The values-based argument against constitutional change is compelling, except it’s not the change being proposed in Saturday’s referendum. Steve Sharp reports. I recall a time in the eighties – in the early analogue days of community broadcasting – when the community radio sectors of Sydney and Brisbane were emerging. We were being asked – some…
Climate-related minerals boom re-ignites old environmental struggles
The large amounts of climate change news on specialist Pacific and Australian sites often disappoint for their lack of critical perspectives. Journalists often re-run advocacy disguised as news. Persistent storylines fashioned by international climate activists go unchallenged as they did in the period leading to the Glasgow climate summit last November. This advocacy content co-exists…
Climate finance no protection against home-grown environmental blunders
In Part 2 of The Politics of Distraction, Steve Sharp detailed how extractive industries in Melanesia drive deforestation and land degradation – and carbon emissions – in a regulatory climate of dysfunction and lawlessness. In a parallel universe, Pacific climate diplomats selectively hector non-Pacific governments for dragging their feet on the Paris Agreement while dismissing…
Failed diplomacy in Suva weakens PIF and regional security
by Steve Sharp On the 8th July, Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Henry Puna addressed PIF foreign ministers and acknowledged ‘the considerable efforts and leadership shown by the Government of Fiji’ since it became Forum Chair in August last year. He made special mention of its ‘single-minded effort to keep our family united’. A few days…
‘Australia’s climate policies are pushing Pacific states into the arms of China’: the false narrative that refuses to die
by Steve Sharp Not long after the new Australian Government launched its shuttle diplomacy with PIF member nations, a contest emerged about how it should see its regional obligations in a fast-changing strategic environment after the Pacific Step-up policy rollout, the acrimony in Tuvalu three years ago over climate policy, and the Solomon Islands signing…
From Extraction to Distraction: politics, not action, is driving Pacific climate diplomacy
In Part 1 of the series The Politics of Distraction, Steve Sharp identified the UN Summit in Glasgow last November as the high-water mark of Pacific climate diplomacy. Despite Pacific diplomats proving themselves climate warriors abroad, ‘climate action’ at home has fallen short of island states’ own high ambitions for environmental stewardship, endorsed by Pacific Island Forum…
It will take more than clever politics to ‘end the climate wars’
During the recent Australian federal election campaign, the then opposition leader – now prime minister – Anthony Albanese vowed to ‘end the climate wars’. Post-election, the energy crisis has made this promise more difficult to realise. But, as Steve Sharp writes in the first of a six-part series, so too will Pacific climate diplomacy which…