“I am a Pacific Islander too,” President says

HONOLULU (Nov. 18, 2011) -- Heads of State and special envoys from eleven Pacific island nations met with President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and other top U.S. and international officials in a special series of meetings organized by the East-West Center in parallel with the recently completed APEC leaders’ week in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Tonga were represented. The Honorable Peter O’Neil, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, was selected as the delegation’s Chairman, with Niue’s Premier, Hon. Toke Talagi, serving as Vice Chairman.

HONOLULU (Nov. 8, 2012) -- For a number of years the East-West Center, with support from the U.S. Department of State, has fielded multinational election observation teams to learn about and offer suggestions for improving the ways in which elections are conducted in various Asia Pacific nations.

This year, for the first time, the Center’s Pacific Islands Development Program hosted a multinational group of election officials and journalists and during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The program sought to provide participants with first-hand knowledge and experience of America’s national, state and local electoral systems through direct observation and interaction with a diverse range of individuals engaged in the electoral process.

The participants included:

HONOLULU (Nov. 29, 2012) -- The Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program (Pacific RISA) has launched an updated, interactive website as a focal point for the current state of climate knowledge about Hawai‘i and the U.S-Affiliated Pacific Islands.

The improved site at PacificRISA.org serves as a hub of interactive media, publications, and tools produced by researchers at the East-West Center, the University of Hawai‘i, and other partner organizations.  Users can explore current knowledge about climate change from Pacific RISA’s interdisciplinary work in areas such as climate projections, hydrological modeling, disaster risk assessment, and legal and policy analysis.

HONOLULU (December 4, 2012)—The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) today released its first report, Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts (Island Press). The report highlights the findings of more than 100 scientists and other experts who assessed the state of knowledge about climate change and its impacts on the Hawaiian archipelago and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. The report also examines the adaptive capacity of island communities in the region.

HONOLULU (Jan.16, 2013) — The Pacific Islands Climate Services Forum to be held next week in Suva, Fiji, will feature discussion of the recently released 2012 Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) report, titled Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts.  The Forum provides an opportunity for dialogue between climate experts and decision makers, including resource and disaster risk managers and community planners, as well as government ministries and policy makers from across the region. PIRCA editors will present a summary of the report, which incorporates findings of the more than 100 scientists who assessed climate change impacts in Hawai‘i and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands.

According to participants at a strategic forecasting workshop held recently in Yangon, ethnic relations are likely to be one of the key drivers of change in Myanmar over the next seven years, along with the development of human capital, democratic gridlock, and the power triangle between China, India and the United States.

Young leaders from 10 Pacific nations participating in program supported by Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry

HONOLULU (Sept. 10, 2013) -- The East-West Center has welcomed the first group of participants to the Pacific Islands Leadership Program with Taiwan, a new initiative designed to enhance leadership capacity in the Pacific islands region and build a network of young leaders who will contribute to lasting people-to-people relationships across the Pacific, Asia, and United States.

HONOLULU (Feb 11, 2014) – The East-West Center has been awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study land-cover and land-use change in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Over the past half-century these countries have witnessed a major shift from subsistence agrarian economies to commercialized agriculture and, in the case of Thailand and Vietnam, industrialized societies. The project will study transitions in forests, boom crops and urban areas using remote sensing data sources and socioeconomic databases for the 2000-2012 period. The project’s aim is to enhance the conceptual underpinnings of land change science by integrating aspects of global markets, land use and political ecology to explicitly link land changes to local, national and international drivers.

Young leaders from 13 Pacific nations participating
in program supported by Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry

HONOLULU (Sept. 9, 2013) -- The East-West Center has welcomed 26 participants from 13 island nations to the 2014 Pacific Islands Leadership Program with Taiwan.

HONOLULU (June 16, 2016) – The Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center has launched a new and improved version of its Pacific Islands Report news website, which provides readers with a free, curated roundup of current news, commentary and analysis from across the Pacific islands.

HONOLULU (September 14, 2016) -- The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) has launched its new website at PIRCA.org.  The website provides a wealth of information and resources about climate change in Hawai‘i and the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI).

HONOLULU - (Aug 16, 2017) -- The East-West Center has welcomed 27 emerging leaders from 10 Pacific island nations to this year’s Pacific Islands Leadership Program with Taiwan, or PILP. The participants will spend close to two months in Honolulu, engaging in experiential learning exercises on such topics as applied leadership skills, future scenario planning, social entrepreneurship and risk analysis, climate change and environmental stewardship, international relations, and public health. Then they will travel to Taipei for a month of field study in at the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs.

HONOLULU (May 4, 2018) -- The East-West Center’s Board of Governors has unanimously approved a forward-looking plan to substantially recast and rejuvenate the Center’s longstanding Pacific Islands Development Program (PIDP).

HONOLULU (Oct 25, 2018) -- The East-West Center has been awarded funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support the International Research and Applications Project (IRAP), which is designed to support international, decision-based research on climate-sensitive health risks in partnership with the Pacific Regional Integrated Science and Assessment (RISA) program.

HONOLULU (November 23, 2018) – Strained freshwater supplies, damaged and compromised coastal infrastructure, coral reef death, and greater stresses on native biodiversity and species are among the major concerns and challenges detailed in the Hawai‘i-Pacific Islands chapter of the fourth official US National Climate Assessment, released today. In economic terms, the impacts add up to billions of dollars.

The chapter on Hawai‘i and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands appears in Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the most significant US report to assess the effects of climate change on the US economy and communities. The assessment finds that early action to address these impacts can lower economic, environmental, social, and cultural costs and could help to prevent conflict or displacement from lands and resources.

HONOLULU (Feb 25, 2020) -- The East-West Center has rolled out a major update of its affiliated Pacific Islands Development Program, or PIDP, with the launch yesterday of the program’s new website at PIDP.EastWestCenter.org. The new site highlights refocused priorities and new projects following recent user surveys and strategy dialogues with Pacific Islands leaders and stakeholders.