Posts Tagged ‘Pacific’

Storm brewing over Pacific climate and debt

Thursday, March 9th, 2023

Across the Pacific, people are picking up the bones of their ancestors like shells on the beach. Burial grounds are being washed away by rising tides. Communities are shoring up seawalls with old tyres. I was raised on the beautiful island of Tonga. When I was a child, my parents and grandparents would come out Read more

Caritas alarmed over Pacific climate change

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

Alarm over displacement in Papua New Guinea caused by climate change was expressed last week during a meeting at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Port Moresby. The gathering focused particularly on climate change and specifically on the issue of the Cartaret islands in the autonomous region of Bougainville and the Manam islands in Madang province. Read more

Pacific slave trade – island countries are a source and destination

Thursday, February 21st, 2019

The Pacific Immigration Development Community is concerned about the increasing slave trade in the region. It says human trafficking to the point of slavery is increasingly common in industries like logging, mining and fishing. Read more

Māori need to do more for our Pacific cousins

Thursday, March 8th, 2018
Māori pacific

As our Pacific Islands cousins face the unprecendented impacts of climate change, they are looking for allies who will support them by taking concrete actions to limit global warming to 1.5oC and will also rehome the now inevitable climate change refugees from low lying Pacific states. Those allies are precious few. Most nations are long Read more

The economics of the Pacific rubbish dump

Friday, March 6th, 2015

If you haven’t already, meet the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of oceanic junk that has ballooned over the last four decades. No one is sure how big it is, but it’s probably enormous. A new study in Science Magazine tried to pin down some firm numbers by digging into various data: waste generation Read more

Pacific climate funding must prioritise the poor

Friday, November 21st, 2014

Caritas supports the government’s prioritising of the Pacific for direct climate change related funding, rather than making a major contribution to the global Green Climate Fund. At the G20 summit in Australia on the weekend, Prime Minister John Key pledged $3 million to the Fund, but said New Zealand would continue to focus on the Read more

Saints, pigs and the Bishop of PNG

Tuesday, June 10th, 2014

Stepping over a pig about to be slaughtered while accompanying the relic of a potential saint may seem a somewhat unusual piece of Church business. But for Bishop of Papua New Guinea’s Kimbe province Capuchin Bill Fey such events are not especially unusual. “On that instance, I was part of a procession carrying a relic of Read more

The power of storytelling

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

I’ve recently returned from a visit to Kiribati. For those who don’t know, the Republic of Kiribati is a remote island nation straddling the equator in the Pacific Ocean. It’s also where a small group of Good Samaritan Sisters have been ministering since 1991. I was there to witness the perpetual profession of Kakare Biita as Read more

Archbishop Martin Krebs appointed new Apostolic Nuncio

Friday, May 10th, 2013
Archbishop Martin Krebs Apostolic Nuncio to New Zealand

The Holy Father, with the agreement of the respective governments, has announced that Archbishop Martin Krebs is the new Apostolic Nuncio to New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Palau, and Federated States of Micronesia in the Pacific. Archbishop Krebs (56) was born in Essen, Germany. He was ordained priest in 1983, and after obtaining a doctorate in Read more

Let them drink Kava: Pacific outcry in Australia

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

A Pacific researcher has joined growing calls in Australia to lift bans on drinking the traditional drink, Kava.

Pacific Islanders in Canberra have been working with Australia’s Greens Party and the Government in the Australian Capital Territory to allow consumption of the alcoholic drink.

The ban was imposed in 2009, after several deaths in Europe were linked to Kava tablets.

Read the article...