An aerial photo of the Tuvaluan capital Funafuti. Low lying Pacific island nations like Tuvalu face an existential threat from rising sea levels.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
The climate migration deal has been dubbed as offering Tuvaluans a lifeline, but others say it is a neocolonial arrangement that does not tackle rising ocean levels.
A healthy reef on Kiritimati (Christmas Island, Republic of Kiribati).
(Danielle Claar)
Exploring the often unseen, and poorly understood, nuances of diversity within coral reefs may prove essential for ensuring the long-term health of Earth’s oceans.
Big resorts, cruise ships and visitor numbers are all up for debate across the Pacific, but economic pressure may test how post-pandemic reality lives up to the sustainability rhetoric.
Pacific communities have always been resilient, surviving on islands in the middle of oceans for more than 3,000 years. But climate change is an unprecedented challenge.
In this October 2011 photo, members of the Royal New Zealand defense force pump sea water into holding tanks ready to be used by the desalination plant in Funafuti, Tuvalu, South Pacific. The atolls of Tuvalu are at grave risk due to rising sea levels and contaminated ground water.
AP Photo/Alastair Grant
A recent ruling by the UN’s Human Rights Committee recognized that climate refugees do exist, and acknowledged a legal basis for protecting them when their lives are threatened by climate change.
Fish are attracted to floating objects, especially with dangling ropes or nets.
WorldFish/Flickr
Fishers who hunt wild tuna use fish’s natural attraction to floating objects to lure them to known positions near GPS-equipped rafts. However, these rafts are attracting increasing concern.
Boys play on a beach in Kiribati in 2014. Cuba is training doctors to tend to people on the Pacific island nation, struggling with disease amid the worsening effects of climate change.
(Shutterstock)
Cuba is offering a compelling example of how we can take care of each other during the climate crisis with its work training doctors on Kiribati, a nation that is being devastated by climate change.
The British nuclear weapon tests on Kiritimati (or Christmas) Island had profound and lasting cultural consequences for both atomic veterans and local islanders.
Island nations composed of low-lying atolls are at risk of being wiped out by rising sea levels in the era of climate change. Yet the international community is doing next to nothing to help them.
Environment Minister Melissa Price is accused of insulting Kiribati’s former president, saying he was only in Australia “for the cash”.
Lukas Coch/AAP
At a time when the future of many Pacific islands is under threat, a little compassion is in order, not barbs at their expense.
If New Zealand introduces a climate refugee visa, 100 Pacific Islanders could be granted access on the basis that their home islands are threatened by rising seas.
Reuters/David Gray
New Zealand’s plan to create the world’s first humanitarian visa for climate refugees has to consider ways people from Pacific Island nations actually want to be assisted.
COP 22 President Salaheddine Mezouar from Morocco, right, hands over a gavel to Fiji’s prime minister and president of COP 23 Frank Bainimarama, left, during the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, Monday, Nov. 6, 2017.
AP Photo/Martin Meissner
Although climate change threatens the world’s small island nations, many can find ways to adapt and preserve their homes and cultures – especially if wealthy countries cut emissions and provide support.
Climate fight: a traditional Fijian warrior poses at the UN climate summit in Bonn.
Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
To many people, island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are synonymous with climate catastrophe. But prophesies of doom aren’t all that helpful.
This wood tower on Bikeman islet, in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati, used to be on the sand. Now it’s in the water. Further out, locals fish.
David Gray/Reuters
A new study finds that even in best-case scenarios, the fishing communities most hurt by climate change are on small island nations such as Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and the Maldives.
Traditional taro pits can be used to grow nutritious vegetables for the entire household.
Graham Lyons
Robert Edis, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Geoff Dean, University of Tasmania, and Graham Lyons, University of Adelaide
We set out to discover whether it’s possible to reduce the alarming rates of non-communicable diseases in Pacific nations while improving nutrition security and income.
The site of the hillfort of Vugala, northern Viti Levu island (Fiji). This was one of many hillforts in the area – home to a few hundred people according to reports from the 1840s – that were probably established around AD 1400 in response to conflict resulting from a food crisis that had come about as a result of an enduring fall in sea level.
Patrick Nunn