Steven Cork, Australian National University and Kate Auty, University of Melbourne
Australia is good at 'hard hat' responses to crises such as cyclones. But a new environmental declaration on the Pacific Islands points out that the best approach is more well-rounded and subtle.
The same beach on Henderson Island, in 1992 and 2015.
After making worldwide headlines with the story of the Pacific "garbage island", researchers were sent a photo of the same beach, white sand free of litter, as recently as 1992.
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.
Church and climate: two issues that are close to many Pacific Islanders’ hearts.
Seaphotoart/Shutterstock.com
What does God have to do with climate change? A lot, if you want to engage with communities in the Pacific Islands, where almost everyone goes to church and religious leaders are hugely influential.
Sport migrations emerge within a general migratory context. In some societies, like the Pacific Islands, adulthood, particularly for men, cannot be completed unless one migrates.
Australia has sought to water down climate declarations made through the Pacific Islands Forum.
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
This week's Pacific Islands Forum is the region's premier multilateral summit. But members have begun turning elsewhere out of frustration with Australia's climate negotiation tactics.
Nauru’s parliament would have been rebuilt in Queensland, but with less power.
CdaMVvWgS/Wikimedia Commons
In the 1960s, with the phosphate boom over and Nauru's economy in ruins, Australia offered to move the entire nation to Queensland's Curtis Island. But with no sovereignty on offer, the deal collapsed.
Does Nauru now face a sunnier outlook?
Saleem H. Ali
Nauruans used to be some of the richest people in the world, before their mining industry imploded. Now, as the island aims to develop sustainably, there are signs of the green shoots of recovery.
The Solomon Islands are low-lying and vulnerable to changes in sea level.
Javier Leon
Sea levels are rising faster in the Solomon Islands – and send a warning for the rest of the world.
The recent arrests of nearly 1,500 protesters in Jayapura are part of a broader systematic oppression of Papuans by the Indonesian government.
Reuters/Darren Whiteside
Benny Giay, Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Walter Post Jayapura
Solving the problem of West Papua in a dignified manner should involve not only Indonesian authorities but also Papuans and the international community.
John Z'graggen’s tapes from Madang.
Nick Thieberger
There are hundreds of different languages spoken in the Pacific region that could be lost. So it's important to safeguard what recordings we have in a digital archive available to all.
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
We don't really know how much international migration will be prompted by climate change. But everyone agrees the issue is big - perhaps too big to resolve at the Paris talks.
The low-lying islands of the Pacific such as Kiribati are vulnerable to sea level rise.
AAP Image/Elise Scott
As Prime Minister Tony Abbott attends the Pacific Island Forum summit today, attention has again turned to how the low-lying islands will deal with global warming.
Marshal Admiral Yamamoto’s bunker in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, which was the wartime headquarters of the Japanese in the south-west Pacific.
AAP/Lloyd Jones
The Pacific War played out as a colonial war in the Pacific. It was brutal for non-combatant civilians in its path, and its impact epitomised the dehumanising capacity of both war and colonialism.
An historian reading the government White Paper on developing northern Australia will realise we’re actually heading all the way back to the 1890s.
andrew matthews/Flickr
The federal government's recent White Paper on developing northern Australia has disturbing echoes of the 1890s, a time when unbridled capitalism and indentured labour developed the North.
Australian has moved swiftly to fly relief aid and personnel to Vanuatu but has been less responsive to Pacific Islanders’ pleas to act on climate change.
AAP/Dave Hunt
The devastation to Vanuatu left in the wake of Cyclone Pam shows small islands in the Pacific need a climate insurance scheme, similar to what has been achieved in the Caribbean.
