NEWSPAGE 09 September
2009

(Photo: Motor1)

NEW ZEALAND: Motor1 tackles vehicle value and eco issues in Samoa

(Photos: New Zealand Defence Force)

SAMOA: Royal New Zealand Air Force thanks Samoa
Source: New Zealand Defence Force Press Release

The Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) departed Samoan shores last week having successfully met all of the training objectives of Exercise TROPIC ASTRA 2009. After a month of readiness training and experience operating in tropical conditions in Samoa, No 3 Squadron and the Expeditionary Support Squadron (ESS) RNZAF have returned to New Zealand and thank the people of Samoa for their support throughout the exercise.

TROPIC ASTRA 09 highlighted the RNZAF 's commitment to joint operations and provided a great opportunity to enhance the New Zealand Defence Force’s (NZDF) interoperability working with a number of local and government agencies in Samoa.

The Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) amphibious support vessel HMNZS CANTERBURY deployed and redeployed four Iroquios helicopters, 21 vehicles, 15 containers and approximately 70 personnel to Samoa. 96 staff and trainees from the NZ Army Officer Cadet School (OCS) achieved their tropical training objectives in the O Le Pupu Pu'e National Park during the first two weeks of the exercise.

The Commanding Officer of No 3 Squadron, Wing Commander Russell Mardon said "The three Services came together extremely well to mount and conduct this Exercise. Also pleasing was the great reception we received from the Samoan Government and the public during our time there. We conducted a wide range of mutually beneficial activities in support of multiple agencies, including the Police, Fire, Civil Defence, Transport and Tourism, Energy and Communications departments. All in all, the Exercise was a tremendous success that not only reinforced capability, but also served to enhance it across a number of dimensions.'

The RNZAF provided over 300 flying hours in support of the Samoan Government including a successful search & rescue mission early in the Exercise. No 3 Squadron and the ESS personnel revelled in the challenges of operating in a tropical environment and gained vital skills and experience during the exercise. This experience bodes well for an Air Force which is now better prepared to provide disaster relief and humanitarian aid throughout the pacific if called upon.

Photo Captions:

Photo 1 - RNZAF Iroquois helicopter flying over Upolu during Exercise Tropic Astra 09.

Photo 2 - RNZAF Iroquois helicopters inserting NZ Army Officer Cadets during Exercise Tropic Astra 09.

(Photo: Jessica Lawrence, NC State Entomology Department)

AMERICAN SAMOA: Plant essential oil eyed as mosquito, ant repellent
Source: ScienceDaily

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have teamed up with researchers from a company in American Samoa to investigate the chemical makeup of a mosquito- and ant-repellent essential oil from a native Samoan plant.

The ARS scientists and researchers at Agro Research, Inc., in Pago Pago, American Samoa, discovered that the oil from a local plant repelled mosquitoes and pest ants in preliminary studies, which were conducted under a material transfer agreement. The isolation and identification of the active component (or components) will be done as part of a recently established one-year cooperative research and development agreement.

The plant is one of the 540 native species of flowering plants in American Samoa, a U.S. island territory in the South Pacific.

ARS chemists Robert Vander Meer and Ulrich Bernier at the agency’s Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology in Gainesville, Fla., are working with Agro Research, Inc.’s Pemerika Tauiliili to identify the active ingredients in the plant essential oil.

Two mosquito species—Aedes aegypti and Anopheles albimanus—were used to evaluate the essential oil’s repellency. A. aegypti transmits viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue and chikungunya. A. albimanus transmits malaria parasites and is not as susceptible to repellents as many other mosquito species.

The essential oil was also tested on the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Significant repellency was observed with concentrations diluted more than 100-fold, and the active components are likely a small fraction of the total oil.

While American Samoa is malaria-free, mosquitoes pose significant problems for the Samoan population due to transmission of dengue virus.

Exploration for new active ingredients among botanical extracts has value because it can lead to the discovery of new synthetic analogs with unique and useful properties.

Photo Caption: ARS scientists and their collaborators in a company called Agro Research, Inc., are working to identify the active ingredients of a mosquito- and ant-repelling essential oil that comes from a native American Samoan plant.
 

(Photo: Secretariat of the Pacific Community)

FIJI: Lifestyle diseases in Pacific are an emergency, forum hears
Source: WHO/SPC Joint Press Release

The greatest health challenge facing the people of the Pacific is how to realign efforts to respond to the threat posed by the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

This was the conclusion of a recent major regional gathering in Fiji of specialists and health administrators working in the Pacific.

One delegate said the spread of NCDs, which claim 75 per cent of lives in the Pacific, was an emergency. Mr Dave Clarke of public policy and regulatory specialists, Allen & Clarke, told the Pacific Noncommunicable Disease Forum 2009 - held in Nadi on 24-28 August - that we need to regard NCDs as a worse public health emergency than cyclones and pandemics.

‘Cyclones go away but NCDs stick around,’ he said.

NCD problems in the Pacific region were complex, he said. ‘They are a burden, they are enduring and they are the biggest threats to well-being in this region.’

Mr Clarke said policy and legislation should encourage us to move away from eating such things as mutton flaps, but importers were also members of our community and we should approach them.

Answering questions after his presentation ‘Policy and legislation development in the fight against NCDs’, Mr Clarke said there were examples of successful outcomes from these approaches.

He emphasised it was important to work out the particular characteristics of a country and to try and provide simple legislation that people could understand and easily implement. Policy and legislation could thus help people make healthy choices.

He was working on a toolkit for policy and legislation formulation. It was 90 per cent complete and would be released soon for countries’ practical action. Mr Clarke stressed the importance of four stages in the policy generation process: assessment, planning, action and review.

The forum was organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of a joint approach to tackling NCDs with Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) and development assistance partners.

Fifty representatives from PICTs and organisations reviewed progress on planning and implementation of NCD policies and strategies and identified challenges and gaps in countries and potential solutions. The meeting included clinicians, administrators, and advisers on nutrition, physical activity, tobacco, alcohol, communications, monitoring and evaluation.

On the final day, the forum agreed on 19 issues and recommendations as a guide for the way forward. These recommendations focus on the theme of the conference: how to turn plans and policy into actions and engagement with communities for results.

It followed Dr Colin Tukuitonga’s keynote address of who called for resolutions to be converted into real solutions and actions on the ground.

As part of their response to the NCD problem, SPC and WHO have jointly developed a Pacific NCD framework and the 2-1-22 Pacific NCD Programme - representing two organisations and one team serving 22 countries and territories. Development partners AusAID and NZAID have provided financial support for the programme, which has been endorsed by Pacific Ministers of Health.

The organisations note that with changing lifestyles and dietary habits, NCDs such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer are the main causes of death globally. The prevalence NCDs among Pacific populations are among the highest in the world.

Most Pacific countries now have a double burden of communicable and noncommunicable diseases. Still grappling with malaria, dengue and influenza, the region also faces an epidemic of chronic NCD conditions.

The main risk factors for NCD or chronic diseases are unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco use and alcohol misuse. In most countries of the Pacific, the prevalence of these primary risk factors is high and is reflected in the rate of intermediate risk factors such as obesity, raised blood pressure and high glucose in the blood, which have led to the current epidemic.

Opening the forum, SPC’s Deputy Director-General, Mrs Fekitamoeloa Utoikamanu, told delegates the good news was that NCDs were to a large extent preventable.

‘These solutions are within our reach and we must be fully committed to do something. We have to first help ourselves to make any significant impact,’ she said.

The World Health Organization Representative in the South Pacific, Dr Ken Chen, called for ‘plans to become the actions of communities and individuals to effect behavior changes for the whole of life’.

Photo Caption: Delegates attending the noncommunicable diseases forum in Nadi.
 

(Photo: Stefan Lins, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism)

TUVALU: Tuvalu ponders legal options against polluters
Source: Reportage-enviro

Millions of people in low-lying islands stand to lose their homes and native lands as a result of climate change. Both international and domestic laws have the potential to protect the people who have been dubbed ‘climate refugees’, yet experts are sceptical that it has any real capacity to provide for them.

The Prime Minister of the low-lying Pacific nation of Tuvalu, Apisai Ielemia, seems to think it might be an option. In a report recently released by Oxfam Australia he was quoted as saying, “For a highly vulnerable country like Tuvalu, we cannot just sit back and watch our homeland slowly disappear. If necessary, we will use whatever legal means available to us to seek the necessary restitution for all damages created by climate change. Hopefully, the international community will respond before such action is necessary. But time is running out fast.”

Previously in 2002, Tuvalu, under the Koloa Talake administration, threatened to sue Australia and the United States in the International Court of Justice for their contribution to climate change. Lawyers and NGOs worldwide, including the Australia Institute said that this could mark the beginning of years of litigation against greenhouse polluters. However, the government under Saufatu Sopoanga dropped all consideration of taking legal steps.

In 2005, the Inuit in the Arctic region of Alaska and Canada filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States.” But the Inter-American Commission deemed the case inadmissible.

The question is why has a possibility that sparked so much discussion and speculation amongst lawyers, activists and legal scholars worldwide, suddenly fallen flat?

Dr Jane McAdam, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of NSW, says that the problem comes with establishing state responsibility. “You need to be able to show specific causation and to talk about impacts of climate change - sure we know what has caused it - but to actually litigate on that basis and show that particular countries are responsible for particular forms of harm is very difficult,” she said.

Dr McAdam doesn’t think litigation is the answer to climate change. “I think it’s actually a very lengthy, expensive and ultimately futile process,” she said.

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, as a signatory to international human rights agreements, Australia is obliged to consider climate change in a human rights context and act accordingly.

Leading human rights lawyers in Australia say fulfilling these human rights obligations means avoiding harmful emissions. In a December 2008 letter to Kevin Rudd, they urged him to set a target of 40% reduction in emissions by 2020.

Australia’s climate change efforts have already been criticised by the UN, this time for non-compliance with another human rights agreement, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

“The Committee is concerned at the negative impact of climate change on the right to an adequate standard of living, including on the right to food and the right to water, affecting in particular Indigenous peoples, in spite of the state party’s recognition of the challenges imposed by climate change,” the May 2009 report said.

Unfortunately, human rights agreements which exist in international law have no binding force unless they are incorporated into Australian law. Currently, Australia has no Legal Rights Act.

Owen Cordes-Holland from Australian National University has studied the potential for litigation under international human rights law as an option for Torres Strait Islanders.

According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if dangerous levels of climate change are not avoided, up to 2000 of the 7000 people living on the Torres Strait Islands are ‘likely’ to be displaced to the Australian mainland later this century.

“To them that’s an enormous issue because their culture is so connected to the environment,” says Cordes-Holland.

“[The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] has an optional protocol under which citizens can make complaints and Australia has ratified the optional protocol,” he says.

As such, unless the Australian Government could be shown to be adequately addressing emissions in Australia, Torres Strait Islanders might be able to submit a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee on the basis that losing their traditional land as a result of climate change affects their right to life; the right to protection of privacy, family and the home; the right to freedom of residence and movement; and the right to self-determination.

In international law, those displaced by climate change are not recognised as a group with defined rights or as a group in need of special protection.

People displaced by climate change have regularly been referred to as climate refugees. According to Olivia Dun, who is working with the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, this has mainly been to create a public profile for the issue. But actually, these people do not fall within the 1951 Refugee Convention definition of ‘refugee’ and therefore do not have the same legal rights.

So lawyers and campaigners are increasingly turning to human rights legislation as a possible approach for climate change victims.

“It is clear that international law is not yet equipped to respond adequately to the diverse causes of climate-induced migration,” says the Human Rights Commission report. “Yet given the numbers, the question of the rights of displaced populations to a form of protection from receiving countries will become unavoidable.”

Some people have argued for using a novel form of the “polluter pays” principle in relation to the issue of climate change migrants. Countries would be expected to take a number of migrants in proportion to their emissions. If the US is responsible for around 30 per cent of emissions, for example. It would therefore be responsible for accepting around 30 per cent of migrants.

This could also be applied to the monetary costs associated with climate change. It has been argued that the costs of adaptation should not be borne exclusively by the low-emitting countries suffering the effects of climate change but by those responsible for causing it.

In a paper written with Dr Ben Saul for the Sydney Centre for International Law, Dr McAdam says that focussing on ‘human security’ aspects of climate change displacement may be an alternative way to help mobilise international action.

This approach, they caution, does carry its own risks, with potentially controversial implications for migration and border control in receiving States.

But despite a lack of definitive research, the link between climate change and security is gaining credibility.

On June 3, a non-binding resolution was passed by the UN General Assembly recognising, for the first time, the possible implications of climate change for international peace and security. This could help put climate change on the agenda of the more powerful UN Security Council.

And here in Australia, the Government is already planning its response to security issues arising as a result of climate change.

The Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, has already predicted that cultural tensions resulting from forced climate migration are going to be the policing issue of the 21st century.

The recent white paper released by the Federal Defence Department acknowledges the pressure that some South Pacific nations will be placed under as a consequence of climate change. It goes on to say that if mitigation and economic assistance strategies fail, “the Government would possibly have to use the ADF [Australian Defence Force] as an instrument to deal with any threats inimical to our interests.”

What is apparent is that there is a double standard here. It appears that while border security and defence measures are already being considered, the Government continues to stall in creating adequate legal restraints on the real perpetrators of the issues, allowing polluting industries to carry on at the expense of neighbouring Indigenous communities.
 

(Photo: Government House)

WORLDWIDE: New flag for Tokelau
Source: Government House Press Release

Tokelau was presented with its first official flag by the Governor-General, Hon Sir Anand Satyanand, this afternoon (September 7, 2009) at Government House Vogel in Lower Hutt.

The flag was presented to the current Ulu-o-Tokelau Foua Toloa, and is expected to be officially launched in Tokelau in October.

The flag was approved by Tokelau’s General Fono in February this year and is based on the winning design in a competition to design a flag for Tokelau back in 2007.

As a territory of New Zealand, and therefore part of the Commonwealth, the Queen has to approve the official flag or coat of arms for Tokelau.

The flag has a blue background with a yellow canoe in full sail under the four mullets (heraldic stars) representing the constellation of the Southern Cross.

Tokelau’s three Faipule, the elected leader of each of the territory’s three atolls, are in New Zealand as part of annual talks with the New Zealand Government, including the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Faipule will also meet with members of the almost 7000 strong Tokelauan community while in New Zealand.