Pacific islands

Solomon Islands landowners seek compensation over catastrophic oil spill

Claim over the 2019 Rennell Island disaster, which saw more than 300 tonnes of fuel leak into the water, filed in the Solomons High court

Ben Doherty

12, Feb, 2025 @12:22 AM

New Zealand raises ‘concern’ as Cook Islands prepares to sign China deal

Deputy PM says New Zealand hasn’t been adequately consulted on an agreement the Cook Islands leader is expected to sign in Beijing this week

Eva Corlett in Wellington

10, Feb, 2025 @4:22 AM

Groundbreaking botanical discoveries on Captain Cook voyage were thanks to Indigenous people

New book reveals that Pacific islands inhabitants helped European scientists identify hundreds of plant species

Donna Ferguson

08, Feb, 2025 @5:11 PM

Sir Julius Chan: death of last of PNG’s founding fathers marks end of era

Sir J, as he was known, led the formation of PNG’s banking and finance systems before going on to lead the nation twice as prime minister

Lucy Palmer

03, Feb, 2025 @1:10 AM

Marshall Islands’ vanishing kit for a team under threat from climate crisis

The isolated Pacific nation is trying to build its first football team amid a battle for survival against rising sea levels

Niall McVeigh

02, Feb, 2025 @8:00 AM

Leaders in the Pacific raise alarm over ‘direct impact’ of Trump’s climate retreat and aid freeze

Samoa’s prime minister says US withdrawal from Paris climate agreement is ‘very disappointing’ and puts the survival of Pacific countries at greater risk

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson

01, Feb, 2025 @12:00 AM

Samoa’s prime minister criticises RFK Jr’s vaccine views after deadly measles outbreak

In an exclusive interview, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa tells the Guardian she is surprised at Trump’s pick for health secretary and criticised anti-vaxxers for their part in 2019 measles crisis

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson

31, Jan, 2025 @4:38 AM

Sir Julius Chan, Papua New Guinea’s last ‘founding father’, dies aged 85

Outpouring of grief after death of Chan, the son of a migrant Chinese father and Indigenous mother, who served as prime minister twice

Rebecca Bush in Papua New Guinea

30, Jan, 2025 @10:47 AM

‘Never seems to end’: exhausted quake-hit Vanuatu rebuilds again

True cost and psychological toll of the December quake emerges as the Pacific country grapples with its third major disaster in two years

Michelle Duff in Port Vila, photography by Christopher Malili

25, Jan, 2025 @12:05 AM

The Guardian view on development’s paradox: the rich benefit more than the poor | Editorial

Editorial: The global south needs a fairer deal than this one, in which it funds the lifestyle and wealth of the global north

Editorial

19, Jan, 2025 @5:30 PM

Vanuatu holds election amid earthquake devastation

Residents line up to vote amid political instability and buildings and infrastructure shattered by last month’s earthquake

Michelle Duff in Port Vila

16, Jan, 2025 @1:07 AM

‘I felt less human, not human at all’: Australia faces moral crossroads over Nauru

Who is accountable for what happens in an offshore processing centre? It’s remarkable this is still a question in Australia