Stories by Jamie Tahana

With the country in a state of emergency, Vanuatu election officials came up with a novel way to keep their election transparent: putting the counting on livestream. Jamie Tahana watched for hours…

The Marshall Islands health secretary is making no apologies for closing the country to all incoming passengers for two weeks, in an effort to buy time to ward off the Covid-19 coronavirus.

On Saipan, the tourist area resembles a ghost town. Restaurants are being shuttered, shops reducing hours, resorts and water parks sit empty. Audio

A colonial eurocentric view of climate change is failing to recognise many of the threats and impacts in the Pacific, says a researcher.

Several Pacific countries have taken heavy-handed measures in an effort to stop a new and largely unknown coronavirus from taking hold in a region already strained by several severe epidemics. Audio

The hospital in Majuro is overflowing, its doctors exhausted, its wards strained, budgets withered, and no end in sight. Every day, dozens more patients are wheeled in to wait in corridors.

As a new decade dawns much of the Pacific is grappling with major upheavals, from climate and health crises to self-determination struggles. Jamie Tahana and Johnny Blades look at the state of play.

Pacific countries and climate activists are calling for an overhaul of how the world tackles climate change, after this month's UN climate talks ended in failure. Jamie Tahana looks back on COP25. Audio

Fiji's attorney general says Australia's climate actions have been disappointing, as UN climate talks continue to falter.

UN climate talks in Madrid appear to be faltering, according to interviews with negotiators, delegates and observers, who say there is a serious risk of failure.

Fiji's prime minister has hit out at several developed countries during a speech at the UN climate summit in Madrid.

This year's climate talks in Spain come amidst the global wave of protests by young people that have swept the world. However, there are still concerns that important voices are being ignored.

The effects of climate change in the Pacific have happened a lot sooner, and are a lot worse, than had been predicted, a leading oceans scientist warns. Audio

Former Tuvalu Prime Minister and climate champion Enele Sopoaga has asked whether countries that refuse to reduce fossil fuel use are really part of the Pacific.

New Zealand's Climate Change Minister, who is attending the latest round of UN climate talks, says his country is doing enough to stand with small Pacific countries on the issue.

The entire UN climate talk process might have to be reviewed if nothing is achieved this year, a Niue government minister says.

Small island countries in the Pacific are demanding greater commitments at this week's Madrid climate talks, saying what's been done so far is far from enough.

The latest round of global climate talks has opened in Spain with the head of the UN warning the world risks sleepwalking past a point of no return.

Pacific countries will be trying to apply as much pressure as possible in the latest round of UN climate talks, says the director of the Cook Islands climate change office.

The decision by Papua New Guinea's government to give cars imported for last year's APEC summit to Members of Parliament has been widely panned by anti-corruption advocates.

More than a year after the MV Butiraoi broke apart and sunk in Kiribati, killing 95 people, grief and anger still run deep on Nonouti, the island from which that fateful voyage departed.

A ship that sank in Kiribati last year, killing 95 people, was severely overloaded, unauthorised to carry passengers, and commanded by a captain who ignored several warnings, an inquiry has found.

A report into the ferry disaster in Kiribati last year, which killed as many as 81 people, has been released by the government after months of public pressure.

A recent report into the state of the world's oceans has set off alarm bells in the Pacific, where the impacts are already being keenly felt. Audio

Mary Moeono-Kolio was up past midnight on Thursday, painting banners and stapling flags to poles. Writing chants and rallying her community.