REVIEW: By Amit Sarwal of The Australia Today

Forty years after the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, award-winning journalist and author David Robie has revisited the ship’s fateful last mission — a journey that became a defining chapter in New Zealand’s identity as a nuclear-free nation.

Robie’s newly updated book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, is both a historical record and a contemporary warning.

It captures the courage of those who stood up to nuclear colonialism in the Pacific and draws striking parallels with the existential challenges the region now faces — from climate change to renewed geopolitical tensions.

“The new edition has a completely new 40-page section covering the last decade and the transition in global emphasis from ‘nuclear to climate crisis survivors’, plus new exposés about the French spy ‘blunderwatergate’. Ironically, the nuclear risks have also returned to the fore again,” Robie told The Australia Today.

“The book deals with a lot of critical issues impacting on the Pacific, and is expanded a lot and quite different from the last edition in 2015.”

In May 1985, the Rainbow Warrior embarked on a humanitarian mission unlike any before it. The crew helped 320 Rongelap Islanders relocate to a safer island after decades of radioactive contamination from US nuclear testing at Bikini and Enewetak atolls.

Robie, who joined the ship in Hawai’i as a journalist, recalls the deep humanity of that voyage.

Humanitarian voyage
“The fact that this was a humanitarian voyage . . .  helping the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands, it was going to be quite momentous,” he told Pacific Media Network News.

“It’s incredible for an island community where the land is so much part of their existence, their spirituality and their ethos.”

The relocation was both heartbreaking and historic. Islanders dismantled their homes over three days, leaving behind everything except their white-stone church.

“I remember one older woman sitting on the deck among the remnants of their homes,” Robie recalls.

“That image has never left me.”

Their ship’s banner, Nuclear Free Pacific, fluttered as both a declaration and a demand. The Rainbow Warrior became a symbol of Pacific solidarity, linking environmentalism with human rights in a region scarred by the atomic age.

On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was docked at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf when two underwater bombs tore through its hull. The explosions, planted by French secret agents, sank the vessel and killed Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

Bombing shockwaves
The bombing sent shockwaves through New Zealand and the world. When French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius finally admitted that his country’s intelligence service had carried out the attack, outrage turned to defiance. New Zealand’s resolve to remain nuclear-free only strengthened.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark contributes a new prologue to the 40th anniversary edition, reflecting on the meaning of the bombing and the enduring relevance of the country’s nuclear-free stance.

“The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and the death of Fernando Pereira was both a tragic and a seminal moment in the long campaign for a nuclear-free Pacific,” she writes.

“It was so startling that many of us still remember where we were when the news came through.”

Clark warns that history’s lessons are being forgotten. “Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States is one of those storm clouds gathering,” she writes.

“New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific.”

Clark’s message in the prologue is clear: the values that shaped New Zealand’s independent foreign policy in the 1980s — diplomacy, peace and disarmament — must not be abandoned in the face of modern power politics.

Geopolitical threats
Robie adds that the book also explores “the geopolitical threats to the region with unresolved independence issues, such as the West Papuan self-determination struggle in Melanesia.”

Clark’s call to action, Robie told The Australia Today, resonates with the Pacific’s broader fight for justice.

“She warns against AUKUS and calls for the country to ‘link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace, which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence.’”

When Eyes of Fire was first published, it instantly became a rallying point for young activists and journalists across the Pacific. Robie’s reporting — which earned him New Zealand’s Media Peace Prize 40 years ago — revealed the human toll of nuclear testing and state-sponsored secrecy.

Today, his new edition reframes that struggle within the context of climate change, which he describes as “the new existential crisis for Pacific peoples.” He sees the same forces of denial, delay, and power imbalance at play.

“This whole renewal of climate denialism, refusal by major states to realise that the solutions are incredibly urgent, and the United States up until recently was an important part of that whole process about facing up to the climate crisis,” Robie says.

“It’s even more important now for activism, and also for the smaller countries that are reasonably progressive, to take the lead.”

For Robie, Eyes of Fire is not just a history book — it’s a call to conscience.

“I hope it helps to inspire others, especially younger people, to get out there and really take action,” he says.

“The future is in your hands.”

The Rainbow Warrior returned to Aotearoa in July to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing. Forty years on, the story of the Rainbow Warrior continues to burn — not as a relic of the past, but as a beacon for the Pacific’s future through Robie’s Eyes of Fire.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The author of the book Eyes of Fire, one of the countless publications on the Rainbow Warrior bombing almost 40 years ago but the only one by somebody actually on board the bombed ship, says he was under no illusions that France was behind the attack.

Journalist David Robie was speaking last month at a Greenpeace Aotearoa workship at Mātauri Bay for environmental activists and revealed that he has a forthcoming new book to mark the anniversary of the bombing.

“I don’t think I had any illusions at the time. For me, I knew it was the French immediately the bombing happened,” he said.

“You know with the horrible things they were doing at the time with their colonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, assassinating independence leaders and so on, and they had a heavy military presence.

“A sort of clamp down in New Caledonia, so it just fitted in with the pattern — an absolute disregard for the Pacific.”

He said it was ironic that four decades on, France had trashed the goodwill that had been evolving with the 1988 Matignon and 1998 Nouméa accords towards independence with harsh new policies that led to the riots in May last year.

Dr Robie’s series of books on the Rainbow Warrior focus on the impact of nuclear testing by both the Americans and the French, in particular, on Pacific peoples and especially the humanitarian voyages to relocate the Rongelap Islanders in the Marshall Islands barely two months before the bombing at Marsden wharf in Auckland on 10 July 1985.

Detained by French military
He was detained by the French military while on assignment in New Caledonia a year after Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior was first published in New Zealand.

His reporting won the NZ Media Peace Prize in 1985.

David Robie’s 2025 talk on the Rainbow Warrior.     Video: Greenpeace Aotearoa

Dr Robie confirmed that Little island Press was publishing a new book this year with a focus on the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

“This edition is the most comprehensive work on the sinking of the first Rainbow Warrior, but also speaks to the first humanitarian mission undertaken by Greenpeace,” said publisher Tony Murrow.

“It’s an important work that shows us how we can act in the world and how we must continue to support all life on this unusual planet that is our only home.”

Little Island Press produced an educational microsite as a resource to accompany Eyes of Fire with print, image and video resources.

The book will be launched in association with a nuclear-free Pacific exhibition at Ellen Melville Centre in mid-July.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.

He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.

On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.

The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.

The Siem Reap regional government announced the arrest of a suspect the day after the attack, reports RSF.

Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.

“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.

“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”

Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.

Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.

One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.

According to a recent CamboJA report, cases of legal harassment against journalists — particularly those covering environmental issues — are on the rise in Cambodia.

Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert.

Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press Freedom Day last Friday, Plinkert said this year’s theme, “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the environmental crisis,” was a call to action.

“So, I understand this year’s World Press Freedom Day as a call to action, and a unique opportunity to highlight the role that Pacific journalists can play leading global conversations on issues that impact us all, like climate and the environment,” she said.

“Here in the Pacific, you know better than almost anywhere in the world what climate change looks and feels like and what are the risks that lie ahead.”

Plinkert said reporting stories on climate change were Pacific stories, adding that “with journalists like you sharing these stories with the world, the impact will be amplified.”

“Just imagine how much more powerful the messages for global climate action are when they have real faces and real stories attached to them,” she said.

Reflecting on the theme, Plinkert recognised that there was an “immense personal risk” for journalists reporting the truth.

99 journalists killed
According to Plinkert, 99 journalists and media workers had been killed last year — the highest death toll since 2015.

Hundreds more were imprisoned worldwide, she said, “just for doing their jobs”.

“Women journalists bear a disproportionate burden,” the ambassador said, with more than 70 percent facing online harassment, threats and gender-based violence.

Plinkert called it “a stain on our collective commitment to human rights and equality”.

“We must vehemently condemn all attacks on those who wield the pen as their only weapon in the battle for truth,” she declared.

The European Union, she said, was strengthening its support for media freedom by adopting the so-called “Anti-SLAPP” directive which stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation”.

Plinkert said the directive would safeguard journalists from such lawsuits designed to censor reporting on issues of public interest.

Law ‘protecting journalists’
Additionally, the European Parliament had adopted the European Media Freedom Act which, according to Plinkert, would “introduce measures aimed at protecting journalists and media providers from political interference”.

In the Pacific, the EU is funding projects in the Solomon Islands such as the “Building Voices for Accountability”, the ambassador said.

She added that it was “one of many EU-funded projects supporting journalists globally”.

The World Press Freedom event held at USP’s Laucala Campus included a panel discussion by editors and CSO representatives on the theme “Fiji and the Pacific situation”.

The EU ambassador was one of the chief guests at the event, which included Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Secretary-General Henry Puna, and Fiji’s Environment and Climate Change Secretary Dr Sivendra Michael was the keynote speaker.

Plinkert has served as the EU’s Ambassador to Fiji and the Pacific since 2023, replacing Sujiro Seam. Prior to her appointment, Plinkert was the head of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Southeast Asia Division, based in Brussels, Belgium.

Kaneta Naimatau is a third-year student journalist at The University of the South Pacific. Wansolwara News collaborates with Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme.

Under the theme “A Planet for the Press: Journalism in the face of the environment crisis”, Puna underscored the critical role of a free press in addressing the challenges of climate change.

“The challenges confronting the climate crisis and the news profession seem to share a common urgency,” Puna said at the event last Friday.

He highlighted the shared urgency between climate activism and the news profession, noting how both were often perceived as disruptors in contemporary narratives.

Puna drew attention to the alarming death toll of journalists, particularly in conflict zones like Gaza, and the pervasive threats faced by journalists worldwide, including in the Pacific region.

Against this backdrop, he emphasised the vital importance of truth and facts in combating misinformation and disinformation, which pose significant obstacles to addressing climate change effectively.

The Secretary-General’s address resonated with a sense of urgency, emphasising the need for journalism that informs, educates, and amplifies diverse voices, especially those from vulnerable nations directly impacted by the climate crisis.

‘Frontlines of climate change’
He said the imperative for a press that reported from the “frontlines of climate change”, advocating for a 1.5-degree Celsius, net-zero future as the paramount goal for survival.

“A press for the planet is a press that informs and educates,” Puna said.

“And, of course, for our Blue Continent, it must be a press of inclusive and diverse voices.”

Puna highlighted the Pacific Islands Forum’s commitment to transparency and accountability, noting the crucial role of media in communicating the outcomes and decisions of annual meetings.

He cited instances where the presence of journalists enhanced the Forum’s advocacy efforts on climate, environment, and ocean priorities on the global stage.

Reflecting on past collaborative efforts, such as the launch of the Teieniwa Vision against corruption, Puna underscored the symbiotic relationship between political will and journalistic integrity.

He urged governments and media watchdogs to work hand in hand in upholding shared values of transparency, courage, and ethics.

‘Political will’ needed
“It takes political will to enforce the criminalisation of corruption and prompt, impartial investigation, and prosecution,” Puna said.

Looking ahead to 2050, he expressed hope for a resilient Blue Pacific continent, built on the foundations of a robust and resilient press.

He envisioned a future where stories of climate crisis give way to narratives of peace and prosperity, contingent upon achieving the 1.5-degree Celsius, net-zero target.

“In 2050, we will have achieved the 1.5 net zero future that will ensure our stories of the code red for climate in 2024 become the stories of a code blue for peace and prosperity beyond 2050,” Puna said.

Media’s crucial role in ClimateChange & environment reporting was the focus of @UniSouthPacific JournalismProgram #WPFD event. EU Pacific Ambassador Plinkert, PIFs GS Puna & Fiji Environment Ministry PS Dr Michael delivered powerful addresses followed by panel discussion. pic.twitter.com/fle6h02Oe2

— Dr Shailendra B Singh (@ShailendraBSing) May 6, 2024

He commended the commitments made at the G7 Ministerial in Turin to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, emphasising the pivotal role of media in upholding democratic values and advancing collective aspirations for a secure and free society.

Puna extended his best wishes to journalists and journalism students, acknowledging their vital role in shaping public discourse and driving positive change in the face of the environmental crisis.

His plea served as a rallying cry for journalistic vigilance and solidarity in the pursuit of a sustainable future for all.

Kamna Kumar is a third-year journalism student at The University of the South Pacific. Republished from Wansolwara News in a collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The launch of a New Zealand project to produce more Pacific news and provide a “voice for the voiceless” on the islands has highlighted the neglect of that field by Australia and New Zealand — and also problems in universities.

The new development is the non-government, non-university Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), a research base and publishing platform.

Its opening followed the cleaning-out of a centre within the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) — in an exercise exemplifying the kind of micro infighting that goes on hardly glimpsed from outside the academic world.

Cleaning out media centre
The story features an unannounced move by university staff to vacate the offices of an active journalism teaching and publishing base, the Pacific Media Centre, in early February 2021.

Seven weeks after the retirement of that centre’s foundation director, Professor David Robie, staff of AUT’s School of Communication Studies turned up and stripped it, taking out the archives and Pacific taonga — valued artifacts from across the region.

Staff still based there did not know of this move until later.

The centre had been in operation for 13 years — it was popular with Pasifika students, especially postgrads who would go on reporting ventures for practice-led research around the Pacific; it was a base for online news, for example prolific outlets including a regular Pacific Media Watch; it had international standing especially through the well-rated (“SCOPUS-listed”) academic journal Pacific Journalism Review; and it was a cultural hub, where guests might receive a sung greeting from the staff, Pacific-style, or see fascinating art works and craft.

Its uptake across the “Blue Continent” showed up gaps in mainstream media services and in Australia’s case famously the backlog in promoting economic and cultural ties.

The PMC Project — a short documentary about the centre by Alistar Kata in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre

Human rights and media freedom
The centre was founded in 2007, in a troubled era following a rogue military coup d’etat in Fiji, civil disturbances in Papua New Guinea, violent attacks on journalists in several parts, and endemic gender violence listed as a priority problem for the Pacific Islands Forum.

Through its publishing and conference activity it would take a stand on human rights and media freedom issues, social justice, economic and media domination from outside.

The actual physical evacuation was on the orders of the communications head of school at AUT, Dr Rosser Johnson, a recently appointed associate professor with a history of management service in several acting roles since 2005. He told the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) that the university planned to keep a centre called the PMC and co-locate its offices with other centres — but that never happened.

His intervention caused predictable critical responses, as with this comment by a former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief Dr Gavin Ellis, on dealing with corporatised universities, in “neo-liberal” times:

“For many years I thought universities were the ideal place to establish centres of investigative journalism excellence … My views have been shaken to the core by the Auckland University of Technology gutting the Pacific Media Centre.”

Conflicts over truth-telling
The “PMC affair” has stirred conflicts that should worry observers who place value on truth-finding and truth-telling in university research, preparation for the professions, and academic freedom.

The centre along with its counterpart at the University of Technology Sydney, called the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), worked in the area of journalism as research, applying journalistic skills and methods, especially exercises in investigative journalism.

The ACIJ produced among many investigations, work on the reporting of climate policy and climate science, and the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It also was peremptorily shut-down, three years ahead of the PMC.

Both centres were placed in the journalism academic discipline, a “professional” and “teaching” discipline that traditionally draws in high achieving students interested in its practice-led approach.

All of which is decried by line academics in disciplines without professional linkages but a professional interest in the hierarchical arrangements and power relations within the confined space of their universities.

There the interest is in theoretical teaching and research outputs, often-enough called “Marxist”, “postmodern”, “communications” or “cultural studies”, angled at a de-legitimisation of “Western-liberal” mass media. Not that journalism education itself shies away from media criticism, as Dr Robie told Independent Australia:

“The Pacific Media Centre frequently challenged ‘ethnocentric journalistic practice’ and placed Māori, Pacific and indigenous and cultural diversity at the heart of the centre’s experiential knowledge and critical-thinking news narratives.”

Yet it can be seen how conflict may arise, especially where smaller journalism departments come under “takeover” pressure. It is a handy option for academic managers to subsume “journalism”, and get the staff positions that can be filled with non-journalists; the contribution the journalists may make to research earnings (through the Australian Excellence in Research process, or NZ Performance Based Research Fund), and especially government funding for student places.

There, better students likely to excel and complete their programmes can be induced to do more generalised courses with a specialist “journalism” label.

Any such conflict in the AUT case cannot be measured but must be at least lurking in the background.

The head of school, Dr Johnson, works in communication studies and cultural studies, with publications especially about info-advertising. He indicates just a lay interest in journalism listing three articles published in mass media since 2002.

What is ‘ideology’?
Another problem exists, where a centre like the former PMC will commit to defined values, even officially sanctioned ones like inclusivity and rejection of discrimination.

Undertakings like the PMC’s “Bearing Witness” projects, where students would deploy classic journalism techniques for investigations on a nuclear-free Pacific or climate change, can irritate conservative interests.

The derogatory expression for any connection with social movements is “ideological”. This time it is an unknown, but a School moving against an “ideological” unit, might get at least tacit support from higher-ups supposing that eviscerating it might help the institution’s “good name”.

What implications for future journalism, freedom and quality of media? Hostility towards specific professional education for journalism exists fairly widely. The rough-housing of the journalism centre at AUT is indicative, where efforts by the out-going director to organise succession after his retirement, five years in advance, received no response.

The position statement was changed to take away a requirement for actual Pacific media identity or expertise, and the job left vacant, in part a covid effect. The centre performed well on its key performance indicators, if small in size, which brought in limited research grants but good returns for academic publications:

“On 18 December 2020 – the day I officially retired – I wrote to the [then] Vice-Chancellor, Derek McCormack … expressing my concern about the future of the centre, saying the situation was “unconscionable and inexplicable”. I never received an acknowledgement or reply.”

Pacific futures
Journalism education has persisted through an adverse climate, where the number of journalists in mainstream media has declined, in New Zealand almost halved to 2061, (2006 – 2018). Also, AUT is currently in turmoil over the future of Māori and Pacific academics and the status of the university with an unpopular move to retrench 170 academic staff.

However new media are expanding, new demands exist for media competency across the exploding world “mediascape”, schools cultivating conscionable practices are providing an antidote to floods of bigotry and lies in social media.

The new NGO in Auckland, the APMN, has found a good base of support across the Pacific communities, limbering up for a future free of interference, outside of the former university base.

It will be bidding for a share of NZ government grants intended to assist public journalism, ethnic broadcasting and outreach to the region. While several products of the former centre have closed, the successful 28-year-old research journal Pacific Journalism Review has continued, producing two editions under its new management.

The operation is also keeping its production-side media strengths, such as with the online title Asia Pacific Report.

Independent Australia media editor Lee Duffield is a former ABC correspondent and academic. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand journalist and academic David Robie has covered the Asia-Pacific region for international media for more than four decades.

An advocate for media freedom in the Pacific region, he is the author of several books on South Pacific media and politics, including an account of the French bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985 — which took place while he was on the last voyage.

In 1994 he founded the journal Pacific Journalism Review examining media issues and communication in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.

He was also convenor of the Pacific Media Watch media freedom collective, which collaborates with Reporters Without Borders in Paris, France.

Until he retired at Auckland University of Technology in 2020 as that university’s first professor in journalism and founder of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie organised many student projects in the South Pacific such as the Bearing Witness climate action programme.

He currently edits Asia Pacific Report and is one of the founders of the new Aotearoa New Zealand-based NGO Asia Pacific Media Network.

In this interview conducted by Mediasia organising committee member Dr Nasya Bahfen of La Trobe University for this week’s 13th International Asian Conference on Media, Communication and Film that ended today in Kyoto, Japan, Professor Robie discusses a surge of disinformation and the challenges it posed for journalists in the region as they covered the covid-19 pandemic alongside a parallel “infodemic” of fake news and hoaxes.

He also explores the global climate emergency and the disproportionate impact it is having on the Asia-Pacific.

Paying a tribute to the dedication and courage of Pacific journalists, he says with a chuckle: “All Pacific journalists are climate journalists — they live with it every day.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand journalist and academic David Robie has covered the Asia-Pacific region for international media for more than four decades.

An advocate for media freedom in the Pacific region, he is the author of several books on South Pacific media and politics, including an account of the French bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985 — which took place while he was on the last voyage.

In 1994 he founded the journal Pacific Journalism Review examining media issues and communication in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.

He was also convenor of the Pacific Media Watch media freedom collective, which collaborates with Reporters Without Borders in Paris, France.

Until he retired at Auckland University of Technology in 2020 as that university’s first professor in journalism and founder of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie organised many student projects in the South Pacific such as the Bearing Witness climate action programme.

He currently edits Asia Pacific Report and is one of the founders of the new Aotearoa New Zealand-based NGO Asia Pacific Media Network.

In this interview conducted by Mediasia organising committee member Dr Nasya Bahfen of La Trobe University for this week’s 13th International Asian Conference on Media, Communication and Film that ended today in Kyoto, Japan, Professor Robie discusses a surge of disinformation and the challenges it posed for journalists in the region as they covered the covid-19 pandemic alongside a parallel “infodemic” of fake news and hoaxes.

He also explores the global climate emergency and the disproportionate impact it is having on the Asia-Pacific.

Paying a tribute to Pacific to the dedication and courage of Pacific journalists, he says with a chuckle: “All Pacific journalists are climate journalists — they live with it every day.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s Suva foreshore has been under “enormous” pressure from decades of destructive practices with little to no public awareness about the various afflictions, says prominent academic professor Vijay Naidu.

The problems have been exacerbated by no sustained public awareness campaign, absence of environmental issues in Pacific news media coverage and lack of leadership, Professor Naidu said.

Professor Naidu made the comment while delivering his keynote address at a two-day workshop this week organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme and the Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

The workshop looked at the causes and impacts of pollution in the Suva bay area and possible solutions.

“I have observed over 60 years massive changes to our foreshore including reclamation, destruction of mangrove forests, sewerage and solid waste, and the epidemic of plastic pollution,” he said.

“Fisheries in Suva Bay have been depleted enormously, and it is not safe to consume shell fish, or ‘kaikoso‘, collected here. Very sadly, there has hardly any systematic ‘fight back’!

“The public who use the water around the Suva Bay area for fishing have little or no idea about the state of the lagoon and what needs to be done to preserve such a wonderful resource for the people of Suva.

‘Need a penicillin injection’
“Some years ago, USP reported that if you fell in the waters of Suva harbour and Laucala Bay, you’d need a penicillin injection.”

The former head of the University of the South Pacific’s School of Government, Development and International Affairs was speaking as the chief guest at an environmental journalism workshop.

Professor Naidu said there was a need for greater collaboration between journalists and scientists to bring attention to these issues and to “help us begin the fightback”.

He commended the EJN for providing crucial support to Pacific journalists in the form of grants and training for stronger environmental reporting.

“The workshop is a great example of how scientists and journalists can work together for the greater good,” Professor Naidu said.

Such partnerships should make the public become more aware of the issues regarding the marine environment, and lead to stronger calls for change, Professor Naidu said.

Sheldon Chanel is the training editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. USP Journalism works in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Witnesses told police he was shot by two men on a motorcycle who immediately made their getaway. The F-16 is an assault rifle used by the US army, reports RSF.

A specialist in covering the mining industry, along with other subjects, Bercasio used to work for Bicol Today, a local news website, before launching his own online video outlet, Balangibog TV.

In a programme broadcast every Monday to Thursday, he interviewed viewers by telephone and often denounced deforestation and illegal mining in his region.

In his last Facebook post before his murder, Bercasio referred to the presence, near a quarry, of suspicious trucks that did not have the necessary permits and were using false licence plates. He had previously posted photos of these trucks five days earlier.

Impunity
“Given the modus operandi, which is typical of the murders of journalists in the Philippines, everything indicates that those who gunned down Jobert Bercasio were acting on the orders of someone who was annoyed by his reporting,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“We urge the Philippine government to shed light on this case by appointing an independent investigation. It is time to end the impunity that characterizes crimes of violence against media personnel in the Philippines.”

Cornelio “Rex” Pepino, a radio journalist who was gunned down in May in Dumaguete City, in the central province of Negros Oriental, was probably targeted because of his coverage of local bribery and corruption related to illegal mining.

The Philippines is ranked 136th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, two places lower than in 2019.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The day began with a video, showing a disparate collection of arresting images – the drowned Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, camera in hand and a huge smile on his face.

Mugshots of two captured French DGSE secret agents – a fake honeymooning pair jailed for manslaughter, but later spirited off to Hao atoll and freedom.

Sun-drenched tropical beaches and a ship with a gaping hull, sinking into the frigid Auckland Harbour on a winter’s night.

READ MORE: 35 years on, Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru guest in Rainbow Warrior rewind

Newspaper headlines expressing disbelief that something like this could happen in peaceful New Zealand.

It is fitting that the discussion began with such an array of images. The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985 is one episode in a large and complex geopolitical story – a story that isn’t over yet.

A panel of academics, journalists and activists, each with a connection to the bombing, met via webinar this morning to discuss and mark the 35th anniversary this month.

Suing French government
Organised by H-France, the panel featured figured such as Oscar Temaru, five times president of French Polynesia who is in the process of suing the French government, and Dr David Robie, a New Zealand journalist who was on board the Rainbow Warrior on its final 11 week Pacific voyage to the Marshall Islands and then to New Zealand.

Other speakers were Ena Manuireva, an Auckland University of Technology academic and PhD candidate who is from Mangareva, one of the French Polynesian islands most affected by the French nuclear tests where the Rainbow Warrior intended to protest before its sinking; Stephanie Mills, a former Greenpeace Pacific nuclear test ban campaigner and NZ board chair; and Rebecca Priestley, a history associate professor from Victoria University in Wellington who has specialised in New Zealand’s relationship to nuclear issues.

The webinar was moderated by Dr Roxanne Panchasi, an associate history professor from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, who specialises in French studies.

The event was preceded by a mihi in Te Reo Māori by Dr Hirini Kaa of the University of Auckland, and a karakia in Tahitian by Ena Manuireva.

In keeping with the discussion’s examination of the effects of colonialism, moderator Dr Panchasi acknowledged the colonised nature of British Columbia, where she was speaking from.

“I am a settler and an uninvited guest on this territory,” she said.

The relevance of the Rainbow Warrior and its connected issues to the current age was a common touchstone among the speakers. Although the sinking of the ship occurred 35 years ago, it still represents issues that have significant impacts on the peoples and nations of the Pacific.

Not least of these are the effects of nuclear testing in French Polynesia.

Nuclear health troubles
Oscar Temaru spoke on how French testing of atomic weapons in his country doesn’t feel so long ago.

“That was 35 years ago?” he said, speaking from his office in Faa’a. “Time flies!”

France conducted 193 tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996, resulting in the contamination of the food and water sources of many people across the islands. Birth defects were common and families were forced to move islands in the hope of providing a healthier future for their children.

To this day, rates of thyroid cancer are disproportionately high, and the disfiguring scars of thyroid removal surgery can be seen on many women.

“I bury people nearly every day, dying from different types of cancer,” Temaru said. “I just wonder sometimes what sin we did to the French.”

Temaru said that nuclear issues and those of French Polynesian sovereignty are interlinked. “The two issues are tied – nuclear testing and our freedom.”

In 2018, he took the French government to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, seeking justice for “all the people who died from the consequences of nuclear colonialism”.

Legal troubles
Since then, he has been embroiled in a number of legal troubles leveled at him by the French government, such as a six-month suspended jail sentence and a US$50,000 fine for alleged corruption.

Last month, he embarked on a two-week hunger strike after a French prosecutor ordered the seizure of US$108,000 from him.

Despite these difficulties, Temaru remained upbeat about the future during the webinar. “We need the new generation to take up the flag and go forward,” he said. “Māohi lives matter!”

When the Rainbow Warrior, a 40m trawler owned by Greenpeace, was bombed by French DGSE agents in Auckland Harbour, causing the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, it had set its sights on French Polynesia.

The crew were planning to sail to Moruroa Atoll to protest continued tests.

“The campaign against nuclear testing was in Greenpeace’s DNA,” said former Greenpeace campaigner Stephanie Mills. At the time of the attack, Mills was a reporter for The New Zealand Herald.

But she stressed that the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was not a discrete, encapsulated event. “People are still dying. They need assistance. There’s still a job to do.”

Birth defects, cancers
Auckland-based researcher Ena Manuireva was born on Mangareva, one of the islands most affected by French testing on Moruroa Atoll. He spoke about how his family was affected by the tests, with a sister born with birth defects and other relatives developing cancer. His mother saw the mushroom cloud from the first blast, in 1967.

“My mum was poisoned,” said Manuireva. “She had her lips bleeding from the fallout.”

Manuireva said that the story was not over for the people of Mangareva, and that they needed to be aware of the ongoing effects of the nuclear blasts.

“People are still dying,” he said. “You see a lot of babies in the cemetery. Mothers and grandmothers feel the effects of chemo and having to take their pills.”

Manuireva said that the people of his island were unwilling to recognise the effects of the tests.

“They feel like they were duped,” he said. Authorities on the island such as the Catholic Church and the French administration assured the locals that the tests would be clean and that there was nothing to worry about, and Manuireva believes that the shame of believing the lies dissuades Mangarevans from talking about these issues.

“We need to make them aware of what’s happened because it’s their history.”

Humanitarian story
New Zealand journalist and academic Dr David Robie, a journalism professor and director of the Pacific Media Centre at AUT, said that media coverage of the attack in New Zealand often neglected to mention the broader issues at play, focusing instead on the espionage intrigue of the DGSE agents.

“I wanted to tell the story from a humanitarian view,” he told the panel.

Dr Robie was onboard the Rainbow Warrior for 11 weeks prior to the bombing, accompanying the crew as they helped residents of the US nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands find refuge on Mejato and travelling to New Zealand via Kiribati and Vanuatu.

Helping move the Rongelap refugees was “one of the most momentous and moving experiences I’ve had in my life as a journalist”, he said. He wrote about the experience in his environmental book Eyes of Fire, published in several countries.

Victoria University of Wellington history professor Dr Rebecca Priestley spoke of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior as confirming New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance.

“The bombing was really the last straw,” she said. In 1984, the Lange-lead Labour government had won on a platform of establishing a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific.

After tensions with the United States for barring entry of potentially nuclear warships to New Zealand harbours, New Zealand was already in a tense position. The attack caused public outrage and people doubled down on the decision to back nuclear-free.

Evidence-based approach
Priestley spoke about how New Zealand led the world by using an evidence-based decision making approach, and that 2020 and the world-changing crises of covid-19 may ask a similar commitment.

“It was a crazy time in New Zealand and the Pacific’s history,” she said, “and it’s a crazy time now.”

French testing on Moruroa Atoll ended in 1996. Stephanie Mills was at the island with Greenpeace during some of the last tests in 1995. She said that she felt no fear because she knew she had public support behind her, evidenced by a recent petition against the tests that had gathered five million signatures.

“We were tear gassed and boarded. A few of us were taken and disappeared for several days. I wasn’t afraid, because I knew about the five million signatures.”

The change to the regime of nuclear tests in the Pacific was a victory for the people of the region, and Mills said that Greenpeace did not claim credit.

“It was a million acts of courage – an example of change from the bottom up.” She said that remembering the Rainbow Warrior was not just about nuclear issues – “It’s about people having the agency to make change.”

However, new issues assail the Pacific as people living on low-lying islands are some of the first to be affected by the ever-increasing effects of global climate change. This, along with the fact that thousands of people in the Pacific are still affected by the effects of the fallout, means that the Rainbow Warrior remains an important symbol.

Independence a fundamental issue
“The fundamental issue is the self-determination of indigenous peoples across the Pacific,” said Dr Robie. The Rainbow Warrior and its Greenpeace crew, along with their solidarity with independence movements across the Pacific, are inextricable from the issue of indigenous sovereignty.

He invoked the memory of Vanuatu’s founding prime minister Father Walter Lini who said the Pacific could not be truly free until the Māohi people of Tahiti, Kanaks of New Caledonia and West Papuans were also free.

Dr Robie reported that he had noticed a “gap in history” in his students in a “living history” journalism project in 2015, wherein they were not aware of the geopolitical backdrop of the Rainbow Warrior attack. He and Manuireva expressed the desire that this retrospective is the beginning of a series to discuss and raise awareness of related Pacific issues.

While the webinar was concerned with how the event will be remembered into the future, there was also an air of memorial to it. Several of the speakers paid tribute to fallen figures connected to the Rainbow Warrior story.

Chief among these was Fernando Pereira, the sole casualty of the 1985 bombing. “I’d like to acknowledge Fernando Pereira,” said Mills. “He wasn’t just a crew member and photographer. He was a friend to many people.”

Steve Sawyer, the Greenpeace campaigner for the Rongelap mission, was also remembered. Sawyer died almost exactly a year ago, on July 31, 2019, of lung cancer.

Matthew Scott is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies programme at Auckland University of Technology. He also reports at Te Waha Nui.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In an innovative new development Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) will partner with the Pacific Media Centre on a “climate and covid” project to help improve and enhance the quality of environmental and reporting in the Pacific region.

In a move that could signal future partnerships with New Zealand Pasifika groups, the 12,000-member organisation working in 180 countries is fast growing in response to the need for more in-depth sustainable development and environmental reporting.

“Building on EJN’s work in the Asia and the Pacific Region, the EJN Asia-Pacific project aims to improve the quantity and quality of environmental coverage in the region, thereby contributing to the capacity among local and regional actors to promote greater accountability and sustainable development in relation to the environment and climate in Asia and the Pacific,” says Imelda Abaño, who is content coordinator Philippines and Pacific content coordinator for EJN’s Asia-Pacific project.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

“We wanted to build and achieve this with the Pacific Media Centre (PMC) and the Pacific Media Watch (PMW) freedom project.

“Under the remit of our EJN Asia-Pacific project, we are open to partnership with New Zealand-Pacific groups and any media and journalists network groups that provide environmental news and information to communities in the Pacific Island and Asian countries,” she says.

Significant step forward
Professor David Robie, director of Auckland University of Technology’s PMC, welcomes the partnership grant, saying: “We welcome this joint ‘Climate and Covid-19’ project as a significant step forward in our Asia-Pacific collaboration projects.

“The Pacific Media Centre has had long-standing initiatives with journalists and journalism schools, especially at the University of the South Pacific, such as the Bearing Witness climate change project and Pacific Media Watch.

“But now we’re delighted to be teaming up with Internews-Earth Journalism Network (EJN), one of the leaders in environmental and climate justice reportage to provide some well-researched articles and multimedia for our diverse Pacific communities across the region.

“We will gain much too from their expertise and experience,” he says.

With many media companies across the globe the impact on climate change reporting, environmental reporting, and covid-19 coronavirus pandemic reporting is being heavily felt.

“In our present situation, media outlets have fewer resources and less time to report on environmental issues,” Abaño says.

“The editors are not assigning journalists to travel and report directly from the communities who are facing the brunt of sea level rise or displaced due to hydropower development and are reliant on press releases and politicians’ speeches for their stories.”

Worldwide attention on wet market risks
However, if there is a silver lining to the covid-19 pandemic, it is that it has drawn worldwide attention to the Chinese wet markets.

“It has helped to draw worldwide attention to wildlife trade and prompted China to ban wildlife markets and use of pangolin in medicines,” Abaño says.

“It has also generated media coverage that examines the tight links between human, animal and environmental health, such as the clean air many cities are experiencing during the lockdown period, how countries can ‘build back better’ and adopt more sustainable development measures, and covid-19’s implications on the world’s struggle with climate change,” the award-winning journalist says.

She was asked by Pacific Media Watch for her opinion on what was perceived to be the predominant threats to climate change, environmental, and covid-19 reportage in the Asia-Pacific region.

“The Internews’ tagline is ‘Information Saves Lives’ and at EJN we believe that timely, accurate and actionable information from trusted sources is crucial for people making important life decisions to address climate change and other environmental threats as well as covid-19,” she says.

“Environmental threats like climate change, biodiversity loss, energy transition, are often considered “slow moving” crises (unlike the covid-19 pandemic) that do not generate as much public interest until they lead to a disaster,” says Abaño.

Abaño has been covering climate change, energy, agriculture, biodiversity and other environmental issues for more than 18 years. She is also founding president of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists says.

Among Pacific journalists involved in EJN is Priestley Habru, content coordinator for the Solomon Islands. He is responsible for helping implement EJN activities and projects in the region.

Habru also currently writes and edits news with specific interests on the environment, health and gender issues.

Disinformation an environmental threat
“Environmental issues are also often technical by nature and the knowledge on these issues is still evolving,” says Amy Sim, EJN Asia-Pacific programme manager.

“Disinformation and misinformation is another threat to environmental reporting. With rumours and falsehood being peddled so casually and widely on social media as well as mainstream news, it is critical for science-based environmental reporting to find ways to rise above the noise and distractions and reach the general public.

“There is always a need for more, higher-quality reporting about the environment, more so during a pandemic,” she says.

EJN for its part is working on developing those much-needed skills sets and training for data journalists and investigative reporting.

“We have webinars focused on coronavirus and climate change; tools to help fact-check and combat misinformation; tools to report remotely and reach new audiences, for instance through engagement or podcasting; financial support, both for individual journalists and media outlets as a whole; safety tips and psychological support; and access to new research and experts,” Sim says.

“It has always been Internews-Earth Journalism Network’s goal to empower and support journalists from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Region, to cover the environment effectively.”

EJN started working in the Pacific in 2017. In that year, climate change and oceans reporting training began with Pacific journalists and the Pacific Environmental Geo-journalism website, Infopacific, was launched.

Pacific environmental network
In 2018, EJN helped establish the Pacific Environment Journalists Network through a sub-grant, and organised a training workshop with local journalists and experts at the Pacific Media Summit in Tonga.

Then last year to the present day, EJN has partnered with the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) on several climate change workshops for journalists in the Pacific.

EJN has also supported the Climate Change Reporting Project of journalism students of the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji.

“Through this project, selected journalist students traveled to the Solomon Islands to interact with climate vulnerable communities and report first hand on how they are coping with and adapting to climate change. Their stories have been published as a special report by Wansolwara and other Pacific media,” says Abaño.

“This project will bring another batch of students to the Cook Islands later this year to do another round of climate change reporting,” she says.

EJN has also delivered a mobile journalism training to more than 200 journalism students of the USP and this year, they looking to intensify their work in the Pacific region.

“We will partner with USP again on an environmental journalism training workshop for journalism students,” she says.

EJN story grants
EJN has also awarded story grants to six journalists following a competitive call for story pitches opened to Pacific journalists.

Those six Pacific Journalists are Stanley Simpson, Sheldon Chanel, Luke Rawalai (Fiji), Benjamin Kedoga (PNG), Alfred Evapitu and Charles Piringi (Solomon Islands).

They are also looking at partnering with PINA this year for a biodiversity reporting workshop for journalists in the Pacific as well as for the management and content production for the Infopacific website.

These are projects are in addition to the annual region-wide story grants, organisation grants and fellowship opportunities available to individual or group of journalists across the Asia and Pacific region.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Six South Pacific journalists have been awarded grants by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) to strengthen environmental reporting in the region, reports Internews.

The awardees include three Fiji journalists – Mai TV journalist and chief executive Stanley Simpson, who hosts the investigative current affairs programme Simpson@Eight, Sheldon Chanel and Luke Rawalai.

Both Simpson, founding editor of Wansolwara and who has hosted three Fiji television programmes and has wide media exoperience, and Chanel are past graduates of the University of the South Pacific journalism programme.

READ MORE: The PMC’s Bearing Witness project

Charley Piringy and Alfred Evapitu of the Solomon Islands and Benjamin Kedoga make up the six.

They have received story grants to explore the importance of mangrove ecosystems for bay conservation, the impacts of logging on biodiversity, the problems with capturing undersized fish, the displacement of marine life due to sea level rise, challenges faced by climate migrants, and the illegal export of endangered and protected tree species.

Six other grants have been awarded as part of EJN’s Asia-Pacific project and will cover reporting projects in Bhutan, China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam.

Their investigations are wide-ranging, seeking to expose issues such as the environmental impacts of mega hydropower projects, the pollution and resultant health risks posed by reckless disposal of hazardous industrial waste, and how a lack of regulation and transparency combined with geopolitics are undermining efforts to tackle air pollution and its health consequences.

Second batch of grants
This is EJN Asia-Pacific’s second batch of investigative story grantees in 2020, and follows a round of grants awarded to a further five journalists from India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Cook Islands.

Those grants were awarded at the beginning of this year and the reporters are currently working on their stories, despite travel restrictions during the covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, some grantees have not been able to conduct field reporting as planned, and have been focusing on online research and phone interviews instead. EJN staff are working closely with them to provide the flexibility and support they need.

The Pacific grantees:

The Asia-Pacific grantees:

Reported as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s partnership with the Earth Journalism Network.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Hans Nicholas Jong in Jakarta

Experts have warned that a slate of sweeping deregulation planned by the Indonesian government could prove disastrous for the environment and create even more conflicts over land and resources.

The administration of President Joko Widodo is preparing to submit to Parliament two bills containing more than 1200 proposed amendments to at least 80 existing laws.

The government says these provisions are all aimed at easing the investment climate in Indonesia in a bid to boost economic growth beyond the 5 percent pace it has been stuck at since 2014.

READ MORE: Scrapping of criminal charges against business people who commit environmental violations

But the so-called omnibus bills threaten to dismantle already tenuous protections for the environment, while the process of drafting them has been opaque and rushed, according to Hariadi Kartodihardjo, a forestry researcher at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB).

“The process [to discuss] the substance [of the bills] is still long,” he said. “But it seems like the politicians want it to be fast. I hear the omnibus bills will be passed in May or June by Parliament.”

President Widodo’s ruling coalition controls three-quarters of seats in Parliament, making it likely that any bill introduced by the government will pass relatively unchanged. The government says it expects the bills to pass within 100 days of submitting them.

But rushing through so many deregulatory provisions in such a short time leaves virtually no room to consider them properly and still maintain some semblance of environmental regulation, according to Laode Muhammad Syarif, the executive director of the NGO Kemitraan Partnership.

“How do you make a law in 100 days? Impossible,” he said. “If officials at the government support that, where did they go to school?”

Hariadi said that when legislation is rushed, risks arise.

“And who will bear the risks? It’s actually investors themselves,” he said.

End of environmental assessments
One of the most contentious points in the bills is the easing of requirements for businesses and developers to carry out an environmental impact analysis, known locally as an Amdal. Under current law, an Amdal is required to obtain an environmental permit from either the environment ministry or local authorities, depending on the scope of the project.

The environmental permit is itself a prerequisite to obtaining a business permit, which will then allow the project to go ahead.

The omnibus bills call for revising or revoking 39 existing articles on environmental permits, including articles in the 2009 law on environmental protection and the 1999 law on forestry.

In effect, environmental permits will no longer be a prerequisite for a business permit. And the environmental impact assessments that underlie them will only be required for projects deemed high risk, according to Bambang Hendroyono, Secretary-General of the Environment Ministry.

“Amdal is only [needed] if [the projects] are heavy and have a large impact on the environment,” he said. “[In that case], it will need public communication.”

He said environmental protections would remain robust despite this because companies were, as a principle, considerate of environmental conservation.

“So there’s nothing to be worried about because Amdal is a moral message,” he said. “In businesses, environmental principles have to be paid attention to.”

High risk criteria
Another ministry official said the government was still discussing what kinds of projects would be designated as high risk and therefore still required to have an environmental impact assessment.

Even then, companies will still be able to obtain a business permit before carrying out the assessment, according to Mahfud MD, the coordinating minister for legal and security affairs. He said the safeguard to ensure their projects were environmentally sound would be an audit carried out after they had both secured the business permit and carried out the Amdal.

“If the permits are issued after the Amdal, it’s going to take a long time,” Mahfud told local media. “People will run out of money [before the permits are issued].”

Forestry researcher Hariadi said revoking the requirements for an impact assessment and an environmental permit, all for the sake of facilitating investment, would be disastrous for a country that is already prone to natural disasters.

He cited the floods and landslides at the start of the year that hit Jakarta and surrounding areas, killing at least 67 people and displacing more than 173,000.

Environmental activists have attributed the severity of the disaster to deforestation and environmental damage in upstream areas. These include residential and commercial developments built in flood plains and water catchment areas, in violation of zoning and environmental regulations.

Hariadi said things could get even worse if the omnibus bills discount environmental protections entirely, noting that many such protections were in place for good reason.

‘You can’t get rid of wheels’
“What about the articles that indeed prevent investment in certain sectors for environmental reasons?” he said. “The problem is you can’t throw these articles away.

“Let’s say you want to make a car. The car has to have wheels, but the wheels are expensive. If you get rid of the wheels, then you won’t have a car, right?”

Hariadi said the current high cost and long wait for an Amdal to be carried out and environmental permit issued was not because of onerous requirements for due diligence and scientific surveys, but rather because of the myriad opportunities for corruption in the process by bureaucrats.

He cited a study carried out by his university that identified at least 32 stages within the process that could either be abused by officials to solicit bribes or gamed by applicants to bypass regulations.

Henri Subagiyo, former executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), said another factor was the lack of environmental data, such as the carrying capacity of the country’s rivers.

Each time a company wants to set up a factory near a river, for example, it has to collect its own data from scratch to determine how much waste it can discharge safely into the river.

“Environment data can’t be made in an instant, it has to be measured over a long period of time,” Henri said. “But the problem is that these data are often not available because our government doesn’t have them.

“We never know how much waste we can discharge into rivers, and yet permits keep being issued.”

Not an investment roadblock
Subagiyo also said environmental protections, including the requirement to carry out an Amdal, should not be seen as a roadblock to investment. Instead, it’s an integral part of safeguarding investors against future uncertainty, he said.

“Amdal isn’t merely an administrative document. It’s guidance for businesses to protect the environment,” Subagiyo said. “If it’s ignored, then there will be environmental risk for the businesses themselves. Amdal actually protects businesses from legal threats.”

He noted that similar requirements were in place in other Southeast Asian countries seen as friendlier to investors, indicating it was not the environmental regulations keeping them away from Indonesia.

Mas Achmad Santosa, a maritime expert from the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative, said Indonesia risked being an outlier among its peers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“Environmental impact assessments are practiced universally, especially in developed countries,” he said. “All 10 ASEAN countries require it and the trend is actually toward strengthening it, not weakening it.”

There are other worrying provisions in the bills being drafted, Hariadi said. One crucial amendment is the scrapping of criminal charges for businesspeople who commit environmental violations. The proposed maximum punishment will instead be a revocation of their business permits.

Conflicts over land, resources
The bills also call for limiting public participation in the permit application process, as a means of speeding up their issuance. Hariadi said this would prevent the public from being properly informed about projects that affect them, and could trigger conflicts over land and other resources.

“In order to issue permits swiftly, all [public] participation will be stopped as long as [the projects] are in line with zoning regulations,” he said. “There will be [environmental and zoning] problems of such big magnitude, but public participation will be limited. Won’t that create conflicts? Instead of the quality of public participation being improved, it’s being ditched just like that.”

The Environment Ministry’s Bambang said the public would still have a chance to participate — but again only in the case of high-risk projects.

Another proposed amendment is to curtail the process by which an area is designated a forest area. This would be an important change, as forest areas are currently off-limits to oil palm plantations, one of the leading drivers of deforestation in Indonesia. As with the limiting of public participation, this change in designating forest areas also has the potential to spark land conflicts, Hariadi said.

The designation process currently requires the approval of indigenous and forest communities, but will bypass these largely marginalised groups if the government has its way. The subsequent mapping process will be carried out electronically, using satellite imagery to speed up the process, Bambang said.

Hariadi said this would only deepen the divide between the forest communities, on one hand, and the government and businesses eyeing their land, on the other, who would be more likely to have access to the technology for drafting the electronic maps.

Most of the existing conflicts over land in Indonesia center around disputed boundaries, and communities without access to electronic maps would be hugely disadvantaged in staking their claim to the land, Hariadi said.

“Just imagine them having to rely on the local government and the private sector, who have possession of the electronic maps,” he said. “An area has social and cultural functions, it’s not just a commodity on paper.”

Forest areas amendment
Also related to forest areas is a proposed amendment to scrap a requirement for all regions to maintain a minimum 30 percent of their territory as forest area.

Muhammad Iqbal Damanik, a researcher with the environmental NGO Auriga Nusantara, said this would allow mining and plantation companies currently operating illegally inside forest areas to whitewash their crimes. The companies, under the proposed change, would be able to request that the forest status of the land be revised to non-forest area, thereby legalizing their operations, Iqbal said.

“So the perspective [of the omnibus bills] is exploitation,” he said. “There’s no conservation perspective.”

Anggalia Putri, a researcher at the NGO Madani, said the government should actually be pushing to increase the threshold above 30 percent, especially for regions like Papua in Indonesia’s east, which still has a lot of intact natural forest.

Maintaining minimum forest area in Papua of 30 percent would effectively greenlight a massive spate of deforestation, she said.

Despite the significance of the changes being proposed in the omnibus bills, the public still has not been able to see the drafts.

President Widodo in December ordered his officials to make the drafts available to the public for the sake of transparency. That still has not happened, prompting labour unions to stage protests against the bills amid speculation about sweeping cuts to worker welfare and job security regulations.

Ombudsman left out of loop
The office of the national Ombudsman has also been left out of the loop; when it requested a meeting with the office of the chief economics minister to discuss the bills, it was rejected.

Ombudsman Ahmad Alamsyah Saragih said this was the first time his office had been denied a meeting by a government institution. Instead, the minister’s office told the Ombudsman to submit a written recommendation about the bills.

“How can we give a written recommendation if we’ve never received the drafts?” Alamsyah said. “We’ve also seen NGOs [ask for a meeting with the minister’s office] and receive the same response.”

Laode from Kemitraan Partnership, who until recently served as a commissioner with the national antigraft agency, the KPK, said the lack of transparency indicated the omnibus bills were ridden with problematic articles.

He likened them to the controversial anticorruption bill drafted by the government and passed by Parliament in similarly lightning fashion last year, with the KPK left out of the deliberations.

While the government insisted the bill would strengthen the agency’s fight against corruption, the reality is that, once passed, the law has severely curtailed the KPK’s ability to carry out investigations.

In the cases of both the anticorruption law and the omnibus bills, the deliberations have been carried out behind closed doors, civil society groups have been shut out, and the government has pushed for speedy passage. If the government has nothing to hide and the omnibus bills truly serve the greater good, then why the secrecy, Laode asked.

‘What’s being hidden?’
“What’s being hidden such that the drafts aren’t being shared [with the public]?” he said.

Hariadi also called on the government to be more transparent about the bills.

“Don’t limit participation,” he said. “Don’t let the bills become legal and yet illegitimate by failing to involve the public in the deliberations.”

He said public participation was important because neither the bills nor prevailing legislation adequately addressed the real problems hindering greater investment in Indonesia, including corruption and land conflicts.

“The roadblocks [for investors] are actually caused by abuse of authority,” Hariadi said.

“The government and lawmakers have to see the facts on the ground in order to solve the problems that the omnibus bills are supposed to solve. The problems on the ground are so many and they’re very complicated. They can’t just be simplified.”

If anything, he said, the bills are a potential minefield for investors, threatening to create more of the problems — environmental degradation and land conflicts, among others — that already deter investors from coming to Indonesia.

Bills ‘actually counterproductive’
Dzulfian Syafrian, an economist with the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), agreed that the bills “are actually counterproductive in attracting investors.”

He said loosening environmental protections would harm investors because environmental damage would lead to more problems.

“From the economic perspective [businesses and the government] are looking for short-term gain and profit,” Dzulfian said. “They don’t see sustainability as something important for the development of their businesses.”

The kinds of investment that would be encouraged by the bills are those in hydrocarbons, he added, which won’t serve Indonesia’s emissions reduction goals or its long-term plans for sustainable growth.

“With the relaxation of environmental regulations, these businesses will be happy,” Dzulfian said. “But investors who are pro-environment will have doubts.”

Banner image: Gold mining tailing pond near Mandor in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

This article is republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A video made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review in 2014. Video: Sasya Wreksono/PMC

Pacific Media Watch

Tuwhera, the open access repository and publisher of Auckland University of Technology, has added 16 years of back copy editions of Pacific Journalism Review to the digital resource.

The full text articles from a further 24 editions have been added, including all the original issues published by the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific.

Some of the research includes the Sandline mercenary crisis in Papua New Guinea, the 10-year Bougainville conflict and the Fiji military coups.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review – Twenty years special edition

PJR now has 964 research articles and reviews on its Tuwhera open access database – the largest single collection of Pacific media research, scholarship and analysis.

Many of the articles also feature research in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, with contributing authors and editors who are members of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), Asian Media and Communication Congress (ACMC), Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA), Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) and Media Educators Pacific (MEP) prominent.

Writing a reflective article marking the journal’s achievements on the 20th anniversary of publication in 2014, Brisbane media educator Dr Lee Duffield wrote:

“Pacific Journalism Review since its inception has always emphasised its regional identity, adopting its own ‘Pacific’ style of discourse and inquiry.”

26th year
The journal, founded at UPNG in 1994 and now published by AUT, is in its 26th year of publication.

All the articles added to the archives here were published prior to 2011.

Five editions were published at UPNG and four at USP while the rest of 41 editions are from AUT, beginning in 2003,.

Many global issues such as media freedom and journalist safety, media accountability systems, communication in development, conflict reporting, climate change journalism, human rights and social media, gender and indigeneity have been examined.

Welcoming the launch of PJR, Dr Margaret Obi, then head of UPNG’s South Pacific Centre for Communication and Information in Development (SPCenCIID), wrote in the first edition: “The issue that is most prevalent in PJR is that of professional ethics, responsibility and accountability by journalists and media agencies and their role in informing and being informed without fear or favour.”

Founding editor Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at AUT, says PJR is more than a research journal. He believes it has developed a unique character of engaged “critical inquiry”, as represented by its Frontline section encouraging journalism-as-research methodology.

“As an independent publication, PJR has given strong support to investigative journalism, socio-political journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning in its almost three decades of publishing,” he adds.

Associate editor Philip Cass says that as PJR is the only journal covering journalism in the Pacific and Asia, the archives would prove to be an invaluable resource for academics and journalists.

“PJR provides a unique record of issues, viewpoints and research from academic and media practitioners,” he says.

The journal’s current editorial team is editor David Robie, associate editor Philip Cass, Frontline editor Wendy Bacon, assistant editors Khairiah Rahman and Nicole Gooch, and designer Del Abcede.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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