be massive amounts of waste produced and discharged to the ocean. The discharge plumes may also be quite toxic, with metals and processing agents. As Pacific Islanders already know - what happens in the deep doesn't stay in the deep. - Pelenatita Kara, Civil Society Forum of Tonga.
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Tuesday 23 February 2021

Christchurch, New Zealand
New York Times reporting: First the houses and cars vanished. Fences, driveways and the other remaining markers of suburban life followed. Now, only stretches of green remain — an eerie memorial to two earthquakes that leveled Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city, 10 years ago. The undulating expanse, which begins 2 miles from downtown Christchurch, was deemed uninhabitable after the quakes, the second of which killed 185 people on Feb. 22, 2011. The 8,000 properties it encompassed were bought by the government and razed, the remnants swept away.
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Friday 29 January 2021

Tonga's Cabinet on 20 January 2021 approved a zero rate of Consumption Tax for the services of collection and disposal waste by a government approved waste management entity, the Waste Authority Ltd. However, the savings will not be passed onto the public.
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Wednesday 27 January 2021

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
An important mangrove area at the mouth of Tongatapu’s Fanga'uta Lagoon that was destroyed in 2017 to make way for a golf course project in Popua, is slowly being restored by the Department of Environment. “It’s a huge job to restore this area,” said team leader, Hoifua Aholahi, who urges the public not to destroy the nurseries at the site.
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Monday 14 December 2020

Bangkok, Thailand
The environmental roots of the COVID-19 pandemic need to be addressed to further protect people's health and the planet, the sixth session of the Committee on Environment and Development (UN-ESCAP) decided, because the destruction of the living world undermines our only support system and makes pandemics more likely.
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Thursday 29 October 2020

Apria, Samoa
For the first time the 2020 Pacific Ocean, Pacific Climate Change Conference underway this week is being held as a virtual conference. Another large virtual event - the Pacific Islands Nature Conference will be held in November, attracting hundreds of virtual participants, reports SPREP. Pacific Islands Forum Leaders also will soon meet virtually to discuss regional priorities, the highest of which are COVID-19, climate change, and oceans.
Tuesday 20 October 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
Tongatapu 5 Youth Council want to tackle water and coastal issues to ensure a better future for Hihifo communities, after electing a working committee last week. They have support from the Tonga IW Ridge to Reef (R2R) project and local MP.
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Tuesday 20 October 2020

Vallejo-California, USA
New York Times: As oceans warm, algae blooms have become more widespread, creating toxins that get ingested by sardines and anchovies, which in turn get ingested by sea lions, causing damage to the brain that results in epilepsy. Sea otters also face risk when they consume toxin-laden shellfish. Early this month, Cronutt a 7-year-old Pacific sea lion underwent groundbreaking brain surgery aimed at reversing the epilepsy. By Matt Richtel.
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Friday 16 October 2020

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New York Times: The Great Barrier Reef, one of the Earth’s most precious habitats, lost half of its coral populations in the last quarter-century, a decline that researchers in Australia said would continue unless drastic action is taken to mitigate the effects of climate change. By Maria Cramer.
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Friday 5 June 2020

Apia, Samoa
As the Pacific Islands consider ways to build back economies severely struck by the CoViD-19 crisis, the environmental impacts faced worldwide highlight the opportunity we now have in our hands to build back a ‘Bluer Pacific’, said Kosi Latu, Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) on World Environment Day.
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Friday 15 May 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
No-fishing areas established around Tonga are showing they are helping coral reef ecosystems to recover, says the Special Management Area Report 2020, compiled by the Ministry of Fisheries in partnership with Australia's James Cook University recently. Damaged reefs might take 20 years for full recovery.
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Tuesday 3 March 2020

Princeton, USA
The apocalyptic images of the locked-down Chinese city of Wuhan have reached us all. The world is holding its breath over the spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, and governments are taking or preparing drastic measures that will necessarily sacrifice individual rights and freedoms for the general good. ...But few mention, let alone confront, the underlying cause of the epidemic. - Peter Singer.
Monday 9 December 2019

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
A population of coral reefs is making a remarkable recovery around the newest island on Earth, Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH), after it was formed during a volcanic eruption in 2015. A new crater connects the neighbouring islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai.
Monday 5 August 2019

Nadi, Fiji
More than 30 Pacific Island environmental practitioners and government officials, from 14 countries, including Tonga, will contribute more to protect biodiversity and ecosystems in their countries after receiving post graduate certificates in Ridge to Reef Sustainable Development from James Cook University, on 1 August, in Nadi, Fiji.
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Tuesday 25 June 2019

Potsdam, Germany
The leaders of the G20 countries head to Osaka this week for their annual summit. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will address them before traveling to Abu Dhabi to finalize the arrangements for September’s UN Climate Action Summit. These meetings should set the world on course for the fastest economic transition in history. Yet both are likely to deliver incremental action, at best. By Johan Rockström
Tuesday 11 June 2019

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
An exhibition explaining the science behind climate change and its effects was officially launched on 11 June at the Taufa’ahau Tupou IV Domestic Wharf. The exhibition was initiated by scientists working in Antarctica who felt the public needed to be informed about the impacts they were seeing caused by climate change.
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Tuesday 28 May 2019

Bangkok, Thailand
A new United Nations report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) progress urges countries to redouble efforts. On its current trajectory, Asia and the Pacific will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030. Many SDG targets related to the environment and natural resources are registering negative trends. Hazardous waste generation, the reduction in forest areas and the permanent water body extent are the three SDG indicators which are predicted to regress the most by 2030, compared to 2015.
Tuesday 28 May 2019

Apia, Samoa
Representatives from 15 Pacific islands are meeting in Apia, Samoa, from May 27-29 for the PacWaste Plus Inception Meeting, looking at ways to reduce the production of, and improve the management of, hazardous wastes, solid wastes and related aspects of waste water in their countries, aiming for a Cleaner Pacific by 2025.
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Monday 27 May 2019

Stockholm, Sweden
Earlier this month, a bleak global assessment of the shocking state of life on Earth made headlines worldwide. According to the report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), about 12% of all known animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. Worse still, humanity is destroying entire habitats, and with them the web of life that supports societies and economies. Unsurprisingly, the findings were greeted with despair. By Ana Paula Aguiar, Odirilwe Selomane, and Pernilla Malmer.
Monday 11 March 2019

Berlin, Germany
We have long known that the accumulation of plastic in the world’s landfills and oceans represents a growing environmental risk. More recently, we have come to understand that plastic poses an urgent – even deadly – threat to public health, too. And yet, global efforts to address the plastic crisis remain consistently focused on the wrong end of the life cycle: waste management. The debate that will resume this month at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-4) is a case in point, because it will focus on “marine litter and microplastics.” By Lili Fuhr and Jane Patton.

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