Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa says the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is focused on how they will approach the next seven years to achieve the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Addressing the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development in New York on behalf of AOSIS, PM Fiame said world leaders needed to leave nationalism behind and urgently put action to the rhetoric they had been propagating for the past eight years.

“Climate change, the global financial crisis, the covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions have taught us that we are even more closely connected than we wish to acknowledge, and that choices made on one end have far and wide reaching devastating impacts on those of us who are many, many miles away,” told the UN High Level Political Forum.

“If we are going to uphold and deliver on our strong commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘reaching the furthest behind first’ we will have to leave nationalism behind and urgently put action to the rhetoric we have been propagating for the past eight years.”

PM Fiame said it was “time to stop kicking the can further down the road and doing bandage fixes”.

“We have to begin to earnestly address our global development issues, if we are going to begin speaking of a ‘summit of the future’ and ‘for future generations’.

“The sad reality is if we do not take care of today, for many of us, there will be no tomorrow or future.

‘We can do this together’
“We believe we can do this together, as the international community, if we return to the strong resolve, we had following the MDGs and knowing that if nothing drastic was done we would be worse off than we were as a global community in 1992 in Rio when we spoke of “the future we want,” Fiame said.

Faced with continuous and multiple crises, and without the ability to address these in any substantial and sustainable way, SIDS were on the “proverbial hamster wheel with no way out”, the Samoa Prime Minister said.

Therefore what was needed was to:

“Firstly, take urgent action on the climate change front — more climate financing; drastic cuts and reduction in greenhouse emissions, 1.5 is non-negotiable, everyone is feeling the mighty impacts of this, but not many of us have what it takes to rebounded from the devastation.

“This forthcoming COP28 needs to be a game changer, results must emanate from it — the Loss and Damage Fund needs to be fully operationalised and financed; we need progressive movement from the global stocktake; and states parties need to enhance NDCs.

“Secondly, urgent reform of the governance structure and overall working of the international financial architecture. It is time for it to be changed from its archaic approach to finance.

“We need a system that responds more appropriately to the varied dynamics countries face today; that goes beyond GDP; that takes into account various vulnerabilities and other aspects; that would look to utilise the Multi-Vulnerability Index, Bridgetown Initiative and all other measures that help to facilitate a more holistic and comprehensive insight into a country’s true circumstances.

‘More inclusive participation’
“This reform must also allow for a more inclusive and broader participation.

“Thirdly, urgently address high indebtedness in SIDS, this can no longer be ignored. There needs to be a concerted effort to address this.

“As we continually find ourselves in a revolving door between debt and reoccurring debt due to our continuous and constant response to economic, environmental and social shocks caused by external factors,” Prime Minister Fiame said.

“I appeal to you all to take a pause and join forces to make 2030 a year that we can all be proud of,” she said.

“In this vein, please be assured of AOSIS making our contribution no matter how minute it may be. We are fully committed. We invite you to review our interregional outcome document, the ‘Praia Declaration’ for a better understanding of our contribution.

“And we look forward to your constructive engagement as together we chart the 10-year Programme of Action for SIDS in 2024,” she said.

Fiame said the recently concluded Preparatory Meetings for the 4th International Conference on SIDS affirmed the unwavering commitment of SIDS to implement the 2030 Agenda as they charted a 10-year plan for a “resilient and prosperous future for our peoples”.

A ‘tough journey’
“We do recognise that the journey for us will be tough and daunting at times, but we are prepared and have a strong resolve to achieve this. However, we do also recognise and acknowledge that we cannot do this on our own.”

The summit marks the mid-point of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It will review the state of the SDGs implementation, provide policy guidance, mobilise action to accelerate implementation and consider new challenges since 2015.

The summit will address the impact of multiple and interlocking crises facing the world, including the deterioration of key social, economic and environmental indicators. It will focus first and foremost on people and ways to meet their basic needs through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

This is the second SDG Summit, the first one was held in 2019.

Republished from Pacnews.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama used his inaugural speech as the new chair of the Pacific Islands Forum to offer an apology to the Micronesian members of the Pacific grouping who were angered by the way the Forum rejected their nominee for the Forum Secretary-General’s job.

“I offer you my deepest apology,” said Bainimarama at the handover ceremony done virtually at the start of the 51st Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ retreat today.

“We could have handled it better,” he added.

All five Micronesian members of the Forum – Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau – announced the decision to withdraw from the Pacific leaders group soon after the leaders decision last February to appoint Henry Puna — former prime minister of Cook Islands — as the new Forum SG, ahead of Micronesia’s candidate, Ambassador Gerald Zakios from the Marshall Islands.

The Micronesians had argued that it was Micronesia’s turn to nominate one of their own for the SG position, succeeding Dame Meg Taylor of Papua New Guinea.

At the start of today’s Forum Leaders’ retreat, only Nauru’s President Lionel Aingimea was present.

Outgoing Pacific Islands Forum chair Kausea Natano, who is Prime Minister of Tuvalu, made mention of the Micronesians in his handover address, and although he gave no clue as to whether his attempts to win back the Micronesians into the Forum had had any success, he stressed “unity and solidarity” for the Pacific regional bloc.

Pacific Way
He believes the Pacific Way of talanoa and dialogue as the way forward to resolving the impasse between the northern Micronesian nations and their southern Pacific neighbours.

The dialogue should be “frank and respectful”, he said.

Prime Minister Natano also spoke about the need for the islands of the Pacific to stay the course on climate change, that their voices ought to be “united and loud”.

He also wanted Pacific Islands Forum unity in opposing Japan’s plans to dump contaminated nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.

Both Scott Morrison of Australia and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand were at the opening of the Leaders Retreat this morning, as well as the Pacific Islands Forum’s newest member, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, Prime Minister of Samoa.

Prime Minister Bainimarama congratulated Prime Minister Fiame by stating that while her coming into office was “not easy,” her achievement was still a proud milestone.

As the new Forum chair, and recalling his navigation days as a navy boat commander, Bainimarama said the Forum’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent would be the “northern star” in charting the work of the regional body.

Blue Pacific strategy
The strategy is on the agenda of the leaders’ one-day retreat today together with a common position on the incoming climate change negotiations in COP26 in Scotland in October, as well as a review of a joint forum action on combatting covid-19.

Due to the closure of international borders, all these discussions are held over zoom, although another leaders’ retreat is planned for January next year, by which time Fiji hopes its international borders would be open, and the Pacific Leaders would be able to attend the meeting in person.

In addition to speeches of the outgoing and incoming chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, this morning’s opening of the 51st Leaders retreat was also addressed by the new Forum Secretary General Henry Puna, as well as an address via video by United States President Joe Biden.

A video to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pacific Islands Forum was also screened.

Pita Ligaiula is a journalist with the Pacnews regional cooperative news agency.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

All across the South Pacific, tribute is being paid to broadcaster and journalist Shiu Singh who has died in his home in Suva, Fiji.

The sad news will be carried throughout Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia via media networks such as PACNEWS, which was pioneered and built up over years of dedicated hard work by Singh.

In the 1960s, as Singh began a term of service in the RNZAF, his homeland Fiji and many other Pacific colonies of Britain, USA, New Zealand and Australia were preparing to become self-governing or independent, but were hindered because their only communication links were with their colonial masters.

Pacific Islanders heard no news from or about their neighbours, and had no chance to talk with each other, swap advice, exchange experiences.

In the 1970s, Singh, now back in Fiji with a fine reputation as a current affairs broadcaster set about changing that state of affairs.

Soon after helping to establish the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) he took on the daunting task of gathering, editing, compiling and re-distributing Pacific news right across our region. It is largely because of his dedication and professionalism that PACNEWS exists today.

Singh overcame many challenges, including a threat by Fiji’s military government to censor bulletins and destroy the credibility he had worked so hard to establish.

His response was to say goodbye to his beloved Prabha and family and – after a two-day hiatus – resume the much valued PACNEWS from a new home in Vanuatu.

We mourn the passing of an outstanding public broadcaster who gave great service to Pacific people in the course of a distinguished career marked by reliability, honesty, impartiality and extremely hard work.

Vinaka vaka levu, Shiu. May you rest in peace.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

News that Australian Associated Press has been saved is being welcomed by media outlets in socially and culturally complex Pacific countries such as Papua New Guinea where dramatic and important stories often emerge.

When the closure of AAP was announced earlier this year, concern was expressed by media industry figures in Australia and across the Pacific.

Media outlets in the Pacific, in particular, are under-resourced due to various structural weaknesses and are, therefore, heavily reliant on credible news from Australia provided by AAP.

READ MORE: Loss of AAP a tragedy for entire Pacific

On Friday, AAP announced that a consortium of philanthropists and media executives had expressed interest are making a bid to buy the AAP Newswire service.

The consortium members, including former News Corp CEO Peter Tonagh; Fred Woollard, managing director of Samuel Terry Asset Management; and Kylie Charlton, managing director of Australian Impact Investments; have made an offer to purchase after raising a significant amount of money.

After the proposed closure was announced, Pacnews agency editor Makereta Komai was concerned that this would have a huge impact on the news service she works for and other struggling outlets.

AAP has been “a great and timely source of stories in Australia that are relevant and significant to the Pacific region,” she explained.

Essential tool
In countries like Papua New Guinea, the AAP Newswire service in particular has been an essential tool in achieving a Fourth Estate in terms of framing political issues.

Former AAP bureau chief Liza Kappelle said journalists at AAP focused on trying to make its news “interesting, engaging, informative and dead accurate”.

Among the Pacific countries, Papua New Guinea has by far the largest economy and the biggest population (8.6 million). The region includes approximately 600 small islands, and has more than 800 Indigenous languages with only 13 per cent of the population living in urban areas.

The region has seen a lot of closures and restrictions of news coverage by traditional media organisations at a time when international support is crucial.

Years ago, AAP had a bureau in Suva, Fiji, which was an important part of the region’s coverage. Then it was left with just one bureau, in Port Moresby. When that was closed in 2013, Australia broke 60 years of print media coverage on the ground in Papua New Guinea.

This left only the ABC’s broadcast media coverage, which has also been reduced due to the Australian government’s budget cuts.

In West Papua, the war of independence has intensified and Indonesia has banned media coverage of the conflict.

Media independence eroded
Successive governments in Papua New Guinea have been accused of eroding media independence.

Former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill was recently arrested under suspicion of corruption, having “bought” some leading journalists. Journalists and the media have increasingly come under threat legally and politically with restrictive legislation, intimidation, assaults, police and military brutality as well as illegal detention.

All this has occurred while Australia’s voice in the region has begun to fall silent.

China’s encroaching influence on the Pacific has made the struggle for media freedom in the region even harder. This is further complicated by Australia’s media freedom being also on a decline.

Consequently, Australia is no longer a press freedom role model for the Pacific. This year, Australia dropped five places to be rated at number 26 on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie says lack of media diversity in Australia is directly impacting on Australia’s poor press freedom rankings. He made comparisons to when press freedom began decreasing after the country’s media independence had been quite strong.

But then the first two military coups occurred in 1987.

Never known ‘truly free press’
“There is now a generation of journalists in Fiji who have never known what it’s like to have a truly free press,” said Dr Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report.

Here in Australia, it has become increasingly difficult for journalists to report on political issues. Laws have been introduced in recent years banning journalists from reporting on Australia’s refugee detention centres in Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, and also on Manus Island.

Australian law enforcement can probe into the identities of whistle-blowers and anonymous sources while seizing journalist’s documents and electronic devices.

The erosion of public interest journalism has left the Australian public with little understanding of what is happening in and around the Pacific Islands.

A survey by the International Federation of Journalists found nearly one in four journalists in countries including Australia, said accessing information from government or official sources was becoming more difficult.

The editor of Croakey Health Media, Dr Melissa Sweet, who has previously worked at AAP, knows this all too well, and said: “Nowadays you’ve got snowballs’ [little chance in hell] of getting people to talk to you, unless perhaps they are whistle blowers.

Tip of the iceberg
“Whistle blowers are really the tip of the iceberg in terms of who you need to communicate with to understand what’s going on in governments and organisations.

“I remember… back when I was at the AAP in the eighties, there were various meetings that I could go and report from and on that were open to the public that are now closed. Back in those days I had much better access, whether it was health ministers or health bureaucrats on all sorts of levels,” she recalls.

“People within government or bureaucracies have been unwilling to talk for a very long time. This has been a long-term trend.”

The declining plurality of the media in Australia has led to one of the most concentrated levels of media ownership in the world. Two parties own almost all privately owned media in Australia – Rupert Murdoch’s $16.3 billion dollar company, News Corp, and Nine Entertainment, which is run by a consortium created by company founders, the Packer family.

Prior to the purchase offer announcement, Murdoch’s News Corp, along with Nine Entertainment, were the two main shareholders of AAP, which has been described as the “Australian democracy safety net”.

The shareholders decided in March, that after 85 years in operation the country’s only national newswire service was no longer profitable and they announced plans for its closure on June 26 this year.

The Australian Journalism union, MEAA, blasted the shareholders’ decision, calling it “irresponsible,” “devastating” and “reckless.”

Worst time for Pacific media
The announcement could not have come at a worse time for media in the Pacific, where local media companies lack the clout to stand up to authoritarian governments. It is unknown what impact covid-19 will have on the region.

Recently, politicians and authorities in Fiji and Papua New Guinea have been accused of silencing criticism by sheltering behind emergency lockdown laws.

After the announcement in March, speculation arose about the reasons for the AAP closure. Kappelle, said she could not recall the exact words of chairman Campbell Reid. But when asked if the closure was because NewsCorp and Nine were tired of subsidising a breaking newswire service for their competitors, she answered, “That’s definitely the gist of it.”

The closure would certainly weaken competition from other news outlets. Murdoch, who has a personal fortune of $17.6 billion, has recently been accused of using the covid-19 crisis as an excuse to scrap regional newspaper titles within Australia.

Following the announcement, it was revealed that both NewsCorp and Nine had made plans to open their own breaking newswire services. However, both shareholders publicly blamed digital competitors Google and Facebook for the AAP’s demise.

Dr Sweet was devasted to hear of the proposed closure, saying it would impact on journalism globally. She explained it as a situation where people did not understand the current crisis facing many journalists and news outlets and that it was not only related to AAP, but to public interest journalism more broadly.

Vested interest reasons
“I guess as an industry we just haven’t done a very good job of explaining it and there’s vested interest reasons around that. No media outlet wants to say to you ‘we are going to hell in a hand basket’. They all want to keep trying to pretend that they are doing good journalism,” she explained.

“Whereas, the industry is obviously showing the strain of losing so many journalists, closing so many newsrooms, leaving so many communities under-served and under-covered.”

Prior to purchase offer announcement, Dr Sweet said it would be terrific if the people investing in the AAP newswire service weren’t just doing it because they wanted to make money, but so that journalism had a “public good model” that would fit with the history of AAP.

Professor Robie described continued coverage of regions such as Papua New Guinea, as vitally important, saying the country had “a treasure trove of dramatic and important stories.

“The security issues with the struggle of the Papuan people seeking independence are highly sensitive. Where the Australian media withdraws in the Pacific, Chinese media influences will take over.”

Jade Bradford is a student journalist at Curtin University in Western Australia. This article was first published in the journalism programme’s online newspaper Western Independent.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz