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.
Destruction caused by Cyclone Pam is visible on the outskirts of Port Vila.
AAP Image/ Care Australia, Tom Perry
We now have more people, infrastructure and assets exposed where tropical cyclones make landfall.
Monitoring fishing vessels could be a growth industry in the tiny Pacific island nations that govern the world’s largest tuna fishery.
AAP Image/Xavier La Canna
A tiny handful of Pacific island nations control more than 50% of the world’s tuna fishery, and their efforts to monitor international fishing vessels are set to become a major source of jobs.
Just over a decade ago this boy posed in front of a mound of weapons handed in during a gun amnesty in the Solomon Islands. Today he lives in a nation that is gun-free by law.
AAP/Military Public Affairs/W02 Gary Ramage
One sprawling region stands apart for having largely avoided, and at times even reversed, the steady global proliferation of illegal firearms and death by gunshot.
A Fijian election officer shows a ballot to scrutineers at the 2006 election. Last month’s election resulted in a stronger vote for female MPs.
AP Image/Peter Williams
In a region that has long had the worst representation of women in politics in the world, Fiji’s recent election delivered some good news: one in seven Fijian MPs are women, while the parliament now has…
Robinvale footballers have been recruited into an active campaign to heal community divisions, which includes playing an annual Harmony Match.
Facebook/Robinvale Football Netball Club
Standing in the social rooms of Robinvale Football Netball Club on presentation night is perhaps like standing in any sports club in regional Australia when their vote count is on. There are the usual…
Frank Bainimarama has pulled off the unlikely feat of making the transition from military coup leader in 2006 (above) to Fiji’s democratically elected prime minister in Wednesday’s election.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
This was the way it was meant to be, at least in the eyes of Fiji’s self-appointed prime minister and self-styled rear-admiral, Frank Bainimarama. The 2014 election, the country’s first since his 2006…
Saipan: peaceful now, torn by war in the 40s.
P Miller
The battle for the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II is one of those well-remembered battles between Japan and America, one made worse by the mass suicide of local Japanese civilians who jumped…
The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands could avoid being swamped entirely, although it will still suffer profoundly from sea-level rise.
Christopher Johnson/Wikimedia Commons
Paul Kench, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
It is widely predicted that low-lying coral reef islands will drown as a result of sea-level rise, leaving their populations as environmental refugees. But new evidence now suggests that these small islands…
The future for migrant Pacific Islanders in Australian education isn’t promising.
AAP/Laura McQuillan
Historically, geographically, culturally – there are many points of comparison between Australia and its neighbour to the east, New Zealand. But there are notable differences. This week, The Conversation…
Protest: Indian women demonstrate against sexual violence.
Rawesh Lalwani
Stuart Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science
Hard Evidence is a series of articles that looks at some of the trickiest public policy questions we face. Academic experts delve into available research evidence to provide informed analysis you won’t…
More than 2 million people live in Pacific cities, many of them in squats and informal settlements.
eGuide Travel
The Pacific Islands Forum, the peak regional body of Pacific Island states, met in Majuro, Marshall Islands, last week. A major outcome of the meeting was the Forum Communiqué. This is the blueprint for…
Faculty Member, Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University; Visiting Fellow, Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University., Georgetown University