Results for Pacific Islands

There was a decline in the flow of tourists from Australia to the Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga during the first four months of 2017, according to the July 2017 issue of the Asian Development Bank Pacific Economic Monitor.

A prominent Australian economist, Dr Patricia Ranald, has called the Pacer-Plus agreement a “failed” regional agreement, because it excluded Fiji, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Concerns over El Nino impacts in the Pacific region during the planet's warmest half-year year on record between January to June 2016 is leading to better preparedness for coordinating humanitarian responses to disaster affected people in the Pacific.

“As Pacific islanders, we have been made custodians of our greatest assets – our people, our culture, our land and our oceans, by our forefathers. A duty we need to fulfill because if we are not careful, we will not only lose our home but we will lose the economic benefits that sustains our livelihoods,” said Christopher Cocker, CEO of the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), at the Climate Action Pacific Partnership Event held last week in Suva, Fiji.

Tonga Police's final contingent to the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) returned to Tonga when the 14-years regional peacekeeping mission ended on 30 June in Honiara.

Roger Pikia, the head of a New Zealand Maori tribe that owns the operation of over 700 hectares of forestry on Tonga's ‘Eua Island, is under fraud investigation.

Only one Pacific Islands heritage site – the Taputapuātea Marae on Ra’iatea Island - has been nominated among 35 world-wide sites under consideration for UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2017, after the people of Opoa in French Polynesia worked for many years to win recognition for its important place in Polynesian voyaging history. The nomination by France asserts that the Pacific region is under-represented in the system of World Heritage properties.

Meeting in Nuku'alofa today, military participants from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Australia, United States, and Tonga’s HMAF are taking part in a three-day military legal workshop, relating to defence forces' deployment to another country in times of crisis.

Illegal fishing operators will now find it harder to offload and sell the fish they catch, under enhanced United Nations measures to stamp out llegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.