Pacific links: PNG’s coffee crop, UN Oceans, Pacer Plus impact questioned and more
Hand-sorting coffee beans at the Baroida coffee plantation in PNG (Photo: Flickr/counterculturecoffee)
- In Papua New Guinea a small beetle, the coffee berry borer, is threatening the coffee industry.
- The impact of the newly signed PACER Plus trade agreement has been overstated by both advocates and critics, argues Matthew Dornan from DevPolicy.
- The UN Oceans Conference, co-hosted by Fiji, has heard Pacific Island leaders will continue to drive the agenda on climate change and ocean health, with or without Washington's support.
- Philippe Grandcolas from Sorbonne Universités reveals how cockroaches rewrote the history of New Caledonia.
- In Senate Estimates, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has quizzed the Australian Government’s Export Finance and Insurance Corporation about loans to the $US19 billion PNG LNG project, and queried the delay in the project’s planned payments to PNG citizens.
- The Bank of PNG and the Australian Government are investigating the use of Blockchain technology to improve the low rate of financial inclusion in PNG.
- The International Committee of the Red Cross' head of mission in PNG, Mark Kessler, has told the ABC the impacts of tribal fighting have been compounded by the use of guns and the erosion of traditional rules of conflict. The ICRC has produced a new documentary on the issue called Spears to semi-automatics: the human cost of tribal conflict in PNG.