News

As many readers are aware, Te Ipukarea Society, with the support of the Tourism Industry Council and Cook Islands Tourism authority, has recently launched an eco certification scheme for tourism operators. Link to the full article below. 

Amid concerns about tourist boats getting too close and scaring whales, tough questions are being asked about how the magnificent marine mammals are to be protected for the future. Link to full article below.

...five citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) graduated from Australia’s James Cook University’s (JCU) Ridge to Reef Sustainable Development Post Graduate Program, making the FSM cohort one of the largest groups of the approximately 30 Pacific Islanders that enrolled in the program

Fata Malolo Funefeai is among 30 Pacific Island environmental practitioners and government officials who received post graduate certificates in Ridge to Reef Sustainable Development from James Cook University. Link below to full article.

A landmark new report from the world’s scientists has warned the pressures humans are putting on land are enormous, unsustainable and are adding to the climate crisis. Link to full article below. 

The Chairman of the Pacific Water and Wastewater Association (PWWA), Raka Junior Taviri, said access to sufficient safe drinking water which is a basic human right is very low in the Pacific. He said only 30% of the Pacific population have reliable safe drinking water.

Researchers say that teasing out the role of human-induced global warming — as opposed to natural fluctuations — in individual weather extremes will help city planners, engineers and home-owners to understand which kinds of floods, droughts and other weather calamities are increasing in risk.

Indigenous Pacific knowledge should inform the science to save the world's oceans.That was the consensus among Pacific ocean scientists and other regional stakeholders who gathered in New Caledonia recently for the first global workshop aimed at arresting the decline of the world's oceans.

Peter Thomson, who is leading the United Nations’ "Goal 14" initiative for sustainable use of the oceans and marine resources, met with Chilean president Sebastian Pinera and other key policymakers to back the South American country's leadership in combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (I