Joint Media Release:  ACT NOW!, Pacific Network on Globilization (PANG) and the Social Empowerment and Education Program (SEEP).

Pacific Island Countries have been told they should effectively abandon the protection afforded by the precautionary principle to allow the development of experimental seabed mining in the region.

Partners to Act Now's Pacific 20,000 Signatures Initiative Against Experimental SeaBed Mining are in Rio de Janeiro attending various events to raise the profile of the initiative. Maureen Penjueli, Coordinator of Pacific Network on Globalization (PNG) from Fiji, talked at Major Groups press briefing on 13 June at Rio+20.

By Dr Kristian Lasslett*

 By Gary Juffa* - via PNG News Facebook Page

An ominous moon has risen over the island of Papua New Guinea tonight, it casts its thick dark shadows across all of the nation, over its villages, its districts and settlements, its suburbs and streets, its ghettoes and by-ways, its highways, valleys and plains.

By Dr. Kris Lasslett 

Last month the President of the European Shareholders of Bougainville Copper (ESBC) Axel Sturm publicly raised concerns over the volatility of BCL’s share prices. In an interview with PNG Industry News, he blamed political uncertainty in Papua New Guinea for BCL’s current woes.

By Andrew Lattas

ACT NOW! recently launched a email action addressed to Pacific Island Leaders, requesting an end to experimental seabed mining in the region. The basis for the concern was in relation to the environmental and social sustainability issue surrounding this "first of it's kind" mining and it's long term impact on coastal communities. 

Andrew Lattas gives an account below of logging, lawlessness and a crisis of legitimacy in one (out of a hundred other) areas of Papua New Guinea, where local land grab, has left a group of aggrieved locals intimidated and brutalized by members of the Royal PNG Constabulary.

State Agencies that are supposed to be Regulators of foreign investment activities, are actively facilitating human rights abuse in defense of foreign interests.

via Radio New Zealand International 

A Papua New Guinea social media practitioner says James Cameron’s historic diving mission has reinforced a message about the need to research and respect the undersea environment.

The University of PNG student body, led by it's Student Representative Counsel, staged a peaceful protest march in Port Moresby, today.

In response to PNG Parliament's controversial passing of the Judicial Conduct Act 2012, which places absolute powers in the hands of parliament to discipline judges, the Student Representative Council, sanctioned a protest march to the National Parliament for the reversal of the law. Several thousand students and supporters converged on the streets of Port Moresby in a show of solidarity against a bad law.