Citizen journalists bring to our attention the truths that we need to know. Being a witness to such truths is different to doom scrolling. It is about awareness.

This is about knowing the truths that the people who run this deteriorating world, want to hide.

Victims everywhere are begging to be heard and seen. And some people are revealing these truths. Some are trained in journalism, some are freelancing because the mainstream is not the clear clean truth stream, and some are self-trained.

• READ MORE: Amnesty calls for independent probe of ‘shocking’ Australian police violence against peaceful protesters
• Other articles by Saige England

The role of filming and reporting the truth is vital in an era when books are banned, when the names of predators are redacted, when the people at the top are part of an oligarchy that supports murder and rape.

A couple of years ago — almost to the day — I was pepper sprayed by a frontline policeman for filming police brutality against peaceful protesters standing on the footpath in Lyttelton Aotearoa New Zealand.

In that situation police seized people and hurled them to the ground. In other instances, as with human rights activist, John Minto, they seized baffled people and hauled them onto the road.

The men and women in blue vests and black gloves, formed a scrum over each seized civilian. They pummelled and beat them viciously, and hauled them into vans. Minto suffered a gash down his forehead.

Nightmares last longer
Others had similar wounds and thanks to the direct illegal use of pepper spray, many suffered a sense like glass in their eyes. In my experience, those painful symptoms lasted weeks. The nightmares lasted longer.

Early last year, I was banned from my own Town Hall for witnessing the State of the Nation speech by Winston Peters. One of that leader’s loyal fans complained that I was taking notes. I produced my press card. Made no difference.

I witnessed a leader inciting hatred. Witnessing. The security guards banned me. The police upheld the ban. I am a multi-award winning reporter who has reported from conflict zones around the world. And I see the conflict increasing.

In the United States, in Europe, in Australia, in Aotearoa New Zealand, what are we learning?

The right to support the right of all human beings to live on their land is decreed a crime by our leaders. Why? Because some have more than others and they want to protect their “more” and push others to have less, even nothing.

These are the actions of totalitarian capitalist regimes intent on retaining power over the land, the rivers, and all the waterways.

We see it in the US with ICE killing a woman who was poet and a mother, we see it in the killing of a nurse, and all the disappearances, people — including children — hauled off streets and “disappeared”.

Police kicking 2 women
We see it with police kicking and beating two women wearing abayas in the Netherlands. If they are assaulting women in public we can be certain they are also molesting women behind the public gaze.

We see totalitarian push back against human rights in Germany and France, Australia and New Zealand.

Let’s call this flagrant attack on democracy what it is.

It is imperialism. Yes I know, it sounds like I’m recalling Thatcher. But hey she never went away. Her Daddy abused her friends and she loved him. Thatcher was an abuse enabler.

Like Blair. Like Trump. Like other abusers who hold power. It is no surprise that many of these leaders who were raised by power hungry predators, become predators. They exploit others.

Really it is a very simple equation. Democracy is impossible under financial imperialist capitalism.

Imperialism upholds the right of one people to reign supreme over another. We aren’t talking about something that ended over a hundred years ago. We are talking about something that is being perpetuated now.

Shameful exploitation
And by now, those of us who are descended by people who usurped and enslaved, are coming to a difficult conclusion — that it is shameful, this history of exploitation.

As one Quaker researcher said: “What I have learned is that if my ancestors were not as radical for human rights as I have hoped, I can at least be different, be radical for human rights now.”

Greed, predatory behaviour is handed down from predator to predator. It used to favour the oldest son. Now it just faces those prepared to sell out to buy in.

Mercenary capitalist entrepreneurs control society and they govern our countries. The brutes who exploit are connected.

So back to the streets. Back to what some reporters saw and reported and what others who aren’t real reporters, failed to report.

Let’s pick apart the claims of incitement. Incitement for what?

Chanting crime
The authorities in NSW deem that it should be a crime for any citizen to chant these words.

From.

The.

River.

To.

The.

Sea.

What next? Will Jews be told they can no longer chant in Hebrew: le shana haba b’yerulashaem. See the parallel.

Next.

Year.

In.

Jerusalem.

Every year Jews around the world chant — as they have for decades and decades — the vow that next year they will be in Jerusalem. They lived in Europe. They lived in the US.

And this they chanted.

Perhaps that is why it bothers Zionists and supporters of genocide. But it wasn’t a return.

Jews who recite this are Europeans and Americans, New Zealanders and Australians.

When they talk of exile, they are talking in mythological proportions, invoking the Bible and tribalism, Goliath and David.

Zionist regime supreme
But one group is reigning supreme. The Zionist regime has pushed thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, and murdered tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands, and still this genocide continues.

But has New South Wales deemed it a crime for Jews to chant “next year in Jerusalem”?

No.

Nor should it. People have the right to chant.

But let’s understand the real history, rather than the propaganda pumped out by a multi million dollar US-Israeli think thank.

Thanks to very real anti-semitism, Europe did not want to rehome Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Britain helped out with an imperialist Zionist strategy that pushed Palestinians out of their homes.

Some Jews fled, refused to do what had been done to them. Good on those Jews. And good on those Jews around the world who stand for societies that care and share, that don’t steal and kill.

I am worried about the implications of any law that bans a chant by exiled people. Will it become a crime for any group of people to chant about their desire to return to lands from which they were exiled?

Governments around the world are leaning that way. They stomp down on Indigenous people, on refugees, on immigrants. They protect their excessive power and privilege.

Blaming immigrants
It’s very popular among these regimes to blame immigrants who come from land that was raped and raided by imperialism. Just tune into our ageing playboy Winston Peters.

Make no mistake under regimes such as this, no one is safe. No one.

It is clearly a crime for others to stand alongside those who have been oppressed and exiled, so will it one day be deemed a crime to talk about ALL the stolen children? Like the stolen indigenous children? The children born in a certain place, on certain land, near a river, near the sea.

Will it be a crime to talk about those abused in state homes?

Will the imperialist histories be redacted? Oh they are. The narrative is changed. The victims can barely survive.

I witnessed some of this so I can remind myself and I can remind you.

When I first went to Israel in 1982 the Begin regime invaded Lebanon. Desecrated people dreaming under cypress trees.

The Israeli Offence Force assisted then, in the genocide, of around 3000 children, women, and men — Palestinians — in refugee camps.

Evil massacre
It was a bloodbath, an evil massacre carried out under stealth, at night. The victims did not have a chance. They had no one to defend them. They were murdered by mercenary Israeli soldiers.

One Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, later made a film, Waltz with Bashir which depicts how he came to realise he was among the soldiers who surrounded the camps and fired flares to illuminate the area for the Lebanese Christian Philangist militia.

Like most soldiers, he was only “following orders”. It haunted him.

The ghosts of every massacre carried out by every totalitarian state like Israel haunt the world. And every regime that supports it is responsibile.

Imperialism is the bloodstain that won’t wash out until the notion of super and special entitlement due to race or class or religion is extinguished.

It is racist and classist and it is wrong.

I wrote my novel The Seasonwife because I wanted to show the truth — that people down the bottom rungs of the class system were exploited by those at the top to exploit indigenous people.

Criminalised the poor
We need to know these truths. And they can be proved. Settler colonialism is not a pretty policy, it was dreamed up by a country that created poverty and criminalised the poor. It sent them out to do its dirty work. Oh some rode on those waves but others were submerged. And Indigenous people lost their rights.

Here in Aotearoa a Treaty was forged, a treaty which clearly gives Indigenous people the right to rangatiratanga. And successive legal acts pushed indigenous people down, breached the principles of that partnership.

When one partner is the abuser the partnership is not equal.

We must remember the crimes of imperialism. We must. Because the past is now.

The massacres of Palestinians is an extension of every colonial crime. The crimes are connected: slavery; forced servitude; exile due to poverty; apartheid, assimilation, extermination.

It is a thread from this ocean to that river to that ocean. From here to there. From Europe to the Levant and the Middle East. All the greed-mongers benefit.

The crimes against Palestinians have been going on for more than seven decades. Research the Nakba. Before the British aided and mounted a violent rape-and-kill takeover, Muslims and Jews and Christians worshipped alongside each other in Palestine. It is easy enough to find documentary evidence of this pleasant land on YouTube.

Look at it now. Look at the difference between Haifa or Tel Aviv and Gaza.

Standing against supremacy
Any Jew who has a soul, who has a conscience, will not stand for the slaughter of innocents or for the creation of a white apartheid supremely state. In the US most Jews are against this, and increasingly so are Jews in Australia and New Zealand, standing up against the supremacy of Zionism.

And Christians need to stand too. It is KKK fundamentalist to support the extermination of people. There is nothing holy in supporting theft and expulsion and the gunning down of women, children, and men.

When we invoke laws that support genocide we create a soul-less compassionless society.

A truly Humanist, Animist, any Values-based system will create a society with laws that uphold rather than extinguish, human rights.

It was a white Australian male who used his inheritance to kill 51 people praying at two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand. The Iman who greeted him at the door welcomed him as “a brother”.

It was a Muslim man who risked his life and suffered terrible injuries while tackling two ISIS-inspired extremist gunmen at Bondi Beach in Sydney. That Muslim man stepped in front of a gun to defend Jewish children, women, and men.

I met many such kind, brave, peace-loving men when I lived in the Middle East and I experienced the utmost hospitality from Muslims.

I differentiate between all people and their regimes.

Greed in common
The regimes that uphold human rights violations are all connected. They all have one thing in common: greed.

Their rulers are predators.

Israel is a US-supported state responsible for mass murder, for genocide, for apartheid, for stealing children decade after decade.

Every government that has failed to denounce that State of Hate is acting against the right of people — all people — to real and precious freedom.

Once again, I call down my Jewish ancestors who experienced, as I have, anti-semitism — in standing against the supremacism that is Zionism.

I stand with Jews Against Zionism. I stand with Jews for Peace. I stand with Jews Against Genocide.

I stand with Jews who support the right of Palestinians to return. Yes to the land, yes to that beautiful river, and to that precious sea. I stand with their right to live where they want to live.

Right to protest
And I stand with the right of all citizens to protest. I stand with the right of citizen journalists to film and report human rights violations.

In my social media posts I continually put aggressive impulsive patriarchal police on notice. I let them know that violence by people who are supposed to protect, is unacceptable.
Their actions could lead to them being incarcerated.

Maybe not now, not yet, but one day. Their violent actions could certainly lead to them being jobless.

Their violent actions will be seen over and over again. The truth won’t be erased.

And I say this to mainstream reporters, please do your job. Join a union and oppose the patriarchy that presents propaganda as truth. Some reporters on the ground in Sydney who said they saw violence by the police and no violence from protesters, but the BBC and RNZ changed that narrative.

News presenters who were not present at the scene presented a skewed version provided by their government. They became a mouthpiece for propaganda. And in doing so they supported totalitarianism.

Reporters must not be mouthpieces for what one commentator so aptly described as the Broligarchy. Predators.

Out of police
The policeman who pepper sprayed me, two years ago, when I took footage of assaults against peaceful civilians by violent police, is no longer in the force. Perhaps he has joined the great raft of unemployed.

I would like to think he can be educated into compassion, that he can learn, that the hard look in his eye will one day be softened when he holds a brown grandchild in his arms.

Think twice police. Think twice reporters. Think twice every one who reads this.

Would you want your children to support all human rights? Do you think words like river and sea and return should be banned? Do you think the colour of the grass and the colour of a rose should be denounced as evil?

Do you think people should have the right to live on their land unmolested? Do you think the land and the waterways should be respected or bombed to dust, drained for its minerals?

Do you believe in freedom? If you do, then know that those who are upholding the right of one people to strip the rights of others, will not leave it there.

These totalitarian leaders are united. As one commentator put it, they are the broligarchy. They are connected. They are predators. And they will use force to shut you up and shut you down.

But I hold hope.

Moral weapon — the truth
Every citizen journalist who films human rights crimes being carried out by the arm of the government is armed with a valuable moral weapon: the truth.

Every citizen journalist reporting these truths is a hero.

The truth might be redacted, those who speak it or shout it might become victims, but in calling it out, they fall on the side of freedom and they will be remembered.

Freedom will come. Because it must. The greed mongers who rule must not prevail.

When the truths of victims is heard, the predators lose the narrative, and then they lose their power.

We are all connected in the lifestream of this tiny, precious blue planet. A spark is born and that spark is creativity, it is the spark that rises from destruction and despair.

Never stop witnessing
Harmony. Peace, and Tranquility is possible if our goal is cooperative living.

So be a witness, and never stop witnessing. Raise your voice, raise your heart and your soul. We are all connected and related because we are all brothers and sisters and cousins, spinning on this spinning orb, sparks in the eye of the universe.

Sparks of creativity are born in societies where nurturers are valued rather than predators and exploiters.

In such a world, peace will prevail.

One fine day.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Australian solidarity activists today marked the 27th anniversary of the Biak massacre in West Papua and have warned the human rights crisis in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region is deteriorating.

No Indonesian security force member has ever been charged or brought to justice for the human rights abuses committed against peaceful West Papuan demonstrators.

According to Elsham Papua, a local human rights organisation, eight people were killed and a further 32 bodies were found near Biak in the following days. However, some human rights sources put the death toll at about 150.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

“Twenty seven years later, the human rights situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate,” said Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) in a statement today.

“West Papuan people continue to be arrested, intimidated and killed by the Indonesian security forces.

“There are ongoing clashes between the TPNPB [West Papua National Liberation Army] and the Indonesian security forces with casualties on both sides.

“As a result of these clashes, the Indonesian security forces carry out sweeps in the area, causing local people to flee in fear for their lives.

‘Bearing the brunt’
“It’s the internal refugees bearing the brunt of the conflict.”

According to the AWPA statement, 6 July 1998 marked the Biak massacre when the Indonesian security forces killed scores of people in Biak, West Papua.

The victims included women and children who had gathered for a peaceful rally. They were killed at the base of a water tower flying the Morning Star flag of independence.

As the rally continued, many more people in the area joined in with numbers reaching up to about 500 people.

The statement said that from July 2 that year, activists and local people started gathering beneath the water tower, singing songs and holding traditional dances.

“On July 6 the Indonesian security forces attacked the demonstrators, massacring scores of people,” said the statement.

Internally displaced
Human Rights Monitor reported in its June update that more than 97,721 people in West Papua were internally displaced as a result of armed conflict between Indonesian security forces and the TPNPB.

Human Rights Watch in a media statement in May 2025 reported that renewed fighting between the security forces and the TPNPB was threatening West Papua civilians.

“As the West Papuan people struggle for their right to self-determination, they face great challenges, from the ongoing human rights abuses to the destruction of their environment,” said Collins in the statement.

“However, support/knowledge for the West Papuan struggle continues to grow, particularly in the Pacific region,” he said.

“If some governments in the region are wavering in their support, the people of the Pacific are not.

Pacific support ‘unwavering’
Jakarta has been targeting Pacific leaders with aid in a bid to convince them to stop supporting the West Papuan struggle.

Civil society and church groups continue to raise awareness of the West Papuan situation at the UN and at international human rights conferences.

“The West Papuan people are not going to give up their struggle for self-determination,” Collins said.

“Time for the countries in the region, including Australia, to take the issue seriously. Raising the ongoing human rights abuses with Jakarta would be a small start”.

• The Biak Citizens Tribunal

Author David Robie and Little Island Press are about to publish next week a 40th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, a first-hand account of the relocation of the Rongelap people by Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

Dr Robie joined what turned out to be the ill-fated voyage of the Rainbow Warrior from Hawai’i across the Pacific, with its first stop in the Marshall Islands and the momentous evacuation of Rongelap Atoll.

After completing the evacuation of the 320 people of Rongelap from their unsafe nuclear test-affected home islands to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, the Rainbow Warrior headed south via Kiribati and Vanuatu.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports

After a stop in New Zealand, it was scheduled to head to the French nuclear testing zone at Moruroa in French Polynesia to protest the then-ongoing atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by France for decades.

But French secret agents attached bombs to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior while it was tied up at a pier in Auckland. The bombs mortally damaged the Warrior and killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Peirera, preventing the vessel from continuing its Pacific voyage.

The new edition of Eyes of Fire will be launched on July 10 in New Zealand.

“This edition has a small change of title, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and has an extra 30 pages, with a new prologue by former Prime Minister Helen Clark,” Dr Robie said in an email to the Journal.

“The core of the book is similar to earlier editions, but bookended by a lot of new material: Helen’s Prologue, Bunny McDiarmid’s updated Preface and a long Postscript 2025 by me with a lot more photographs, some in colour.”

Dr Robie added: “I hope this edition is doing justice to our humanitarian mission and the Rongelap people that we helped.”

He said the new edition is published by a small publisher that specialises in Pacific Island books, often in Pacific languages, Little Island Press.

• For more information about the new book: https://littleisland.nz/books/eyes-fire

With more than 50 Fijian villages earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years due to the climate crisis, Fijian journalists are committing themselves to amplifying the voices of those who face the challenges of climate change in their everyday lives.

Vunidogoloa village on the island of Vanua Levu was home to 32 families who lived in 26 homes. As early as 2006, floods and erosion caused by both sea-level rise and increased rains started to reach homes and destroy crops that fed the community.

The situation worsened in the following years, with water progressively taking over the village. The mangroves that used to cover the coast where they lived were absorbed by the sea completely.

• READ MORE: Other reports in the QUT Fiji Project series

The Fijian government began the mission to relocate Vunidogoloa in 2014. Not only did people in the community walk away from their homes, they left the place where their traditions and stories were passed down. Since Vunidogoloa was relocated, five other Fijian villages have faced the same fate.

Several projects have been established in response to such pressing threats, with an aim to increase the amount of climate journalism in Fijian media.

University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh has previously expressed concern about the lack of specialisation in climate reporting in the Pacific and says the articles produced can often come from “privileged elite viewpoints”.

Dr Singh continues to harbour such concerns in 2024. He notes that Pacific news media organisations have small profit margins, so rather than face the expense of sending out teams to talk to everyday people, their stories tend to focus on presentations and speeches that are cheaper to cover.

“This refers to the plethora of meetings, conferences, and workshops where the experts do all the talking and presenting,” he says.

“Ordinary people in the face of climate change are suffering impacts and do not get as much coverage.”

Training journalists to specialise in climate reporting will give them an in-depth understanding of both talking to experts and ordinary people experiencing the effects of climate change, Dr Singh says.

Blessen Tom’s climate change ‘ghost’ village report on Vunidogoloa for Bearing Witness in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre

“It brings focus, consistency and knowledge if done on a regular basis. Science has its place, but let’s not forget that people dealing and living with the effects of climate change are experts in their own right.”

Up-and-coming journalists, USP students Brittany Nawaqatabu and Viliame Tawanakoro say they see it as a good journalists’ responsibility to prioritise climate stories.

“Journalism provides people with the opportunity to be the vessel of message to the world. We are the captain of the ship that delivers the message,” Viliame says.

Brittany criticises Western media that considers climate change as a “debatable” topic.

“You have to put yourself in the shoes of a Pacific Islander to know what it’s really like. You can’t be debating it because you’re not the one going through it,” she says.

It’s important for Fijian media to continue to put the climate crisis on the front page and not let the stories become lost in other news, she says.

“If we are not going to become strong advocates as Pacific islanders for climate change and what our island homes are going through, then it’s only going to go downhill.”

Brooke Tindall is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This is published as the first of a series under our Asia Pacific Journalism partnership with QUT Journalism.

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.

• READ MORE: Other presentations at the Mediasia conference in Kyoto, Japan
• The Bearing Witness project

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.”

• David Robie’s Eyes Of Fire microsite (with Little Island Press)

Pacific journalism educators are worried that the global covid pandemic has threatened media development programmes in a vast region of island microstates at a time when expertise in health and climate change reporting has never been greater.

The news media industry in some countries has recognised this need and is trying to boost resources and human skills.

New Zealand, for example, earlier this year unveiled a $50 million plan to help the local media after it suffered a huge hit after the start of the pandemic last year with a massive layoff of journalists and a closure of publications, especially magazines.

• READ MORE: Pacific journalism education

One of the innovative features of a new initiative announced by Broadcasting and Media Minister Kris Faafoi, himself a former journalist with Pacific heritage from Tokelau, is a Public Interest Journalism Fund with one of its targets being to assist indigenous Māori, Pasifika and “diverse voices” journalism.

The fund will finance an ambitious Te Rito programme to train 10 Māori and five Pacific Islander journalists a year in digital, broadcast and print media in an industry partnership established under the umbrella of the Treaty of Waitangi partnership.

Other programmes in the Pacific also assist journalism development, such as the United States and Philippines-based Internews/Earth Journalism Network, which trains journalists in climate change skills and strategies and publishes their work.

Ironically, while these developments have been unfolding, Pacific journalism education has gone into retreat since the covid crisis began.

‘A cruel irony’
While New Zealand has the largest metropolitan Pacific Islands population in Oceania with more than 381,642 comprising 8.1 percent of the total 5 million (according to the 2018 census)—matched only by Fiji (890,000) and Papua New Guinea (8.8 million)—none of its six journalism schools cater specifically for Pacific Islands media students.

A decade ago, the country’s largest media school, Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, boasted both a Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism catering especially for the country’s independent Pasifika news media industry and a Pacific Media Centre (PMC) research and publication unit.

But the diploma programme was phased out four years ago and the PMC, which ran an award-winning Bearing Witness climate change journalism and documentary making programme with partners in the Pacific under a “voice of the voiceless” banner, was left in limbo by the school management this year after the founding director retired at the end of last year.

“It’s a cruel irony that at a time when Pacific journalism is at the crossroads—if not on its knees—and needs to be better understood to be helped and strengthened to face new challenges, specialised Pacific journalism and research programmes in one of the centres of excellence in the region face an uncertain future,” said Fiji journalism educator and Associate Professor Shailendra Singh. “It just feels sad and surreal.”

Dr Singh’s own institution, the Suva-based 12-nation regional University of the South Pacific has just embarked on an innovative new programme, a BA degree in communication and media with options in business and marketing.

Media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis, a former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, argued in his weekly Knightly Views column that the PMC ought to be “re-established as a stand-alone trust”.

“It should continue its original remit … It may be time, however, to find a new university or industry partner,” he added.

Urged renewed commitment
The Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) lobby and training group wrote to the AUT university’s vice-chancellor and unsuccessfully urged the institution to renew a commitment “at a time when Pacific journalism is under existential threat and Pacific programmes suffer from under funding”.

This retreat on campuses has contrasted with renewed energy by the New Zealand media industry to boost Māori and Pacific journalism to provide better cultural “balance” in the legacy media.

In July, the new $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund over three years unveiled its first cycle of grants for stories examining a wide range of community issues—such as an in-depth revisiting of a documentary, Inside Child Poverty, made a decade earlier with considerable impact.

The fund also provided $2.4 million for the setting up of Te Rito, the first comprehensive kaihautū, or journalism cadetship scheme for Māori, Pacific and “other communities traditionally under-represented in media”.

A significant feature of this scheme is the unprecedented collaboration between Māori Television, a state-funded public broadcaster; Pacific Media Network (PMN); Newshub-Discovery Channel; and New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), the country’s largest print and oneline publisher.

PMN chief executive Don Mann welcomed the collaboration, saying it aligned with his organisation’s mandate to help train a “pipeline of excellent Pacific broadcasters and multimedia journalists”.

He added: “Te Rito provides sustainability in provision of best-practice Pasifika multilingual journalism but, more importantly, it allows the network to play our part in rectifying the significant under-representation and imbalance within the journalism sector on behalf of the Pasifika community.”

Critical shortage
Māori Television head of news and current affairs Wena Harawira echoed this view, saying the partnership would address the critical shortage of te reo Māori speaking journalists.

“It’s incredibly important that New Zealand’s journalism landscape is rich with Māori stories created by Māori, in te reo Māori, for everyone,” she said.

Te reo Māori is one of New Zealand’s three official languages – the others being English and sign language. But while Māori make up 16.5 percent of the population, only 4 percent of the country speaks te reo fluently, although its popularity is growing fast.

News media carried advertisements this month to recruit a Te Rito project manager who would be given “a unique opportunity to shape the future of journalism” in New Zealand.

Educators hope that universities take the cue and renew their earlier support for diversity journalism.

First published by In-Depth News (IDN), the flagship agency of the nonprofit International Press Syndicate. This is published as a collaboration between IDN and Asia Pacific Report. The writer, Dr David Robie, is editor of Asia Pacific Report, founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review and former director of the Pacific Media Centre.

Highly commended for their recent success at the Ossie Awards for the best student journalism in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific in the video story category (over 2 minutes) for their documentary Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival, Hele Ikimotu (Niuean and Banaban-Gilbertese) and Blessen Tom can’t rule out a return to the remote island of Rabi.

During the Second World War, the inhabitants of Banaba in the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati) were forcibly displaced to Rabi in the Fiji group while the British Phosphate Company mined on Banaba, decimating the island.

The Banabans had to make a fresh start on Rabi, where they now face a new threat – climate change.

READ MORE: The Ossie Awards – the full winners list

The student pair travelled to Suva, Fiji, and were based at the University of the South Pacific before catching a boat to Rabi to tell the story of the people of Banaba as part of the Bearing Witness climate programme (International Journalism Project) run by Professor David Robie and Jim Marbrook at Auckland University of Technology’s (AUT) Pacific Media Centre.

While the talented Hele Ikimotu, who works as an initiatives and projects team member at AUT’s Office of Pacific Advancement, could not make it to the presentation of the certificates, Blessen Tom took time out from his work as an assistant producer on TVNZ’s Fair Go investigative programme to attend.

Dr Robie presented the certificates yesterday and read out the commendation from the Ossie Awards organisers, Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA), saying the prizes recognised the “cream of student journalism”:

“More than 22 journalism schools across Australia, New Zealand the Pacific compete for these awards so it is a tremendous honour to get a highly commended for Blessen and Hele, so it is a tribute to both of you,” he said.

“The judge’s comments were passed onto to me by the co-ordinator of the awards, Dr Peter English.

Judge Nicole Hegarty of the  Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Queensland said:

“Blessen and Hele’s short documentary has a nice story arc coupled with nicely framed and focused shots. The use of drone footage provided a great overview of the island. The inclusion of the reporter [Hele] in story helped to personalise or localise the story for the audience.”

‘Burning desire’
Tom, who hails from Trivandrum, Kerala, India, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, explained why he has a “burning desire” to return to Rabi – in the middle of the Pacific.

“It feels like home when I went Rabi. You have a lot of coconut trees and a tropical climate, and I felt similarity to the people there. So I felt like I was coming home,” Tom says.

“When Hele’s mum [Janet Tawaketini] told the story about the original Banabans and their community that has suffered so much, it kind of resonated with me.

“Infrastructure needs a lot of work there because there aren’t any good schools and hospitals, and electricity is very sparse.

“You feel like you you’re in a world far, far away … it was transforming I don’t know how to explain it …”

With no mod cons such as wi-fi and electricity they had to take a lot of batteries for the single camera used.

‘Lot of challenges’
“We had a lot of challenges; they didn’t have much power, so we had to be careful with what we shot.”

Tom talks about returning to Rabi because he feels an urge within to do something for the people there in the best way he knows how.

“If all bricks fall into place, I’m hoping to document a return to Rabi, because there is a plan to take all the Banabans for anniversary celebrations…they have to raise the money and then there are the logistics of getting them all to Rabi.

“And, if possible, I would like to go to Banaba and shoot the decimation done to the place.”

The nine-minute documentary got credits for screening at the Nuku’alofa International Film Festival 2018 in Tonga, Pasifika Film Festival 2019 in Salt Lake City in the USA and Maoriland Film Festival in Otaki last year. It was “published” by Asia Pacific Report last August.

The annual Ossie Awards, named after foreign correspondent Osmar S. White, are organised by JERAA. Senior journalists and editors judge the main award categories.

The winning video story (over two minutes) was Nasir Sobhani, The Streets Barber, by Catherine Smith of RMIT, and another highly commended story was Gladys Liu vs Jennifer Yang about political rivals battling to make history as the first Chinese-Australian MP, by  Youja (Kate) Tan of Monash University.

• Banabans of Rabi on Film Freeway

The successful video story, Banabans of Rabi.

A Relocation Trust Fund will be set up by the Fiji government to help villages facing the threat of climate change.

Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the fund would be announced in the upcoming budget, reports FBC News.

Speaking at the Ministerial Finance Dialogue at the United Nations in New York, Sayed-Khaiyum said a small percentage of money would be taken from the Environment and Climate Adaptation levy to set up the fund.

WATCH VIDEO: Banabans of Rabi – climate change documentary

He said 43 Fijian villages were under threat from sea level rise and might need to be moved to higher ground.

The fund would also be used to develop adaptive measures as an alternative to relocation.

If relocations were necessary, however, he stressed the need for a “holistic approach”.

“If we do relocate, then we have to build in the holistic approach too, for example sustainable livelihood, new way of livelihood – that they need to develop.”

The announcement comes a week after the University of the South Pacific (USP) journalism programme received a US$20,000 grant to boost climate change reporting.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Banabans of Rabi – A Story of Survival, a short documentary by Blessen Tom and Hele Ikimotu of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, has been selected for the Māoriland Film Festival 2019 next month.

The film will be screened as part as part of Ngā Pūtake Shorts.

This is the third official international film festival selection for Banabans of Rabi. The short documentary travelled to Salt Lake city, Utah, earlier this month and was screened at the Pasifika Film Festival.

READ MORE: Life on Fiji’s Rabi Island – simple, peaceful and full of smiles

The film had its Pacific premiere at the 2018  Nuku’alofa International Film Festival last year.

The film was produced out of the three-year-old Bearing Witness climate change project, a collaboration between PMC and its documentary partner Te Ara Motuhenga at Auckland University of Technology and the Pacific Centre for Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and Regional Journalism Programme at the University of South Pacific.

Māoriland Film Festival is Aotearoa’s largest indigenous film festival and is in its sixth year. The festival brings more than 138 films and 62 events from 94 indigenous nations to Aotearoa.

“Indigenous stories help us make sense of our world, of our connections and our shared humanity. Our sixth festival includes stories from the polar regions, from the deserts, from the mountains of Iran and Nepal, and from nations who dwell upon and beside the planet’s vast oceans including the Pacific,” says festival director Libby Hakaraia.

The 2019 MFF features a strong lineup of films from Te Moananui a Kiwa (the Pacific), including the southern hemisphere premiere of Vai.

Vai is a portmanteau feature film directed by eight female Pacific Island filmmakers and filmed in seven Pacific countries: Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Kuki Aīrani (Cook Islands), Samoa, Niue and Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The festival will also bring seven Pacific features and 41 short films from Aotearoa, Hawai’i, Papua New Guinea, Rapanui, Guam, Haida Gwaii, Vanuatu and more. Also, indigenous films from the United States, Canada, Northern Europe and Iran will also be screened at this five day film festival at Otaki.

The Māoriland Film Festival is at Ōtaki on March 20-24.

• Banabans of Rabi
• Banabans of Rabi wins highly commended award in Ossies

By Rahul Bhattarai in Auckland

Banabans of Rabi – A story of Survival, a short documentary film by the two Auckland University of Technology media students, has been premiered in the fourth Nuku’alofa International Film Festival that took place in Tonga this week.

This short documentary is a story about the people who have been first affected by the phosphate mining on their original home island of Banaba and now by climate change on their adopted island of Rabi.

The British Phosphate Commission forceful displaced them from Banaba during World War Two.

READ MORE: Life on Fiji’s Rabi Island – simple, peaceful and full of smiles

Since 1945 after they first settled into their new home – Rabi, a remote northern island in Fiji – they are faced with a second and the most threatening man-made global problem, climate change.

Tom Corrie, one of the residents who had left Rabi as a young man and later returned, says Rabi has changed.

“The part of my history has been taken away from me, part of my livelihood, my enjoyment my pleasures have gone,” he says in the documentary, pointing at his former playground that now has now been engulfed by the rising tides.

“We are the most effected by climate change,” he says.

In solidarity
“People in Rabi and their struggle with climate change, they’re not the cause of this but unfortunately they [have] had to face the consequences,” says co-director Blessen Tom.

“I wanted the world to know about their struggle and wanted to let them know that they’re not alone in this,” says Tom.

The film was a part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate change project, which was initiated by director Professor David Robie in 2016.

It has been made possible by collective support from the partners, University of South Pacific Journalism, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective with senior and documentary maker Jim Marbrook.

Film makers Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom travelled to Tonga with the assistance of a funding grant from AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

• ‘Bearing Witness’ – a Pacific climate change journalism research and publication initiative

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

A short documentary, Banabans of Rabi – A Story of Survival, by Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, has been selected for the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival in Tonga next month.

This is a film produced out of the three-year-old Bearing Witness climate change project, a research and publication collaboration between the PMC and its documentary partner Te Ara Motuhenga, and the Pacific Centre for Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Journalism Programme at the University of the South Pacific.

According to the filmmakers: “During the Second World War, the inhabitants of the island of Banaba were forcibly displaced to Rabi Island in Fiji due to phosphate mining by the British Phosphate Commission.

“The island of Banaba was decimated and the Banabans had to start afresh in Rabi. The documentary follows the people in Rabi and sheds light into the problems that they face now, especially with climate change.”

Film maker Blessen Tom said on the documentary’s Facebook page: “It’s an amazing news for all of us. The festival will be the first time the full documentary is screened in public.

“Super excited for the Pacific screening. If you’re in Tonga on November 22-23, be sure to visit us.”

Documentary maker and senior lecturer Jim Marbrook said: “This is great and it’s a very cool first step,” adding that plans should be made for other film festival entries.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie said: “This is a tremendous achievement for starters and a reward for the really hard work that Blessen and Hele have put into making this quality and inspirational doco.”

• Banabans of Rabi
• 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival

PROFILE: By Craig Major of AUT News

​Based at Auckland University of Technology, the Pacific Media Centre is a small team dedicated to telling stories from across the Pacific that you won’t read anywhere else.

Established in 2007 by Professor David Robie in AUT’s School of Communication Studies, the centre focuses on postgraduate research projects and publications that impact on indigenous communities across the Pacific.

“We’re a small team, but the scope of what we cover is phenomenal,” Dr Robie explains. “As researchers and reporters, we look at the repercussions that big issues like climate change, human rights violations and press freedom have on these small communities in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The team are active publishers, managing several platforms including the Pacific Media Watch and Asia Pacific Report news websites, the half-yearly academic research journal Pacific Journalism Review and its companion Pacific Journalism Monographs, the blog Niusblog and Toktok, a quarterly newsletter.

The centre has also secured a media partnership with Radio New Zealand – the first content-sharing arrangement between a New Zealand university and a news organisation – and hosts the weekly Southern Cross radio programme on 95bFM.

Dr Robie, along with Advisory Board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, sees the centre as having a strong advocacy role across the Pacific and further afield.

“I think it is a real strength of the PMC that the team can find issues in the Pacific that just aren’t covered in the mainstream New Zealand media, then explore them and report on them with authority and conviction,” Dr Robie says.

Beyond a travel brochure
“The team is skilled in identifying issues that are beyond the scope of what the public sees in a travel brochure.”

Dr Nakhid echoes this sentiment. “New Zealand’s media can be very insular when reporting on what is happening in the Pacific – even though there is so much happening right outside our doorstep.”

Internally the team takes a cross-discipline approach, working closely with students and staff in the School of Communication Studies (particularly Te Ara Motuhenga, the documentary collective) and the School of Social Sciences.

The centre also has international partnerships, such as with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, and maintains close ties to Pacific communities based in New Zealand – and are sure to collaborate with community groups for events and seminars.

“Pacific Media Centre organised a seminar about the refugee situation in Myanmar recently,” recalls publications designer Del Abcede. “Through talking to the Burmese citizens that we had invited, we discovered a range of issues that only came to light in the mainstream after the Myanmar election.”

PMC reporting staff – mostly postgraduate students – are encouraged to uncover and explore the issues that interest them.

“Working with the PMC has been very illuminating,” says Sri Krishnamurthi, a postgraduate student who has covered Fiji-based news for PMC, and has interviewed two of the three party heads hoping to win Fiji’s general election next month.

“I have a background in communications and journalism, but doing this kind of reporting has been a real eye-opener,” says Krishnamurthi, a Fiji-born journalist who worked with the NZ Press Association for 17 years.

Film festival screening
And just this week two students from the centre, Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, have had their Bearing Witness climate change documentary, Banabans of Rabi, accepted for screening at the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival.

The trailer of Banabans of Rabi, a short documentary on climate change accepted by the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival. Video: BOR

The freedom to pursue stories in the region is an opportunity for Dr Robie and the team.

“Students that work with us learn so much – and there really is no underestimation of their abilities,” Dr Robie said.

“Not only that, it promotes media and journalism as a viable career path for Pacific students, and leads to opportunities for international journalism projects.”

• Pacific Media Centre website
• Pacific Media Centre on YouTube

By Hele Ikimotu

The president of the Samoa Voyaging Society (SVS), Schannel van Dijken, says humans cannot thrive without looking after our landscapes and seascapes.

As part of his work with the SVS, van Dijken and his team of volunteers sail across the Pacific on their waka, the Gaualofa – promoting the old tradition of navigating.

“Our mission is to revive the lost art of traditional navigation and voyaging but also to take this knowledge and stewardship responsibilities that we used to have – take these to the communities,” he says.

He also speaks of the challenges around climate change and the need to raise awareness about the issue.

This 4 minute video was produced by Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate assignment under the postgraduate International Journalism Project with Te Ara Motuhenga at Auckland University of Technology.

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

The University of the South Pacific’s environmental centre spearheading climate change research believes in working together for shared solutions.

Director Professor Elisabeth Holland says the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) has a culture of quality and shared “ownership” of projects.

“Don’t assume you know what the answer is,” she says in her advice to climate change researchers.

“The strongest solutions are developed together.”

Dr Holland is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

She is an author of four of the five IPCC reports and has also served as a US, German and now a Fiji representative.

• More frontline ‘Pacific research for Pacific’ plea

Vunidogoloa was the first village in Fiji to be relocated – barely three years ago – due to sea level rise.

The village was in the Cakaudrove province and had backyard views of beautiful Natewa Bay on Vanua Levu Island.

The relaxing life for these villagers was, however, dampened by the impact of sea level rise.

Flooding was common for the villagers and so they needed to be relocated.

Their new village is 2 kilometres inland and was renamed by the villagers as Kenani (“Promised Land”).

The whole village of Vunidogoloa (pop. 130) moved to their new settlement in January 2014 and now have solar lighting.

We stopped by the old “ghost” village to see where the people once lived and also took some photos of where they are now settled.

• In Fiji, villages need to move due to climate change

From Vunidogoloa to Kenani

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The rebuilding of a road on Fiji’s northern Rabi Island is currently in the works.

Fiji’s most recent natural disaster, Tropical Cyclone Keni, destroyed many parts of the country’s main towns.

One of Fiji’s outer islands, Rabi, was also affected by the cyclone.

Although the cyclone did not pass through the 66 sq km island in the Vanua Levu group, heavy rain and wind caused the landslide, blocking a road which connects the main village of Tabwewa to the rest of the island.

The landslide has meant that it is unsafe for locals to use the road. They must either walk around the rubble – or ride a horse.

This is not the first time a landslide has happened in Rabi due to the impacts of harsh weather.

Janet Tawaketini, whose last time on Rabi was in 1995, is visiting the island and was shocked to see the remnants of a previous landslide, also in Tabwewa.

“That’s where my great grandparents’ graves were. Their grave and their bones are literally gone,” she said.

A building company from Savusavu has been sent over to Rabi to fix the most recent landslide.

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

By Hele Ikimotu on Rabi Island, Fiji

Our trip to Rabi was a long journey, first starting with a bus ride from Suva, driving straight onto a ferry in Natovi and arriving in Nabouwalu. That trip alone was about seven to eight hours.

From there, my uncle, Aretana Kabure, picked us up and let us borrow the car to head into Savusavu. After exploring the area for a bit, we then caught another bus which drove onto Princess Moana in Natuvu – the final stop before Rabi.

Arriving on Rabi for the first time was a monumental moment for me personally as I am from Rabi Island. My parents, Janet and Jone, managed to make it and came with us. My mother’s last time in Rabi Island was in 1995.

The island’s inhabitants are the Banabans, who were forcibly relocated to Rabi in 1945 due to the destruction of their island from phosphate mining. The people kept the four villages of Banaba and brought them with them to Rabi – Buakonikai, Tabwewa, Tabiang and Uma.

When we arrived in the evening, we were picked up by my uncle, my mum’s brother, whom she hadn’t seen since her last time in Rabi. Immediately upon arrival, his family fed us – we went to sleep with happy stomachs.

As the morning sun greeted us and after a dip in the sea metres away from the house we were staying in, we began our journey in exploring Rabi.

There are three main modes of transport in Rabi: walking, horse riding and driving a car. Walking is the main – having your own car is a rarity on the island. You can call a “taxi” which comes in the form of a pickup truck. As you pass people walking, they wave and smile.

Fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner
We visited many of my relatives and they all welcomed us with food. We had fish for breakfast, fish for lunch and fish for dinner. It is a staple dish in Rabi.

In between the visits, we interviewed people about the effects of sea level rise on the island and also heard personal testimonies about the move from Banaba to Rabi. You will hear and see this soon.

The island of Rabi is beautiful. The more we explored the island, the more we fell in love with it. In one part of the island, you will find kids fishing. In another, men are clearing the weeds outside their church, a young girl in a hammock is rocking a baby to sleep and people are swimming in the clear waters.

Rabi is a welcoming island. The trip may be long but it is worth it. If one plans to go, it is best they know someone and organise accommodation beforehand as there are no hotels. The island isn’t a tourist destination, which makes it that more special. It is simply a homely environment.

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

• More Bearing Witness stories

Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate project postgraduate student team Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom have just spent five days on the northern Fiji volcanic island of Rabi.

As Ikimotu, himself a Rabi Islander, reports: “The island’s inhabitants are the Banabans, who were forcibly relocated to Rabi in 1945 due to the destruction of their island from phosphate mining. The people kept the four villages of Banaba and brought them with them to Rabi – Buakonikai, Tabwewa, Tabiang and Uma.”

Here are some of the images from Ikimotu and Tom’s visit to the island.

• Life on Fiji’s Rabi Island
• Rabi Island video

Life on Rabi

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By Hele Ikimotu with visuals by Blessen Tom in Suva

Ten students from the University of the South Pacific have captured the effects of climate change on their smartphone devices.

The task was organised through an eParticipatory Observers Project (ePOP) workshop last month by members of the ePOP network based in France.

The ePOP project was established by RFI Planète Radio, along with the IRD (National French Research Institute for Sustainable Development). The project aims to raise awareness about climate change through videos produced by young people.

The workshop at USP was over four days, with the first part of the workshop developing the students’ filming and editing skills. The students then applied these skills to produce videos about communities affected by climate change.

Bigger platform
Koroi Tadulala, a third year Fiji journalism student took part in the ePOP project both last year and this year.

“I joined ePOP because I’ve always been keen about climate change and the environment. I had been writing climate change stories since I started first year.

“Ever since then, I’ve been following up stories on climate change and then ePOP came around. I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to put my skills to use and address this issue on a bigger platform.”

The Fijian student bears a close connection to the effects of climate change as his own village is affected by sea level rise.

He said it made him want to be an activist in spreading “the word of climate change”.

“As part of the ePOP project, we go to the grassroots level and sit down with a lot of community members and ask them to share their stories with us,” he said.

Tadulala said it was a great opportunity to produce and share the stories to a wider audience.

‘Amazing’ response
“We brought out some of the stories that we didn’t really know about and now people are reacting to it. It’s amazing to see how people take it in.”

Tadulala created a video story on the effect of the 2016 Cyclone Winston on food security and a story on how the Fiji village of Nabudakra thinks they should strengthen their faith with God to reduce the impact of cyclones.

He said a project like ePOP catered to the digital era and encouraged young people to engage with issues around climate change.

“We create short videos from two to three minutes long so it enables them to go through the whole video without being bored.

“We decided to put this out on social media, especially because most of the people are using social media networks and it’s only smart to use that platform to put out the word of climate change.”

Filmmaking interest
Mia Kami, a law student at USP, also took part in the ePOP workshop out of an interest for filmmaking.

The student, of Tongan descent, said the ePOP team had shared that awareness of climate change issues faced by the Pacific was not as strong in Europe.

“Their [ePOP’s] goal was to spread awareness of climate change in Europe, so the videos that we did were based on climate change.

“I think because it was from a student in the Pacific, it would be a lot more heartfelt so people would understand it more from a Pacific point of view,” said Kami.

Kami and a few other students went to a fish market and interviewed vendors to get their perspective on how climate change affected fisheries.

She said she was surprised at what their idea of climate change was and how it affected them.

“The first lady we interviewed, her definition of climate change was that it’s bad weather.

Water pollution
“She believes that the bad weather is making the fishermen stop fishing, so they don’t fish and she doesn’t get to buy fish from them so she can sell. So that’s how she said that climate change affected her.”

Speaking of another vendor she interviewed, Kami said the vendor did not think overfishing was an issue and felt that it was water pollution.

“I feel like a lot of the media coverage that we do based on climate change, it doesn’t reach as far as their areas because a lot of the vendors are based in rural areas.

“I feel like the proper research on it doesn’t reach that grassroots level so I think if people took climate change into the more grassroots level, it would give them a totally different perspective.”

Kami enjoyed the ePOP project and the process of producing the video story. She said it was important for young people to make themselves aware of climate change.

“It’s our future. I think it’s important that we make an attempt to lessen the damage that we’re going to face in the future,” she said.

“What we can do now is so essential. If we know more about it, it makes so much of a difference. It all starts with ourselves.”

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

• More Bearing Witness stories
• France committed to backing ePOP climate storytelling

By Hele Ikimotu with visuals by Blessen Tom in Suva

This year, the University of the South Pacific is celebrating 50 years since its opening in Fiji in  1968.

The university’s first campus was established in Suva, with a student count of 200 – it now accommodates over 30,000 students across the different campuses within the Pacific region.

USP has campuses in 12 different Pacific nations – Fiji, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Chandra said USP has made a positive contribution to the Pacific region, including contributions in human resources, policy change and research.

He described the university as being “owned by the Pacific and serves the Pacific”. Professor Chandra emphasised the need for these Pacific countries to work together in advocating for Pacific issues.

“As small countries, we need to work together. One is simply too small to be playing in the big world out there. We need to put all of our voices together. We need to co-operate, work together and integrate,” he said.

Professor Chandra also spoke highly of USP’s efforts in tackling the issue of climate change.

Leading stand
Over the years, the university has become one of the leading tertiary institutions to make a stand against the issue.

“The university has played this role of researching, advocating, supporting policies and disseminating knowledge around climate change,” said Professor Chandra.

The USP journalism school for example is consistently producing stories on climate change issues in their student newspaper Wansolwara. They have also partnered with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre to host two students every year for the Bearing Witness climate change journalism project.

This has seen significant stories about the effect climate change has had on communities in Fiji such as the award-winning multimedia story produced by Kendall Hutt and Julie Cleaver last year about Tukuraki village.

“I am also proud of the USP students. They have gone to the various COPs and have supported their own countries and have become senior advisers to their governments.

“I am quite proud and happy because the climate is central to the survival and prosperity of our country.”

The university’s 1999 strategic plan also saw the establishment of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD).

Raising awareness
The centre was opened to implement more research of the region’s environment and has continued to raise awareness about climate change and sustainable development in the Pacific.

PaCE-SD offers a postgraduate programme in climate change, with currently 200 students across the Pacific enrolled in the programme.

The centre also implements community projects around climate resilience in the Pacific and has been involved in major projects such as the Community Coastal Adaptation Project (C-CAP) and the Future Climate Leaders Programme (FCLP1).

Since the centre has been established, it has been recognised as a strong part of the university’s fight against climate change and environment research in the Pacific.

PaCE-SD director Professor Elisabeth Holland said it was important to be on the ground making a difference in the Pacific region and local communities.

Deputy director of the centre Dr Morgan Wairiu echoed Professor Holland and said the focus of PaCE-SD was helping communities adapt to the changes in the environment because of climate change.

He said it was also important to provide students with the right skills to help them in their areas of research so they could come up with effective solutions to help communities affected by climate change.

Community projects
Professor Holland said: “We run community development projects. We have a locally managed climate change adaptation network that extends to more than 100 communities in 15 countries across the Pacific.”

She said that by listening to how communities were affected by climate change, it had taught their team to listen better and develop a more participatory approach in decision making.

“We have the opportunity to learn from one another and if we’re learning from one another, we’re in a partnership to serve whatever problem is in front of us.”

Professor Holland encourages anyone who is interested in learning about climate change to keep an open mind and said: “Don’t assume you know what the answer is.

“The strongest solutions are those developed together. The fundamental values of participatory listening and respect help solve most of the challenges that come up.”

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

• More Bearing Witness stories
• USP’s ’50 Years’ website
• Wansolwara News

Affordable energy enhances the livelihood of Pacific communities, says an associate professor in physics at the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific.

Dr Atul Raturi presented a seminar as part of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) seminar series about the use of solar energy in supporting sustainable development in the Pacific.

The deputy director of the centre, Dr Morgan Wairiu, said these seminars were a great opportunity for students to interact with.

“We encourage our students and staff to attend these to exchange their ideas and knowledge.

“At the same time are bringing the visibility of the programme to outside communities about what we are doing here at the centre.”

Dr Raturi’s seminar focused on global sustainable development goal SDG7 (access to affordable and clean energy). He said SDG7 was a main driver for many of the other development goals.

‘Trilemma’ challenge
He said Pacific Island countries face a”trilemma” – energy poverty, climate change impacts and extreme fossil fuel dependence.

As a result, communities are suffering from the effects such as having a lack of access to clean water.

Dr Raturi said renewable energy development can help tackle these three challenges.

He spoke of how solar PV was on the rise and some of the USP community solar projects as examples of sustainable development.

He said it was important to be having discussions with small communities to understand where their struggles were.

“The challenge of these projects is that we have a good heart and good intentions and we know what we want to do, but the community doesn’t want it because they have other priorities,” he said.

Creating an opportunity
Dr Raturi said listening to helps create an opportunity to collaborate with them on aiding their needs.

“We need to have a discussion with them and then together form a project. This is why a talanoa is very important.”

The USP community solar projects has seen success in several Fijian communities – one significant project regarding solar energy and water in Yanuca Island.

The community had no access to fresh water and through the project, a solar thermal desalination system was installed in March last year.

This system was described by Dr Raturi as “simple” as villagers just bring sea water and fill up a tank which is pumped using the solar energy, then producing fresh water.

“On a good sunny day, the system produces about 200 litres of drinking water,” he said.

The solar water pumping systems have also been installed for some Fijian schools – Batiri Lagi, Namau, Korotolutolu and Kubulau.

Shared message
Dr Raturi shared what one of the head mistresses at Namau School had said about the project:

“The supply of clean and safe water without any fuel costs is recognised by the community and the benefits will be felt by the future generations of children attending this school.”

He said it was important to recognise how solar energy could play a vital role in tackling climate stresses in the Pacific, achieving some of the sustainable development goals and also leading towards aspirations regarding the Paris agreement.

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

Bearing Witness climate change project students won big last night at the annual awards ceremony for AUT’s School of Communication Studies last night.

Julie Cleaver and Kendal Hutt took out the Spasifik Magazine Prize and Pacific Media Centre Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting for their work on the Bearing Witness climate change project last year.

Hele Ikimotu was awarded the John Foy Memorial Award for broadcast journalism and will be flying to Fiji tomorrow to continue the Bearing Witness climate change project this year.

READ MORE: Bearing Witness climate project stories

‘Great honour’
Cleaver and Hutt both travelled to Fiji last year where they created a multimedia feature on the Fijian village of Tukuraki, which was hit by a deadly landslide and two cyclones in the space of five years.

The project also won the Dart Asia-Pacific Prize for Journalism and Trauma at the annual Ossie Awards for Student Journalism at Newcastle, NSW, last December.

Cleaver is now editor of Debate Magazine and Hutt is a reporter with the North Shore Times.

Hutt said it was a great honour to receive this award.

“This award is not just our award, it is also Tukuraki’s award for letting us come up to the community and let us tell their story. I think it had only been told in Fijian media and ABC Australia,” said Hutt.

‘Journalism highlight’
Cleaver said her time in Fiji was a moving experience. “It was a privilege to be a journalist and hear these people’s stories. When else would you get to hear these people’s personal testimonies from someone who has been through so much as well.”

“The Pacific Media Centre has been so supportive to both of us throughout this process. Thanks so much to Professor David Robie and everyone else involved,” said Cleaver.

“The trip was a journalism highlight. This is why I wanted to get into journalism.”

“It’s so awesome that Dr Robie is driving this PMC project. It needs someone passionate to keep it going and it’s such a privilege to be a part of that.”

Ikimotu ‘excited’
Bearing Witness climate change project participant Hele Ikimotu received the John Foy Memorial Award.

Louise Matthews, curriculum leader of AUT’s journalism programme, presented the award to Ikimotu and said he “aced” his undergraduate courses and stayed on to do postgraduate study this year.

Ikimotu thanked God, the John Foy Memorial Trust sponsors and his “supportive and inspiring” journalism tutors in his acceptance speech.

“I’m so excited and nervous to go over there. I come from an ancestry of storytellers. There are times I doubted I had the ability to be a good storyteller but this award has affirmed I have what it takes, and I’m so excited to see where journalism takes me.

“I’m so excited to use it as a platform for my people and continue being a voice for the Pacific. I was born in the Islands and I know my family back home are proud that I’m doing it and representing them.”

Ikimotu leaves for Fiji tomorrow with fellow participant Blessen Tom to carry on this year’s version of the Bearing Witness project.

Ikimotu and Tom will be heading on a two-week climate change mission to the main island of Viti Levu where they will be interviewing local people who are directly affected by the devastating effects of climate change in the Pacific.

Ikimotu and Tom will be searching for stories, interviewing people directly affected by climate change and reporting directly for Asia Pacific Report, Wansolwara and other media.

• Wansolwara report on the climate change project in Fiji
• Tukuraki disaster village multimedia report

Full 2017 School of Communication Studies awards:
School of Communication Studies Award for Top Student in the Certificate in Communication Studies: Schumacher Liuvaie

School of Communication Studies Award for Top Year One Bachelor of Communication Studies: Amy Wang

School of Communication Studies Award for Top Year Two Bachelor of Communication Studies: Jamie Ensor

School of Communication Studies Award for Excellence in Communication Theory: Adam Szentes

Communication Studies Postgraduate Scholarships: India Fremaux, Yulia Khan, Malini Radkrishna, Jayakrishnan Sreekumar

Dean’s Award for Best Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies: Elizabeth Osborne

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Master of Communication Studies – Thesis: Ximena Smith

Oceania Media’s Spasifik Magazine Prize and the Pacific Media Centre’s Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting: Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt

The Radio Bureau Award for Top of Research Project: Radio: Georgina Cain-Treleaven

The Radio Bureau Award for Top Radio Student: Maxene London

John Foy Memorial Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism: Hele Ikimotu

Bauer Award for Excellence in Magazine Journalism: Nicole Barratt

New Zealand Herald Award for Top Post Graduate Diploma Student in Creative Practice – Journalism: Arun Jeram

National Business Review Award for the Outstanding Graduate in the BCS Journalism Major: Nicole Barratt

New Zealand Geographic award for Excellence in Photojournalism: Adam Szentes

Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Award for the Top Year 2 Public Relations Student: Jamie Ensor

The winners of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Paul Dryden Tertiary Award 2017: Boyan Buha, Jodealyn Cadacio, Simon Cooper, and Georgia Ward

Highly Commended Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Paul Dryden Tertiary Award 2017: Abby Berry, Emma Hilton, Morgan MacFadyen

Public Relations Institute of New Zealand President’s Award for the Top Academic Student in the Public Relations Major: Adam Szentes

The Postgraduate Public Relations Global Virtual Team Winner (2017): Alex Ubels

FCB Change Agency Award for Digital Media Excellence: Stefanee Chua

School of Communication Studies joint Award for Academic Excellence in the Creative Industries Major: Kaylah Burke and Laura Reid

QMS Awards for Advertising Creativity:
QMS Art Director of the Year – Holly Smith
QMS Account Executive of the Year – Ella Bilham
QMS Team of the Year – Will Macdonald and Adam Ramsdale

Francis Porterfield Memorial Award for Excellence in Multicamera Production: Steven Yee

MediaWorks Award for Best Producer: McKay Carroll

Two postgraduate students on the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate change project are due to jet to Fiji this weekend.

Journalism student Hele Ikimotu and screen production student Blessen Tom will be heading on a two-week climate change mission to the main island of Viti Levu where they will be interviewing local people who are directly affected by the devastating effects of climate change in the Pacific.

Ikimotu and Tom will be searching for stories, interviewing people affected by climate change and reporting for Asia Pacific Report and other media.

Using the University of the South Pacific as a base, the two students will work closely with the USP journalism programme newspaper Wansolwara. They will also be working with the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD).

Both Ikimotu and Tom bear a close connection to the impact climate change is wreaking on the Pacific region and wider world.

Ikimotu is from Kiribati and his passion for the Bearing Witness project is drawn from his close connection to the Pacific region.

Ikimotu said: “Kiribati is one of the most affected countries by climate change and climate change issues. I have a special connection to the issues these communities are going through because it’s my family that’s being affected.

‘Genuine passion’
“I wanted to be a part of this project as I have a genuine passion for climate change and climate change issues.”

Likewise, Tom has a strong link to the consequences of climate change due to the impact it is having on his family’s agriculture business in his homeland of India.

Tom said: “For me, climate change is a very personal subject. I come from a family who for generations has depended on agriculture as our main income.

“This project is really important to me because just like in my country, people in the Pacific Islands are really suffering.

“Climate change real for us. We experience it in a really bad way right now, when you think about our income from agriculture, we can’t survive on it.”

Both Ikimotu and Tom bear a strong commitment to sharing the stories of the Pacific peoples, which they say are not being covered adequately by mainstream media.

Ikimotu said: “I feel that mainstream media aren’t doing enough to report on climate change.

Local stories
“I think a project like ‘bearing witness’ gives a platform for climate change to be reported on genuinely and passionately, and give opportunities to locals to tell their story.”

“The Bearing Witness project gives us the opportunity to share that with a wider audience, both in the Pacific in and New Zealand.”

“Rather than just talking about the need for change, I want to be a part of that change,” said Ikimotu.

Tom also highlights the unclear way mainstream media reports on climate change.

Tom said: “Mainstream media gives a lot of statistics and details that people don’t understand. So bearing witness is a stage where we can tell stories in a really creative way, so people will be interested in climate change and then they can act against these things we do to nature.”

Ikimotu said: “Bearing Witness is a great opportunity for us as journalists to be at the forefront of climate change and to see first hand what these communities are going through, and hopefully spark a discussion around what needs to be done to tackle the issue.

“It also emphasises the need for journalists to be reporting on climate change.”

Partners praised
PMC director Professor David Robie, who initiated the project in 2015, praised the support from the partners, USP Journalism, PaCE-SD and AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective.

“They have helped make this experiential journalism and doco-making project possible and we hope it will grow in future years.

“Last year, our Bearing Witness team students won the Dart Journalism Award for trauma journalism, so it is a tremendous creative and learning opportunity facing one of the world’s most urgent challenges.”

• More Bearing Witness project stories
• Bearing Witness project up close

The French government is committed to the fight against climate change in the Pacific and hopes programmes such as the eParticipatory Observers Project (ePOP) will shed light on the impact of this global phenomenon in the region.

Ambassador of France to Fiji Sujiro Seam made the assurance during a visit to the journalism newsroom at the University of the South Pacific in Suva last week to observe the progress made at the conclusion of an ePOP workshop, which focused on producing short videos about the perceptions and impact of climate and environmental changes on Pacific Island populations.

Seam said ePOP targeted young people and gave them an opportunity to share stories on climate change and environmental issues taking place in their communities.

“I am very happy that we have this programme because it is not only beneficial for the youth but it also focuses on climate change,” he said.

“Since COP21 and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, France tries to stay at the forefront of this fight against climate change.

“With the ePOP training, there are some good tools for the participants’ personal development and their professional career.

“I think it is important today to master these techniques and knowhow to tell a story in different formats.”

French actors
Seam said it was also appropriate for him as Ambassador of France in Suva to support the initiative which was designed and led by French actors.

Ten students from USP, including a group of journalism students, were part of the four-day intensive training ePOP workshop which enabled them to maximise their reach through video storytelling and develop a brand narrative across multiple social media platforms.

One of the training facilitators was Julien Pain, former editor-in-chief of France24’s Observers, a citizen journalism project he set up in 2007. Prior to that, Pain was head of the new media desk at the Paris-based global media freedom agency Reporters Without Borders.

ePOP is a concept imagined by RFI Planète Radio (France Media Monde Group) and developed with the IRD (National French Research institute for Sustainable Development), in collaboration with many partners including the PIDF (Pacific Island Development Forum), L’Office des postes et télécommunications (OPT) in New Caledonia, the Fondation Expéditions Tara, la Fondation de France , la Fondation des Alliances françaises et l’Organisation internationale de la francophonie (OIF).

Two Auckland University of Technology students, Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, are travelling to Fiji later this month on the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate change project and will be working with USP students and staff.

Elizabeth Osifelo is a final year student journalist at the University of the South Pacific.

• Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Watch climate storytelling project
• USP students, France24 team up in smart-phone Fiji climate story

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

News media need to empower people over climate change and to encourage them to take action in their communities and press governments to do more, says a New Zealand environmental journalist and advocate.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, told researchers at a recent seminar at Indonesia’s Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta that journalists in the Asia-Pacific region needed to step up to the mark.

“We are rapidly running out of time,” he said in an interview with UGM’s Centre for Southeast Asia Social Studies (CESASS).

“The news media itself is not terribly good when it comes to long term planning, and long-term issues. It tends to respond to immediate issues and consequences. It lacks the attention span for longer term challenges.”

Climate change was not just a simple “news round” but an issue of planetary survival.

There were examples in some countries of where the media was working quite well to empower people.

“The micro states in the Pacific have taken a lead in this way.”

He spoke about the achievements in the Pacific – especially Fiji leading up to COP23 in Bonn – and also about the PMC’s award-winning Bearing Witness climate journalism project in partnership with the University of the South Pacific.

• Bearing Witness project wins DART award

Pacific Media Centre project students and interns announced for the year this week include two budding documentary makers and a seasoned journalist from Fiji with more than two decades of experience.

Jean Bell has been appointed the Pacific Media Watch contributing editor for 2018 and posted her first story this week about concerns over food safety and a politically “contained” debate seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan in March 2011.

She is a current student at Auckland University of Technology, studying towards a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies, majoring in journalism.

Bell also graduated from the University of Auckland in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts double major in politics and international relations.

In 2017, Bell worked as a legal secretary in a commercial law firm and spent her free time working on freelance journalism projects and writing news for Auckland radio station 95bFM.

She will also be hosting the Pacific Media Centre’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross.

Bell admits she is no expert in Pacific journalism or politics, “but that’s one reason why I wanted to apply.

“I see this as a chance to learn more and widen my skill base while also bringing the valuable skills I already have to help drive this project.”

Highly experienced
Sri Krishnamurthi brings more than 20 years of experience as the PMC’s 2018 NZ Institute for Pacific Research journalist.

Originally from Fiji, Krishnamurthi has always had a strong connection with – and a deep interest in – what is happening in the Pacific region.

He is currently a part-time student in the Postgraduate Diploma in Communications (Digital Media) course at AUT. He also has an MBA (Massey University).

Krishnamurthi worked for many years as a journalist with the now-defunct New Zealand Press Association newsagency and has held a variety of senior communications posts, including Northland Inc., an iwi (Ngatiwai) organisation, the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and as a minister’s press secretary.

“The media landscape has changed with the advent of the digital age, but the fundamentals of working as a journalist, a public relations practitioner, or in communications, require the same inherent skills they always have – albeit with some enhancements,” he says.

The two students going to Fiji this semester on the Bearing Witness climate change project are Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, both on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies degree and keen to develop their screen production and writing skills.

‘Pacific passion’
Of Niuean and Banaban descent, Hele Ikimotu completed his Bachelor of Communication Studies degree majoring in journalism last year and worked as an intern on the NZ Institute for Pacific Research project.

Ikimotu is currently employed by the Office of Pacific Advancement at AUT, working for the the Oceanian Leadership Network, a new initiative at the university.

“I have a passion for Pacific stories, issues and people,” he says. “ I believe there needs to be more coverage on the Pacific community and positive representation of Pacific people.”

Blessen Tom, originally from India, completed his Bachelor and Masters in Literature and is now pursuing his studies in digital media.

He is passionate about visual storytelling and documentaries.

Tom directed two short films and a drama, and is currently working on a mini documentary series for YouTube.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie described the project-winners as a “talented team” and looked forward to working with them this year.

He also praised project partners the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme, NZ Institute for Pacific Research (NZIPR), AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga and Evening Report.

The PMC recently engaged Dr Sylvia C. Frain, a Micronesian, Northern Marianas and peace studies specialist as a postdoctoral research fellow.

• More about PMC projects

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate change project has won the Dart Asia-Pacific Prize for Journalism and Trauma at the annual Ossie Awards in Student Journalism presented at the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) annual conference at Newcastle University last night.

PMC journalists Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt received the award for a multimedia feature on the Fijian village of Tukuraki, which was hit by a deadly landslide and two cyclones in the space of five years.

Cleaver and Hutt travelled to the village in the highlands of Ba, Viti Levu, in April to trace its journey of recovery as the first inland village to be relocated due to climate change.

Dart Centre Asia-Pacific director Cait McMahon praised the pair for their sensitivity in reporting the story of Vilimaina Botitu and her family.

“Cleaver and Hutt’s victim-focused story of climate change in Fiji through the eyes of one woman and her family’s tragedy was sensitive, well researched and of a high professional standard,” she said.

“The story was informative, and introduced a difficult-to-report climate change story in a very personal yet non-gratuitous way.

“The modality of hearing the survivor’s voice without interference from the journalist resulted in a well-produced and intelligently edited piece,” McMahon said.

Victim, survivor focus
The Dart Centre Asia-Pacific award is for reporting on the impact of violence, crime, disaster and other traumatic events on individuals, families and communities. Entries should focus on the experience of victims and survivors as well as contribute to public understanding of trauma-related issues.

Former Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Daniel Drageset won the award in 2013 for a story on the torture and abuse of escaped prisoners in Fiji.

Cleaver and Hutt were in Fiji on the Bearing Witness project, a collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga.

Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

A research paper by supervisors Dr David Robie and Sarika Chand about the first year of this Bearing Witness project was published by Pacific Journalism Review on the open access Tuwhera platform.

• Fiji’s devastated Tukuraki village moves to new site after landslide
• Destruction and construction – Tukuraki’s lonely story of survival
• Village relocation provides new hope for Fiji’s devastated Tukuraki
• More Bearing Witness stories

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

After more than five years of living in temporary housing, the community of Tukuraki in the highlands of Fiji are this weekend celebrating as they move into their newly built, disaster resilient village.

The Tukuraki community – featured by the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate project in May – was devastated in 2012 as a landslide buried 80 percent of their village and tragically took the lives of a young family including a toddler and young baby.

The community were forced to relocate to temporary homes as they were at risk of further landslides and in the midst of recovering from the landslide, the community was hit by Cyclone Evan only 10 months later.

In February last year, the community was again forced to flee to nearby caves as Tropical Cyclone Winston hit – the community’s third major disaster in four years.

As a result, the Fiji government deemed relocation for the inland community an urgent priority and approached the Pacific Community (SPC) to support in this work.

On Friday, 11 homes and a community hall built to category five cyclone standards were officially opened.

The F$756,000 relocation of the Tukuraki village to a safer and less disaster prone site was made possible through the European Union and the ACP Group of States-funded Building Safety and Resilience in the Pacific Project (BSRP) implemented by the Pacific Community.

Reducing vulnerability
The BSRP Project is committed to reducing the vulnerability for the Pacific to disaster and climate change.

Inia Seruiratu, High Level Climate Change Champion for COP23 and Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development, and National Disaster Management and Meteorology said:

“Today as we celebrate the critical milestone for Tukuraki, we also remember Anare Taliga (38 years), Mereoni Robe (23 years), Losena Nai (18 months) and Makelesi Matalau (6 months), who lost their lives to the devastating landslide that altered the lives of everyone in the Tukuraki community.

“The achievement of creating a disaster resilient community that has been led by the community itself is testament to the resilience of the Tukuraki community.”

In addition to the buildings, the project also provided the community with access to a reliable water sources. The Ba area is known for enduring long term droughts and to counter this issue, the project built a dam nearby and have strategically placed water tanks that connect to each household, ensuring the community will never run out of water.

Pacific Community Deputy Director-General Dr Audrey Aumua said: “This community knows and understands disaster but what makes this relocation remarkable is the partnership led by Fiji government with SPC and the European Union to achieve real, measureable disaster resilience at the community level.

“We know this new community will protect not only the lives but the livelihoods of the Tukuraki community and we are immensely proud to be a key partner in this work.”

Community assisted
Along with the 11 homes and the evacuation centre, the Tukuraki community has also been assisted with a retaining wall (to prevent soil erosion), road access, site levelling and a playground.

The new location is closer to Nalotawa District School which means the community will have easier access to schools as well as health services.

European Union head of cooperation Christoph Wagner said: “We are proud to partner up with the Fiji government and the Pacific Community on this project as it not only has helped the people of this community, it has also established for the nation what a resilient rural community looks like.

“With the effects of climate change and rising tides threatening coastal communities all over the Pacific, Tukuraki stands as a great example of how effective partnerships can sustain development.”

Tukuraki is the first inland community to be relocated, a unique feature as the other 46 key priority communities for relocation are all coastal.

• Destruction and construction – Tukuraki’s lonely story of survival
• Other Bearing Witness project stories

Climate change research ranging from Australia and Indonesia to Fiji and Vietnam feature in the latest Pacific Journalism Review in the first publication to focus on media and global warming in the region.

The edition, published next week, is timely as Fiji prepares to co-host the COP23 global climate change summit in Bonn, Germany, in November.

Canadian media academic professor Robert A Hackett argues for an overhaul of the approach by journalists and media groups to “address the need for public engagement and a sense of urgency in the context of global climate crisis”.

He advocates peace journalism as a component of a strategy for “both journalists and the public to recover a sense of political agency”.

New Zealand investigative journalist Phil Vine, now attached to Greenpeace as a journalist, writes about the dilemmas facing seasoned journalists when joining non-government organisations in an independent media role.

“In order to stem plunging levels of credibility and adapt to the fast changing digital environment while recognising existing biases within traditional reporting, it may be that mainstream media needs to embrace a more inclusive attitude towards so-called ‘NGO journalism’,” he writes.

Documentary maker Ulrich Weissbach offers a case study on his film The Solar Nation of Tokelau while David Robie and Sarika Chand also file a case study on the “Bearing Witness” climate change collaboration between the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific and AUT’s Pacific Media Centre by postgraduate student journalists.

Staff and researchers at USP’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development and School of Government, Development and International Affairs have contributed several papers in the peer-reviewed edition.

Introducing this edition, Wendy Bacon and Chris Nash write in the editorial about the contribution and demise of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), which has been a trailblazer for university based investigative journalism for a quarter century.

Paying tribute to the many journalists who have contributed over the years and the collaboration between ACIJ and PJR, they write: “It is important that the sense of crisis in the journalism profession and the threat of increasing concentration of mainstream media ownership does not overwhelm the many worthwhile initiatives and projects that continue to be undertaken.”

In the journal’s unthemed section, research papers include defamation and the “hazards of relying on the ‘ordinary, reasonable person’ fiction”, news media representations of the “brown” community in New Zealand, and citizen news podcasts and the counter-public sphere in South Korea.

This edition has been co-edited by professors David Robie (AUT) and Chris Nash Monash), Dr Shailendra Singh (USP) and Wendy Bacon (PMC) with associate editor Dr Philip Cass (Unitec).

Full papers from the edition are already available online at the INFORMIT database.

• Pacific Journalism Review
• PJR submissions

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Broadcast student journalists from the University of the South Pacific have contributed on France 24 as part of the ePOP multinational network of broadcasters, NGOs and researchers who are telling frontline stories of climate change.

“France 24 is essentially the French BBC and Koroi Tadulala and Telstar Edrie Jimmy participated in their programme The Observers,” says USP broadcast lecturer Dr Olivier Jutel.

He thanked Mina Vilayleck from the Noumea-based Institute for Research in Development (IRD) for “bringing this ambitious project to Suva” and giving the journalism students this opportunity.

“And of course Max Bale and Matthias Balagny from Radio France-International who have shared their internationalist vision with our students. I hope we can continue to strengthen institutional and media relationships in this incredibly important work.”

The ePOP (eParticipatory Observers Project) concept was conceived by RFI Planète Radio (France Medias Monde) and developed with the IRD in partnership with the Tara Expéditions Foundation, Pacific Islands Development Forum, Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and the University of the South Pacific with the support of Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) Professor Elisabeth Holland, co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore.

ePOP says on its Facebook page:

“This innovative project is built around an international network of young volunteers from the Pacific region.

“With a cooperative and participatory approach, the ePOPers shoot and edit video clips that capture the feelings of local populations facing the direct consequences of worldwide changes and global warming.

“The initiative aims to collect the findings, doubts and questions of the older generations, often relatives or members of their families, in order to question the scientific world and to obtain understandable answers for the communities, especially the elderly, who endure and suffer these daily disturbances.

“In line with the declared will of the international organisations, this human and inter-generational approach aspires to nourish the archives of the intangible human heritage of this region, which is the most impacted by climate change.”

• France 24 Observers
• PMC’s Bearing Witness climate project

Climate change is at the heart of a unique regional study into journalism culture in the Pacific.

The study, focusing on journalism’s role in democracy amid cultural, economic, environmental, political and technological changes throughout the University of the South Pacific’s 12 member states, aims to assess journalists’ understanding and reportage of climate change.

“The goal is to assess journalists’ capacity for reporting climate change to help formulate approaches to training programmes in this area,” says USP’s senior journalism lecturer and programme leader Dr Shailendra Singh, the study’s project manager and one of its lead authors.

Climate change journalism
Researchers hope to learn how prepared journalists are in reporting climate change, which is one of the most imminent threats facing the Pacific.

Dr Singh says the media’s role in accurately conveying this threat will also be considered by the study.

“Journalists play a very important role in educating the population about the science of climate change, and how it may affect them in their daily lives.”

More importantly, the study is one of only a few to address the issue of climate change in the context of Pacific journalism, Dr Singh adds.

“This study will therefore contribute valuable knowledge about journalists’ understanding of climate change, allowing us to identify potential training requirements.”

The study, a partnership between the University of the South Pacific (USP), Pacific Islands’ News Association (PINA), Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), also aims to involve young researchers.

“Besides the lead researchers, we have a team of young USP tutors who are doing the field work and gathering data. This is part of their development. It’s part of capacity building for our upcoming academics and researchers.”

‘At our doorstep’
Eliki Drugunalevu, a teaching assistant in journalism at USP, is one of the researchers. He says having the opportunity to be involved in a project which focuses on climate change means a lot.

“Climate change is at our doorstep. And reporting, highlighting it is critical in telling the stories of people who are affected by climate change.

“Not only in that, but helping people, particularly people in influential places, such as policy makers, fully understand that every decision that they make has consequences to those that are on the ground.”

Drugunalevu, who works as both a research assistant and research coordinator for the study, says the regional project is unique in its focus on climate change because it focuses on the issue from a media, rather than scientific, perspective.

“People have this perception that doing research on climate has to do with the sciences – measuring the rise of the sea level, rainfalls and so on – but this project is quite different by looking at it from the media’s perspective and how much attention the media gives to climate change in a vulnerable region like ours.”

Drugunalevu explains he and his fellow researchers are attempting to grasp journalists’ levels of understanding in what he says is “actually dissecting a story that deals with climate change rather than just looking at it as another climate change story”.

He says the current trend on climate change is reporting it “as it is and then moving onto the next story”, which is alarming.

Greater recognition needed
“Climate change means loss of land. It means loss of livelihood. It means potential loss of identity. We’ve heard of stories of people being relocated from a place where they have been settled for generations.

“While it may not mean much to the outside world, to us and to those who experience this, it means the world to them having to move from a place they have called home for generations to a new place. It can quite be an overwhelmingly emotional experience having to witness it and read it as well.”

Drugunalevu and his colleagues would like to see an understanding of how journalists’ report climate change come out of the project, but also hope their findings encourage greater recognition of climate change on the political scale.

“Getting policy makers and people in influential places to recognise the role of the media and see the bigger picture and the impact of the decisions they make on the people on the ground and with regards to climate change is important.”

The study is expected to be completed within the next two years, with research on Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu carried out by the end of this year.

Research on Samoa and Tonga has already been completed.

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt have been in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

In January 2012, a small Fijian village on Viti Levu was almost wiped off the map by a deadly landslide. In the same year, the barely recovered village of Tukuraki was hit by Cyclone Evan. Four years later, Tukuraki was devastated once again by the wrath of Tropical Cyclone Winston, scattering the community far and wide across the northwest of the island. The inland village near Ba is now in the process of relocating to a new site. The Pacific Media Centre’s Kendall Hutt and Julie Cleaver travelled to the remote village to find out how the people are adapting.

By Kendall Hutt and Julie Cleaver

Vilimaina Botitu was fast asleep when the earth from a nearby hill tumbled down, burying her uncle’s house in mud, trees, and rock.

Her small Fijian village of just 10 houses, located in the mountainous highlands of Ba, Viti Levu, had been pummelled by rain for a week prior to the landslide in January 2012.

The people of Tukuraki are no strangers to heavy downpours — even as we sit cross-legged on a flax-weaved mat in Botitu’s new temporary home, located just 10km away from the old village, the rain moves in quickly and heavily, seemingly out of nowhere.

But on the day of the landslide, Botitu knew something was wrong.

“I begged Uncle Anare to bring his family to stay with me, because where I live it is safe,” she tells us through tears. “But he didn’t listen. He just said, ‘If God thinks it is my time to go, then I am okay with that.’”

Botitu tells us the ridge behind her uncle’s house was unstable, as it had unknowingly been destabilised by the removal of pine trees from a nearby timber farm above. She says the hill near her place was made of rock and therefore less likely to slip.

Despite this, Uncle Anare was reluctant to move his family to sleep at her house, and that night he, his wife, and two daughters, aged just only six months old and a year-and-a-half, were buried alive in their sleep.

Access to the village via the road was wiped out in the fatal landslide, as was the community’s path to fresh water. The villagers of Tukuraki were subsequently cut-off from the outside world for three days and left to recover the bodies of Anare Taligo and his family themselves.

“It was very hard because there was no machine to help us … so they were struggling to take out the bodies.”

Botitu was in shock. It was hard to imagine that just a few hours ago, she was drinking grog with her uncle, having a good time.

“You know, it was family time, teasing each other, laughing at each other, having fun.”

Now, she was staring at the Taligo’s home, completely covered by mud and rock.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she tells us through tears.

Girls walked to safety
In a grief-filled daze and to keep her two daughters safe, Botitu walked her girls to a nearby cave to take shelter, half-an-hour away from the village. She then rushed back to the village to help the elders who were left behind. Once the bodies of the Taligo family had been recovered, it was Botitu who volunteered to wash them and prepare them for burial.

“The first body out of the mud was their mother. I washed the mother, but we couldn’t see her face. It was black and the tongue was popping out. The two daughters – the eldest one, she was smashed on the head, and the small one, it’s just like she’s sleeping.

“Then at 1.30pm, they took out the father’s body. The father — there were not even any clothes on the body. His hands were covering his ears, I thought maybe for the thunder storm, but his body was good. So I washed them properly, then lay them down in the hall.”

The landslide not only destroyed 50 percent of the village, but also left the community traumatised. Botitu tells us, as we struggle to hold in our own tears, that after the burial ceremony the small village of 10 houses was in shock. It was a sleepless and fearful night for the people of Tukuraki.

“It took me three months for the smell of their bodies to go away, because during the time I bathed them, I didn’t have any gloves. I didn’t use any protection.”

Today, the pain of losing her Uncle, Aunty-in-law and nieces is still fresh.

“When I go to Tukuraki [the old village] I can’t stay there for very long. Every time I go there, as soon as I reach the village, it’s too hard. It brings back too many memories.”

Relocation decision
Due to such damage and loss, the Fijian government made the decision to relocate the Tukuraki community soon after the landslide. This was a unique move, as the past three relocations to take place in Fiji — Vunidogoloa village in the province of Cakaudrove, Yadua in Bua province, and the partial relocation of Vunisavisavi village, also in Cakaudrove — have all taken place due to rising sea levels caused by climate change.

Tukuraki is therefore the first relocation to take place inland.

In early 2014, the site for the new Tukuraki village was gifted to the community by a neighbouring clan. But for the villagers, who were living in makeshift shelters made out of what the landslide left behind, tragedy would strike again only 11 months later, when Cyclone Evan, a category four tropical cyclone, struck them.

Cyclone Evan wiped out what homes and belongings had been salvaged from the landslide at their temporary site, a few kilometres down the road, and also destroyed more of Tukuraki’s livelihood — its crops.

“This place, there’s no working, we just do the farming and sell in the market,” Botitu says.

But despite being in the midst of relocating to a new site, climate change was not quite done with Tukuraki just yet. In 2016 severe Tropical Cyclone Winston destroyed what remained of the small mountainous village. The caves, which had kept Botitu’s daughters safe following the landslide, were the residents of Tukuraki’s only shelter from the wrath of Winston.

“We had a very hard time after the cyclone because everything we owned was lost,” Botitu explains.

Salvaged belongings
What belongings she managed to salvage now sit in boxes in her temporary home. The villagers crops, consisting of vegetables and fruit trees, were once again ruined.

“We used to sit under the mango trees and drink grog,” Botitu reflects, “we led a simple life, but we were rich.”

Six years on from the fatal landslide, the forest and a broken church are all that remain of Tukuraki. But as the buildings of the relocated village near completion, there is hope: the displaced community will have the chance to come together again, something Botitu is looking forward to.

“It gets very lonely up here, with just your family and construction workers around.”

For George Dregaso, project manager of the relocation, seeing the villagers return to a normal way of life is what motivates him.

“I just want to see them become a community again. That’s what really drives me.”

However, the relocation and adapting to climate change has not been an easy journey. Although the people of Tukuraki are grateful for the relocation, the process has been long and gruelling.

“It happened in 2012 and now it’s 2017. For that long period of time we have had to struggle.

“It’s been very challenging for us. It’s taken a very long time.”

Significant setbacks
The relocation project was meant to be completed in November 2016, but has faced significant setbacks due to a shortage of building supplies following Cyclone Winston. Dregaso says the lack of materials is not unique to the project, but “endemic to Fiji as a whole”.

“But we’ve researched and found more building materials.”

The project is now due to be completed in July this year, ending six years of limbo for the Tukuraki community. Sadly, the new village is not without its drawbacks. The relocated village site is mostly bare and Botitu says this is the hardest part about leaving Tukuraki behind.

“The old Tukuraki, it was a nice village. The relocated site just gives us a place to sleep. There is no place to do the farming.”

This means the villagers have to walk approximately 10km across hilly ground to get to their old crops. As we stand on a hill overlooking the site with Dregaso, it is easy to understand Botitu’s disappointment. All of the houses bar one have been completed and the Methodist church is yet to be built, and there are no trees in sight.

Strands of grass are barely visible against the red-brown clay, and the only way to traverse the village easily is in gumboots, which were kindly donated to us by a couple of the contractors.

The only consolation seems to be that the villagers now have access to clean, running water, flushable toilets, showers, and shelter from future storms. The community hall, which doubles as an evacuation centre, can withstand a category five cyclone, meaning the villagers will no longer be forced to take shelter in the caves.

If the reinforcement of the evacuation centre is anything to go by, it is certain the people of Tukuraki, and indeed people across the Pacific, will continue to face head-on the effects of a warming planet.

800 communities hit by climate change
Fiji’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that approximately 800 communities within the country have been affected by climate change. In the Pacific alone, the London School of Economics estimates 1.7 million people could be displaced by 2050.

For Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, home to the village of Tukuraki, the impacts of climate change are expected to cause economic damages of up to F$52 million (NZ$35.7 million) a year. That is four percent of the country’s total gross domestic product.

For Tukuraki, the everyday, ongoing effects of climate change are visible. “It shouldn’t be raining now,” Botitu comments.

She highlights that evenings are hotter than they used to be, meaning her family eats and sleeps later: their lifestyle is changing. Also, every time it rains, the roads are washed out and unusable: if the villagers are not busy in the fields, they are working on the road. As we drove in we passed Botitu’s husband and several other men busy at work on the road, and as the truck’s tires continued to spin uselessly in the loose gravel, it is easy to see why.

Even at lunch, as we sit eating soup filled with noodles, pumpkin, potato, bacon and spinach, surrounded by the contractors, we were warned by Dregaso: “If we don’t leave now, we’ll have to stay the night, maybe for a couple of nights, would you girls be happy with that?”

We left promptly after that and were confronted by a grader and steam roller on the way out. For two city girls from New Zealand, this was a shock, but for the people of Tukuraki, it’s a normal, daily occurrence. It makes the difficulty of accessing the village all the more challenging.

Dregaso tells us that only a month ago Tukuraki was inaccessible for almost three weeks.

Because of this all, the contractors are forced to live on-site, and if it was not for Dregaso bringing up much-needed supplies, such as bags brimming with food and large fuel cans, both the villagers and contractors would be forced to live off what little crops remain.

For Fiji, a giant question mark looms over the future of climate change relocations. Potentially 45 villages have been earmarked for relocation, although Fiji’s Climate Change Unit says this number is not final. These relocations are also not expected to occur within the next five to 10 years.

A source from the Ministry of Economy’s Climate Change Unit says: “I doubt it. Relocation is a long process and quite expensive.”

The source says the Fijian government therefore cannot realistically afford to complete all of these relocations. “It can only be possible with the help of donor funds, financial institutions, and co-finance with the community itself.”

In Fiji, climate change is not coming, it is already there. For Vilimaina Botitu and the community of Tukuraki, global warming is not an idea: it is a lived and daily experience. When asked if she was mad at industrialised countries for changing her way of life, Botitu had no anger, only sadness: “I pray to God that climate change will stop.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

• Village relocation provides new hope for Fiji’s devastated Tukuraki

After six years in limbo, the villagers of Tukuraki in the Fiji highlands of Ba on Viti Levu are three months shy of moving into their new village in July.

Located 10km from their former village, which was hard-hit by a landslide in early 2012, Cyclone Evan in the same year and Cyclone Winston in 2016, the villagers can now look forward to 10 new homes, a community hall which doubles as an evacuation centre, and a Methodist church.

The new village is located around 60km north of the self-proclaimed “sugarcane capital of the world” Lautoka, and allows the villagers to have access to clean, running water, flush toilets, and showers.

The project is funded by the European Union and costs F$600,000 (NZ$415,000). An additional F$200,000 (NZ$138,000) is needed for the village to gain access to power.

When complete, the relocation will see the villagers of Tukuraki, who have been scattered far and wide across the Fijian province of Ba, come together as a community again.

For Vilimaina Botitu, the mother of one of three families currently living in the relocated village, she is looking forward to being around her neighbours again.

‘Lonely up here’
“It gets very lonely up here, with just your family and construction workers around.”

George Dregaso, the project manager for the relocation, said he was motivated to see the villagers return to their normal way of life.

“I just want to see them become a community again. That’s what really drives me.”

The relocation also includes retaining walls that surround the village. Dregaso said this was to avoid another catastrophic landslide like one in 2012, which killed Botitu’s uncle, Anare Taligo and his family while they slept.

The new village also features a fish pond with 2500 fish, beehives and a poultry farm, intended to ensure the villagers future and survival.

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

By Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt in Suva

Pacific journalism students in Fiji say reporting climate change is crucial for the survival of the region.

The University of the South Pacific students say educating people about the issue throughout the region and the world is a key factor when it comes to “saving” the Pacific.

“Covering climate change is important for me because my country’s life and my country’s peoples’ lives are at stake, so I need to let institutions outside my country know that we are facing the effects of climate change, and its severe effects that we’re facing,” says Shivika Mala, a third-year Fiji journalism student who is also majoring in politics.

Mala also says it is time for the global media to pay more attention to the Pacific’s current situation and not just focus on natural disasters.

“Climate change is happening. This is the reality and it’s about time journalists and other people who don’t necessarily believe in climate change to start doing their research and start understanding the challenges, the implications, and the impact it has on not only the Pacific countries, but other countries as well,” says Mala.

She says this is because the homes and lives of herself and her peers have already been affected.

Climate change ‘something personal’
“Climate change for me is something personal. It’s something that effects my country and the Pacific and the world as well. Climate change for me means loss of life, and loss of loved ones.”

For Vilimaina Naqelevuki, a 20-year-old journalism and politics student, her village, Narikoso, on Ono Island in the Kadavu group, has already suffered great loss.

Nariko has been suffering from the impacts of climate change and therefore believes the island’s younger generation will lose their sense of culture, Naqelevuki says.

“I was fortunate enough to have met my great-grandmother, she passed away six years ago. She tried to talk and teach us as much as she possibly could about what was left of the island.

“It’s a little bit emotional and every time I talk about it I get really sad, because I know for a fact that within the years to come I won’t have an island left to go back to, and that just saddens me a lot.”

For Semi Malaki, who is studying a double-major in journalism and politics, climate change has also already become a reality in his home country, Tuvalu.

“For us in Tuvalu it’s more to do with the security and survival of our people, because we all know climate change causes the sea level to rise.”

Changed food lifestyle
He also says climate change has changed the lifestyle of people in Tuvalu, particularly regarding food. This is because the rising sea level makes it difficult to grow food as salt water contaminates crops.

“People now are now less dependent on root crops and more dependent on imported foods from overseas, and that’s had a lot of impact on our diets.

“This has health impacts on non-communicable diseases, like lots of Tuvaluans have suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure due to the change in their diets.”

He also says people are migrating away from Tuvalu because of the fear that the country might sink one day.

Due to forced migration, culture and traditional ways of life is also at stake for Pacific people.

Loss of culture
“What climate change does is remove these people from their traditional and everyday lives and completely sends them somewhere else. They have to restart their lives again,” says Mala.

For Vanuatu, where the population largely relies on subsistence farming, losing culture is already a fact of life, says Telstar Jimmy, a mother of three who is completing a double major in journalism and language and literature.

“Sixty-five percent of our population relies on subsistence farming. That’s naturally their way of life. All they know is how to grow crops and also how to fish.

“That’s been a major part of their lives and changing weather patterns is affecting that because our ancestors used to know when to go fishing or which places to do their fishing. But now, because of changing weather patterns it affects that cultural knowledge we used to have.”

Additionally, Jimmy says one of Vanuatu’s 100 plus languages has already been lost as a result of climate change migration.

“In some places where we had different dialects, when we had to relocate them to another place and in order to adapt to the particular environment, they have to use the bigger languages to communicate with the people there.

“As they use more of the bigger languages, they lose the smaller languages that were originally there and that is why some of our languages have already begun to be lost.”

For Jimmy, Mala, Malaki, and Naqelevuki, their message for the world is clear: climate change is real.

“Climate change is happening to us. We’re going to lose our land, we’re going to lose our culture and our identity if we don’t do anything about it.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

Report by Kendall Hutt and video by Julie Cleaver in Suva

The commitment of more than 190 nations to reducing global emissions will continue to be addressed following a special climate change report which seeks to advise how countries can further cut emissions.

Dr Morgan Wairiu, an expert in food security and climate change with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), says the report will enable countries to further their efforts in keeping the global average temperature below 1.5°C.

“This is an assessment report, looking at all the work that has been done, research into the global average temperature 1.5°C, and see whether this is feasible, whether we can achieve that as agreed under the Paris Agreement.”

Dr Wairiu, a Solomon Islander who is one of only two Pacific Islanders working on the report, said that if current aggregate emissions reductions by countries under their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) would see the global average temperature on track for 2.7°C, which would have real-world effects on Pacific Island countries that were on the frontline of climate change.

“For Pacific Island countries, because of our vulnerable ecosystems, we can manage up to 1.5°C, but beyond that we’re going to start losing our ecosystems and livelihood, our resources, and then the survival of our people.”

Commissioned by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) following the Paris Agreement in late December 2015, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 1.5°C report seeks to avoid such negative outcomes.

Dr Wairiu said this was because data collected by the 86 authors of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C would allow countries to “take stock” of their current emissions targets.

When this report is released in 2018, it will help countries decide on how to cut back emissions.

Reduction pledges
By 2025, the US has pledged to reduce emissions from 26 percent to 28 percent relative to 2005 levels.

China, on the other hand, says it will lower its emissions by 60 to 65 percent, but only after reaching maximum carbon emissions by 2030.

The European Union, meanwhile, aims to cut back emissions by at least 40 percent relative to 1990 levels.

The issue noted by many observers is that these intended targets put forward by nations prior to the Paris Agreement are up to each individual country to implement and force.

If these are not honoured or increased, scientists have warned the world will surpass the threshold in which global warming is reversible. The results of which will be catastrophic, observers believe.

Heat waves are predicted to last a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, sea level will continue to rise, and tropical reefs would continue to degrade, a study by the European Geosciences Union revealed in 2016.

Loss of more atolls
The implications for human life of a warmer planet mean already vulnerable communities who live close to sources of water will face more flooding and drought.

For the Pacific, this means the loss of more atolls to sea level rise, salt water intrusion to fresh water supplies and staple crops, and the forced migration of Pacific Islanders.

“Some countries will disappear from the face of the world,” Dr Wairiu said.

He said a 1.5°C global average temperature was the threshold in which Pacific Islands would be able to survive, therefore. Beyond that, the future was relatively unknown.

The report is important for the Pacific, Dr Wairiu acknowledges.

“It’s very important because this is a call from Pacific Island countries. You know, they formed this coalition around the legal setting of 1.5°C during the Paris COP meeting, which is part of the Paris Agreement.

“This particular report will inform Pacific Island countries whether achieving 1.5°C is feasible or not. We’ll still be making very important decisions based on this report.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

• UNFCCC climate newsroom

A group of Marshall Islanders is calling on the Pacific to stand with them in solidarity as they urge leaders to prioritise healthy oceans.

The Marshall Islands Student Association (MISA) delivered a talk at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji expressing concern about current political inaction towards addressing land-based contaminants in the ocean.

“The time to act is now. We have to act now,” said Brooke Takala, a MISA member and doctoral candidate who specialises in education for sustainability.

With the United Nations Oceans Conference set to take place in New York in June, MISA has launched a campaign called MISA4thePacific, where Pacific Islanders can submit poetry, dance, art and photos urging for action regarding Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.1.

SDG 14.1 seeks to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds by 2025, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, the implementation of which is to be discussed at the conference co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden.

“If we don’t prioritise SDG 14.1, all of our other sustainable development goals are moot. There’s no point,” Takala said.

“If we have radiation leaking into our ocean and poisoning our food systems there’s no food security, there’s no water security, there’s no maternal health, there are no opportunities. This has to be prioritised.”

Widespread suffering
This call to action comes in light of widespread suffering still endured by the Marshallese following nuclear testing on Enewatak and Bikini atolls by the US during the 1940s and 1950s.

Nuclear testing in the Pacific has caused countless people in the region to suffer from the effects of radioactive fallout.

These include widespread displacement, loss of culture, and serious health issues including high rates of cancer and deformity.

More than 70 years on from the first nuclear tests, many islands and atolls remain uninhabitable.

Plutonium leakage
The members of MISA highlighted that there is an inability to address large quantities of plutonium leakage from the dome on Runit Island on Enewatak Atoll, which contains toxic waste left over from the 67 nuclear and thermonuclear bombs tested by the US.

Takala said she wanted the US to finally take stock of its “unfinished business” in the Marshall Islands and recognise that Castle Bravo, the 15-megatonne hydrogen bomb tested on Bikini Atoll in 1954, which had a blast one thousand times bigger than Hiroshima, was not simply an “accident”.

“For me personally as a mother of a young Enewatak boy whose land rights are on that island with a nuclear waste storage site, I want the world to know that the US has stolen my child’s future and that they need to be held accountable. And I think when we share that message that it is this child’s future, all of our children’s’ futures at stake, and that we cannot let this go.”

Data collected by the US which would fully determine whether the water surrounding Runit Island is contaminated is either still classified or redacted, she added.

This means the ocean surrounding Runit Island could be polluted, but no one knows for certain as radiation is difficult to detect without access to scientific equipment.

The atoll’s fresh water lens, which is present under the island and sits on the salt water, enters the dome from below every high tide as it is elevated, meaning as the tide rolls out radioactive isotopes are dispersed into the ocean, MISA says.

‘Radiation knows no boundaries’
“Radiation knows no boundaries. You cannot taste it, you cannot smell it, you cannot see it and it does not stop at our colonial boundaries, our country boundaries,” said Takala.

Danity Laukon, a member of MISA, said before radioactive nuclear waste was stored on Runit Island it was a beautiful place with prime fishing ground.

“It’s not the same anymore. On top of this climate change is happening.”

Takala said the Marshall Islands was at the forefront of climate change, so addressing the leakage of Runit’s dome was urgent.

This is because climate change for the Runit Islands is not a question of if, but when.

Climate change implications
“When those inundations come, and when sea level rises happening, and Runit Dome becomes underwater, it won’t just be a matter of it leaking into the ocean from the bottom, but the whole thing.

“So for those of us who live on Enewatak, whose families are from Enewatak, this is the most pressing matter for us. For the rest of us in the Marshall Islands, it affects all of us. But even on a larger scale for all of us in the Pacific.”

Maureen Penjueli, a supporter of MISA, reflected that it was now time for the remainder of the Pacific and the next generation to take up the baton in the fight for nuclear-free oceans.

She said the Marshall Islands had been fighting and endured enough.

“It’s a burden for the rest of us to bear.”

MISA said despite calls for Pacific solidarity, they remained determined to make leaders recognise the need to address the lingering effects of radiation in the ocean.

“Going to New York is the plan.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

• John Pilger’s documentary on US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

By Repeka Nasiko in Lautoka

Fiji’s youth should become active ambassadors in the fight against climate change, says a leader of a rural non-government organisation.

Addressing University of Fiji students during the institute’s climate change awareness programme this week, Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprise and Development (FRIEND) local associate director Dr Jone Hawea backed Fiji’s COP23 co-host role.

“If our youths unite and be active ambassadors in the fight against climate, we can ensure that our prime minister is speaking on behalf of say 90 percent of the population,” he said.

“The population of the country does not matter, the proportion of the population standing behind our prime minister and raising their voices on climate change, is what matters.”

Dr Hawea said Fiji’s COP 23 role offered a unique opportunity for all Fijians to influence international policies on climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“And we should take full advantage of it as it would have significant impacts on grassroots levels.

“Now that the Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, has taken the bold step, it means that we now have an opportunity which may not come again, to influence international policies which we know for a fact eventually filters down to our communities.”

Dr Hawea added that work at the grassroots level would not make as much impact if policies did not change.

“If we are going to concentrate a lot on doing things at the ground level and the policies do not evolve, the work would not be so significant.

“At the international arena, we could tell them to change policies that may be affecting us, amend policies to benefit the countries in climate change adaptation and mitigation.”

The student interactive seminar session was the first awareness session hosted by Fiji University’s School of Science and Technology at the Saweni campus in Lautoka, western Fiji.

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter.

• Other Bearing Witness reports
  

The University of the South Pacific in Fiji has a colourful market which happens in the third week of every month for four days. Locals and students are both welcome.

There is music, food and clothes stalls, and also books and accessories at Suva’s Laucala Campus.

I snapped some photos while Julie Cleaver got b-roll for the climate change mini documentary we’re making.

We have several interviews lined up today, so watch for our stories over the next couple of days.

• Other Bearing Witness project stories

Market day at USP

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The effects of climate change on vulnerable areas throughout Fiji could be reduced if the island nation adopts several more land planning measures, says a local researcher.

Speaking at a Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) seminar today about “Disaster Risk Reduction from a Physical Planning Perspective: Fiji”, Joeli Varo, a Lands Officer for the government’s Sustainable Land Use Planning and Development Unit, says there are two ways in which Fiji can both mitigate and adapt to flooding.

These involve “hard measures” such as sea walls and “soft measures” such as ensuring compliance with building regulations.

“I would say we need a combination of both, because in our urban areas they need hard structures — they need sea walls because we cannot do soft measures in those areas. We cannot plant trees, we cannot retreat, we cannot relocate, and we just have to implement hard measures,” he said.

“For rural area settings, there is still room for relocation and retreat. We can apply soft measures there.”

Varo, who completed a Master of Science degree in urban and regional planning, said moving inland was one of the most viable options for alleviating the effects of climate change in Fiji.

Communities at risk
Varo said this was because coastal areas were more vulnerable to being hit by tropical cyclones, compared to inland areas due to infrastructure not complying with building regulations.

This was because houses on the foreshore were required to be a certain distance from sources of water, such as the ocean and rivers. Houses also required a certain size area of grass in order to absorb excess water.

Rural communities and coastal areas were therefore the most severely affected by floodwaters.

“As the result of flooding, stagnant water causes unpleasant smells to linger, pollution in streams and creeks, and a decline in the subsequent quality of drinking water.”

Varo highlighted the impacts of Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, which devastated Fiji early last year, leaving 44 people dead and 45,000 displaced.

He also said Cyclone Winston represented a growing trend in the Pacific where small island nations were facing extreme weather with greater frequency, intensity and magnitude.

“It’s intensifying and it’s getting bigger in magnitude. We’ve seen an increase from category one to category three, and just recently in 2016 it was category five — imagine that? That is the worst in the South Pacific.”

Higher damage costs
The cost of damage caused by such weather was something that needed to be considered, Varo added.

Data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) quoted by Varo revealed damage caused by Severe Tropical Cyclone Evan in late 2012 paled in comparison with those of Winston.

Cyclone Evan cost the Fijian government F$75.29 million (NZ$49.68 million), whereas Winston cost a staggering F$1.99 billion (NZ$1.37 billion).

“They’re getting intensified and the magnitude and cost in US dollars is tremendous, from millions to billions. So for small island states such as Fiji, we cannot control this, it’s coming. We just have to mitigate and adapt to these changes and natural phenomena.”

Varo said tackling such “natural phenomena” at the urban planning level had a flow-on effect which reduced the impact of extreme weather events on communities in the Pacific.

He said the responsibility of tackling climate change effects lay with both the community and the government.

“We need to work together in this digital era. We need people, because people define policy. Without the people there is no use for policy. So public participation is much more needed for collaboration with civil society and private stakeholders.”

However, he says this will not change the inevitable.

‘We just have to adapt’
“We cannot stop climate change – bear that in mind. Climate change is coming and no one can stop it. We just have to adapt and mitigate so that our urban areas are resilient to these undesirable forces, like increasing sea levels. We just have to adapt, instead of retreat.”

Varo planned to head to the Caribbean to continue his research into climate change and begin his doctorate.

He said the Caribbean was feeling the effects of climate change in a similar way to the Pacific.

“Unlike New Zealand and Australia that are continental islands, for us Small Island Developing States we need to collaborate among ourselves to save us in the future.

“We are looking up to Australia and New Zealand as our older brothers, to help us small islands collaboratively come together and plan for the next 10 to 15 years.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

The University of Auckland, Unitec and Auckland University of Technology were closed by late morning because of the predicted extreme weather.

Media said the University of Auckland had made the decision “to ensure the safety of our staff and students in light of current information”.

But the worst of the storm is expected to be over by Good Friday morning tomorrow.

Two of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre students, Pacific Media Watch editor Kendall Hutt and Debate acting editor Julie Cleaver, will leave on Easter Sunday for the second year of the Bearing Witness project.

The graduate student journalists will be based at the University of the South Pacific.

“This is a tremendous experiential opportunity for our students to explore stories related to climate change and Pacific islands resilience,” said centre director Professor David Robie.

“It is a critically important year too for the Pacific with Fiji and Germany co-hosting COP23 talks on climate change in November.”

Partners on the project include Te Ara Motuhenga (documentary collective at AUT), the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Pacific Journalism Programme – both at the University of the South Pacific.

• Bearing Witness stories
• Bearing Witness project profile
• ‘Bula Spirit’ for COP23

Two Auckland University of Technology students who took top communication studies prizes at an awards ceremony last night are off to Fiji next month on a climate change “Bearing Witness” project.

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt were rewarded for their journalism at the School of Communication Studies annual awards event.

Cleaver, editor of AUT’s magazine Debate and a freelance writer for The New Zealand Herald, won the school award for final year Bachelor of Communication Studies excellence in communication theory.

Hutt, who works for AUT’s Pacific Media Centre as contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch, won the Radio NZ International Prize for top student in Asia-Pacific journalism.

They will fly to Fiji in the mid-semester break for a two-week assignment for the PMC in partnership with the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Pacific Journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific, and AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective.

“This is the second year running that we have done this mission and we would like to build it up to cover several Pacific countries, especially the ‘frontline’ climate change nations,” said Professor David Robie, who initiated the project.

Cleaver, who is of Canadian and Māori descent, said her passion and interest for media topics were more rewarding than getting a good grade.

Raising awareness
The award would encourage her to raise awareness of other cultures in New Zealand.

Hutt, who travelled to Finland last year, said the journey had broadened her journalism horizons.

Hundreds of people packed AUT’s function hall for the ceremony, hosted by advertising supremo Mike Hutcheson, who told guests he welcomed the recognition of creativity and diversity.

Hutcheson’s comic anecdotes left guests amused and inspired — “be the voice of creativity”, he said.

Her trip to Fiji last year during the first Bearing Witness mission and a passion for global journalism had won her this award, she said.

“If we want a diverse culture in New Zealand we should have more international students address or share knowledge in other cultures.”

Scholarships awarded
Communication Studies postgraduate scholarships were awarded to Shirin Brown, Jayakrishnan Sreekumar, Rebecca Trelease and Chao Zhang.

Another AUT journalism graduate, Janie Cameron, was named top postgraduate student in creative practice and won The New Zealand Herald prize. She shared her insight, telling the audience that for such a “small country we have a lot of problems” and her role as a journalist was a “unique voice for the voiceless”.

Ophelia Buckleton won the National Business Review award for outstanding journalism graduate in the Bachelor of Communication Studies degree.

The awardees were given cash, a plaque of recognition and internships based on their specialisation.

Queenie Jose is a final year Bachelor of Communication Studies student journalist working on Te Waha Nui.

• Earlier story on the awards
• Full list of award winners

The Storyboard and Spasifik Magazine prize went to a young Indian engineer-turned-journalist, Ami Dhabuwala, for her role in the Bearing Witness climate change project in Fiji and as part of a team covering diversity at the World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) conference in Auckland last year.

The Storyboard was presented to her last night by PMC advisory board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid and the Spasifik prize by editor-in-chief Innes Logan.

Recently graduated, Dhabuwala takes up a job at the Greymouth Star next week.

She appealed for more international students to be taken into the AUT journalism course.

“Every journalist should be able to expand his or her horizon to be a global journalist,” she said, adding there should be a wider acceptance of other cultures – “we need more international students who don’t want to be restricted to Kiwi or any regional media.

“Many times, I felt like an alien.”

‘Giving me hope’
Dhabuwala praised staff, facilities and classmates but said more diversity was needed. She also praised the staff at the Pacific Media Centre for “giving me hope”.

Pacific Media Watch editor Kendall Hutt won the Radio New Zealand International Award for the top Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies student.

This was presented by RNZ journalist Alex Perrottet, himself a former Pacific Media Watch editor.

Hutt described her RNZI award as an “honour” and she thanked the radio station.

“I would also like to thank Professor David Robie and Del Abcede. Without your passion for the Asia-Pacific region, and the work the Pacific Media Centre does, I wouldn’t be standing here today,” she said.

Hutt described how in one semester the postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism studies course had “really opened my eyes to diversity”.

Travel posters
She said the region was not all about the images on travel posters, because “behind these lie climate change, media freedom issues and human rights violations”.

Julie Cleaver won the School of Communication Studies Award for excellence in communication theory.

Cleaver and Hutt head for Fiji next month on the Bearing Witness climate change project.

A Pacific student, Hulu Tu’inukuafe, won the FCB Change Agency Award for digital media excellence.

Postgraduate scholarships were awarded to a diverse range of students:  Shirin Brown, Jayakrishnan Sreekumar, Rebecca Trelease and Chao Zhang.

• Full list of award winners

As part of a collaborative venture between Auckland University of Technology’s PMC and Te Ara Motuhenga (documentary research collective), and the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and regional Pacific journalism programme, two new journalists are going to Fiji to take up the challenge.

Julie Cleaver, a Communication Studies Honours student journalist, and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Kendall Hutt have been selected to go on the two-week project this year.

The pair say they are looking forward to experiencing the effects of climate change first-hand.

They follow in the footsteps of former PMW editor TJ Aumua and postgraduate student journalism Ami Dhabuwala who went to Fiji last year.

Many small island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu live daily with the impact of sea level rise, while water and food supplies are plagued by salt water intrusion.

Cleaver, who has not “really experienced the true Pacific outside of hotels”, says seeing such effects will be a fascinating and eye-opening experience.

‘People’s stories’
“I’m really looking forward to going to Fiji to hear people’s stories, meet local people, and report on what is happening in the country,” she says.

“The story of our Pacific neighbours is extremely important, and it is my job as a journalist to tell the world what is happening.”

Cleaver is no stranger to the Asia-Pacific region, having volunteered throughout Southeast Asia in countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia and South Korea.

Next month will mark Cleaver’s first “proper” time in Fiji, however.

She first travelled to Fiji when she was just a four-year-old, but due to the George Speight coup in 2000, her family did not get beyond the airport.

Pacific Media Watch’s Kendall Hutt, who has yet to experience the Asia-Pacific, says she is looking forward to being on assignment in the region where her passion for journalism lies.

“Writing about the Pacific and climate change is one thing, being able to experience it yourself, first-hand, that’s another.

Forefront of climate change
“Pacific nations are at the forefront of climate change.  Islands are being inundated by rising sea levels, people are being forced to migrate, so we can’t really continue to deny climate change’s existence anymore.

“Bringing this to the wider public’s attention, that’s key for me.”

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, who initiated the project, said “live” assignments like this were a major boost for young journalists’ professional development.

He paid tribute to PaCE-SD’s communications consultant Sarika Chand and USP journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh and his team, and Te Ara Motuhenga’s Jim Marbrook for their support for the project in Fiji.

“Their help enables us to carry out challenging projects like this.”

• Watch for the “Bearing Witness” stories and multimedia reports on the PMC’s current affairs site Asia Pacific Report.

Kendall Hutt talking climate change on Radio 95bFM’s Southern Cross today.

By Denise Yeo

A two-week journalism stint in Fiji, dubbed “Bearing Witness”, has lent new perspectives on the effects of climate change on AUT journalism student Ami Dhabuwala and honours graduate TJ Aumua.

The project, sponsored by AUT’s Research and Innovation Office (RIO) through a grant to the Pacific Media Centre, gave the two aspiring journalists a chance to meet Pacific climate change experts, and experience first-hand themselves the impact of climate change on everyday lives in Daku, a small village in Fiji.

Aumua, who is also Pacific Media Watch project editor for the PMC, says witnessing climate change’s impact on Daku village was heart-breaking.

“I was aware that climate change was happening before but I didn’t realise it’s devastating impacts,” she says.

Dhabuwala believes that climate change is a human rights issue that demands urgent action today.

“It’s not just about rising sea levels or other environmental effects, it’s also a physical and mental health issue,” she says.

“For many Pacific countries, climate change is a way of life. When we were there, somebody said something that struck me – you can’t stop climate change, you can only adapt to it.”

Multimedia stories
Both students researched and reported for multimedia stories focusing on what Pacific youth are doing to stem effects of climate change, published on the Pacific Media Centre’s new current affairs website Asia Pacific Report.

University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) communications officer Sarika Chand praised Aumua and Dhabuwala as a delight to work with.

“There are so many different issues that need media attention – the Pacific Media Centre team was more than willing to oblige,” says Chand.

“Especially with the Daku village trip. A big vinaka to TK and Ami for following traditional protocol and being respectful of the local culture.”

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie thanked RIO for providing a funding grant to enable the PMC team to go to Fiji.

“This is the start of a regular Pacific ‘Bearing Witness’ project linking in with USP’s climate change and media research and local Pacific publisher Little Island Press. It is an enterprising awareness and communication programme about the impacts of climate change and how Pacific communities are adapting.”

The trip has also changed the trajectory of TJ and Ami’s careers. Both girls says that not enough is being done in New Zealand to highlight these issues, and hope to do their part.

Climate change journalist
Dhabuwala says she plans to be a climate change journalist.

“This is what is happening to our neighbours. New Zealand is not immune, it will affect us too.”

Aumua says: “The topic of climate change in the Pacific will always be close to my heart wherever my journalist endeavours take me.”

For their next challenge, both Aumua and Dhabuwala will be reporting on the Fourth World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) conference and a Pacific preconference at AUT next month.

The RIO grant also helped fund a special climate change department on Asia Pacific Report and climate change research.

“Warm Waters’” a photoessay on climate change by Russian photojournalist Vlad Sokhin, is the best piece of reporting on climate change in the Pacific. It is a must-see collection!

Sokhin’s images and text capture the grave threat climate change poses to the Pacific islands from sea level rise, hotter weather, changes to rainfall and stronger cyclones.

Browse the photoessay here, and encourage your colleagues and friends to see it too!

• Vlad Sokhin’s Warm Waters photoessay on climate change
• Vlad Sokhin’s website
• Vlad Sokhin at Panos Pictures
• Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness reports, videos and images

By Ami Dhabuwala, recently in Fiji

Fiji was the first country in the Pacific to ratify the United Nations climate change deal agreed on in Paris on February 12, and fulfilling the promise by signing the agreement on April 22.

According to The Guardian: “Under its national climate action plan, Fiji pledged to generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. It also promised to cut overall emissions from its energy sector by 30 percent by 2030 compared to business-as-usual, conditional on it receiving climate finance from industrialised nations.”

Asia Pacific Report recently spoke to young climate change advocates and researchers at the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) in Suva about the Pacific’s response to the COP21 outcome in Paris. Here are the views of two of them:

‘Great news’
Diana Salili, a climate change masters’ student from the University of South Pacific, says: “The signed agreement is GREAT news. This is a positive step forward; although there is much that remains to be done.”

Salili was a part of the Vanuatu delegation coordination team during the COP21 Paris conference last year.

“Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) remain voluntary, and it’s difficult to know if or how nations will be penalised if they fail to live up to their promises.”

‘Issue of accountability’
Jenny Jiva was a member of the Fiji delegation at COP21.

“The agreement is voluntary and it is up to the individual countries to abide by the agreement.”

In the Paris conference, the countries agreed to reduce the carbon emission for holding the increase in the temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Jiva says INDCs currently submitted are “leading us to at least a 2.7 degrees Celsius temperature rise, not the 2 degrees that was agreed to in Paris.”

There is a major issue of accountability and transparency, says Salili.

“There is still no process to independently verify all 195 countries’ greenhouse gas inventories, or progress towards their targets.”

She says this could pose serious problems in the years to come as INDCs have been calculated and presented to the UN in many different ways.

“The lack of a common or comparable format will clearly make national emissions reductions even harder to assess and track. A solution needs be developed urgently.”

‘Loss and damage’
Jiva followed the “loss and damage” track during the COP21 Paris conference. She says ratifying the agreement is two-pronged.

“At least 55 parties need to ratify and they also need to make up at least 55 percent of emissions. This means it is crucial for developed countries and newly industrialising countries to be a part of this process and ratify the agreement. ”

There are 14 Pacific parties which contribute only 0.03 percent of emissions. “Therefore, it is a complex process and that will require collective action.”

Jiva says climate change is happening now. If we continue with ‘business as usual’, it will affect people all over the world.

“It is not just an issue for the future, it we don’t take action now, whole countries could disappear and their culture as well.”

Youth all over the world need to be encouraged to hold their leaders and governments accountable she says.

‘Positive action’
“If great numbers of young people collectively show they want positive action on climate change, I believe our leaders will listen.”

Salili says the youth should be pro-active in this movement. They should engage in community adaptation and excel in climate change in the Pacific.

“Why do they need inspiration?” asks Salili.

She says youth from the neighbouring countries are close enough to all the smaller Pacific Island countries to be aware of what is going on in the Pacific in terms of climate change.

“If they need to be inspired to do something about climate change; something is very wrong somewhere!”

• Video: Jenny Jiva speaks out on climate change

Name: Jenny Jiva

Age: 23

Occupation: Masters student, University of the South Pacific

Passion: Pacific diplomacy and climate change

Country: Fiji

Jenny Jiva, a master’s student from the University of the South Pacific in Suva, is giving Pacific climate change a voice on the world stage.

Her master’s research concerns the loss and damage impacts related to climate change, as an issue, which can include the loss of livelihood, territory and property.

Jiva’s research focuses on the Pacific’s role in getting loss and damage issues on the negotiating table, and successfully into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outcomes and documents.

In 2015, the 23-year-old was selected as a country delegate to represent Fiji at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris, a global meeting where world leaders reached a legally binding agreement to address climate change.

“I went to the meetings and the negotiations about loss and damage,” she says.

“My main role was to take notes and do briefings for our main negotiator so that’s what really consolidated my research question.”

A goal for Jiva is to attend COP22 in November this year, which will be held in Marrakech, Morocco.

She told Asia Pacific Report that this year the conference would be reviewing the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, a policy that aims to address climate-related loss and damage in developing countries vulnerable to extreme effects of climate change.

In 2013, in Warsaw, the Pacific fought strongly for this mechanism, she says.

The young activist is also a member of Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), an organisation that brings together Pacific NGOs and civil society actors who advocate for climate change.

“Climate change is a very real thing, we now know that it is happening, it’s not debatable anymore,” she says.

By TJ Aumua in Daku, Fiji Islands

Rising sea levels are a major threat to coastal villages in the Pacific.

Daku village in the Rewa delta area in Tailevu, Fiji, is one village that faces the challenge every day.

Biu Naitasi, Daku’s headman, says that despite the village receiving a floodgate funded by USAid to help drain water, the sea level is still rising and the strength of waves is increasing.

Naitasi told Asia Pacific Report that sea water flooding in their village can reach up to their ankles, forcing some children in the village to relocate to another school.

The salt water has damaged their food plantations and eroded the wooden and concrete support beams on their homes.

While they wait for another floodgate to stop seawater flowing into their crops, they continue to be proactive, using people power to build higher seawalls and filling the flooded land with soil.

• Thanks to the people of Daku village and the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), USAid and the Pacific Community in Fiji for support in making this video.

A 50-minute drive out of Suva city is Daku village, a community of 332 people nestled close to the sea and surrounded by mangroves.

As peaceful as it seems here, the village is one of many in Fiji where the people are working hard to adapt their daily lives to the burdens of climate change.

Village headman Biu Naitasi says he has noticed the sea-level rising around the village within the last 40 years.

But it wasn’t until five years ago, with the assistance of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific, first through an AUSAID project and then through the United States Agency for International Development’s Coastal Community Adaptation Project (USAID/C-CAP), that they understood the terminology and its link with climate change.

‘New term’

“[The term] climate change is something new for us. We haven’t heard about it before,” says Naitasi.

Arriving at the village, Asia Pacific Report bore witness to flood waters lapping on the door steps of village homes.

Remnants of the tropical cyclone Winston that savaged Fiji two months ago, and other tropical depressions which have left parts of the nation drenched in heavy rainfall, have left their mark.

Waterlogged land leaves the village vulnerable to water-borne infections, like dengue, filariasis, and diarrhoea, and in the worst case scenario, cholera and typhoid.

Floodgate system
In 2015, USAIDs’ C-CAP initiative implemented a floodgate system, built into the river wall which allows water to flow out of the village while blocking out sea water in high tides or floods.

But relief is still needed when king tides surge onto the land.

“Sometimes it’s up to our ankles,” Naitasi says. “We need another floodgate near our plantations as salt water has damaged our crops, but we’re waiting for funds.

“The plantation area of the village gets flooded every rainy season and during high tides.”

Sea water is also rusting and eroding the wooden and metal homes in the village.

The extreme weather in Fiji in the past month has seen the community having to rebuild and repair their homes.

“Some houses were blown off partly, and some completely, by the cyclone.”

Took shelter
Headman Biu Naitasi says villagers were unable to use electricity and because of flooding many were forced to take shelter in the community hall.

Asia Pacific Report was told the strong winds completely destroyed a family home, forcing all eight members living inside to relocate.

Like Daku, many villages and communities in Fiji are facing similar problems. They are doing the best they can; using traditional methods and human power to heighten coastal walls and eliminate flood water from their homes.

But climate change is escalating, leaving coastal villagers living with the burden of its effects daily.

“Tell them to believe it, climate change is happening,” says Naitasi, sending a message to the world.

“We can’t stop climate change, but we can reduce its effect.”

• More “Bearing Witness” project photos of Daku
• VIDEO: Climate change adaptation in a Fiji village

The low-lying village, with a population of just over 300, is completely surrounded by mangroves.

Villagers are vulnerable to water-borne diseases because of the standing water.

A USAid project is helping the villagers adapt with the installation of a floodgate system.

Pictures by Asia Pacific Report’s Ami Dhabuwala and TJ Aumua.

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