Papua
New Guinea’s Northern Province Governor Gary Juffa …he asked what about the climate
change activists and West Papuan advocates? Where were they? Image: David
Robie/PMC
A recent Andy Marlette cartoon published by the Statesman Journal
in Salem, Oregon, depicted a bathtub-looking Noah’s Ark with a couple
of stony-faced elephants on board with a sodden sign declaring “Climate
change is a hoax”.
The other animals on board floating to safety were muttering among
themselves: “The elephants won’t admit that these 100-year events are
happening once a month …”
At the other end of the globe in Wellington this week for the second
Pacific Ocean Climate Conference at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, I encountered a
fatalistic message from a Tongan taxi driver counting down the hours
before the tail-end of Tropical Cyclone Gita struck the New Zealand
capital after wreaking a trail of devastation in Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.
He had it all worked out: “We don’t need climate conferences,” he said. “Just trust in God and we’ll survive.”
However, a key takeaway message from the three-day conference was
just how urgent action is needed by global policymakers, especially for
the frontline states in the Pacific – Kiribati, Marshall Islands and
Tuvalu, where none of the sprawling atolls that make up those countries
are higher than 2m above sea level.
Drone views of the village of Timbulsloko showing the scale of coastal erosion and sinking flatlands in an area that once used to be rice fields on the edge of the Central Java city of Semarang. Mangroves are being rapidly re-established. Drone footage source: CoREM (UNDIP). Video compilation: Scott Creighton (AUT), David Robie’s Café Pacific
ANALYSIS: By David Robie in Semarang, Indonesia
A vast coastal area of the Indonesian city of Semarang, billed nine months ago by a national newspaper as “on the brink of ecological disaster”, is fighting back with a valiant survival strategy.
Thanks to a Dutch mangrove restoration programme and flexible bamboo-and-timber “eco” seawalls, some 70,000 people at risk in the city of nearly two million have some slim hope for the future.
An area that was mostly rice fields and villages on the edge of the old city barely two decades ago has now become “aquatic” zones as flooding high tides encroach on homes.
Onetime farmers have been forced to become fishermen.
Villagers living in Bedono, Sriwulan, Surodadi and Timbulsloko in Demak regency and urban communities in low-lying parts of the city are most at risk.
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie will next week join academics from around the world in a global professorial exchange with Indonesia's Universitas Gadjah Mada. In return, six academics from the progressive Yogyakarta university have visited Auckland University of Technology for the first communication and publication research collaboration of its kind in New Zealand.
The academics from Yogyakarta, led by Gadjah Mada University's Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, arrived in Auckland earlier this month for a two-week visit featuring workshops, seminars and joint research projects related to climate change.
They will also be collaborating with their newly published research journal IKAT, the PMC's 23-year-old Pacific Journalism Review and AUT Library's Tuwhera research platform on a major project involving ecological communication and Asia-Pacific maritime disasters.
Dr Robie is one of six academics invited by CESASS as part of the Indonesian government's World Class Professor (WCP) programme to strengthen international publication and research studies.
A pensive Peter Willcox at a detention hearing at the Kalininskiy Court in Saint Petersburg in 2013 before being set free. Originally charged with "piracy" with a penalty of up to 15 years, Willcox faced the prospect of languishing in a Russian jail for the rest of his life. Image: Igor Podgorny/Greenpeace
WHEN Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, a collection of 33
tiny atolls sprawling across the Pacific equator in the frontline of
climate change, believed he wasn’t being listened to, he thought of a
simple strategy – polar bears.
By comparing himself and his country’s meagre population of 102,000 to the endangered creature, he suddenly got more headlines.
The endangered polar bear … anecdote for former President Tong,
FB mojo for Peter Willcox. Image: Still from Greenpeace video
And he got the idea after having just seen a polar bear in the wild.
“I drew a comparison that what happens to polar bears will also be happening to us in our part of the world,” he explained.
Tong feared that the bears in their Arctic habitat, like the people
of Kiribati in the Pacific, were in danger of losing their homes in the
near future.
Today the polar bear is the mojo adopted by Greenpeace skipper Peter Willcox on his Facebook page.
THE WHEEL of climate action turns slowly, but in Paris it has turned. There’s much in this deal - the so-called Paris Agreement - that frustrates and disappoints me, but it still puts the fossil fuel industry squarely on the wrong side of history.
Parts of this deal have been diluted and polluted by the people who despoil our planet, but it contains a new temperature limit of less than 2C degrees.
That single number, and the new goal of net zero emissions by the second half of this century, will cause consternation in the boardrooms of coal companies and the palaces of oil-exporting states and that is a very good thing. The transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable.
Now comes our great task of this century. How do we meet this new goal?
The measures outlined simply do not get us there. When it comes to forcing real, meaningful action, Paris fails to meet the moment.
We have a 1.5 degree wall to climb, but the ladder isn’t long enough. The emissions targets outlined in this agreement are simply not big enough to get us to where we need to be.
THE three major oil and gas economies - Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela - have emerged as the main stumbling block to the push by Pacific and Small Island Developing States to limit global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius at the climate negotiations in Paris.
Climate Action Network, an association of more than 100 powerful civil society groups around the world that follow the negotiations, said the three countries refused to shift their positions, citing their own vulnerabilities.
BREAKING NEWS:Historic deal praised – but criticised by Pacific commentators Pacific commentators were quick to criticise the 31-page pact dubbed the “Paris Agreement” with Fiji-based Islands Business editor Samisoni Pareti tweeting from Paris: “Not a good deal ... 2 watered down, no below 1.5, no loss n (sic) damage, God save the Pacific!"
“As you can understand the economies of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are dependent on fossils. Clearly what the small islands are asking for – to phase out oil and gas will affect their economies big time," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace.
Saudi Arabia argued that, like the small islands, it is also faced with extreme weather events like flooding, heat waves and drought.
“The small and vulnerable nations have stood their ground of 1.5 degrees in the negotiations despite the attacks by Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela," said Kaiser.
Roskill MP and opposition Labour spokesperson on disarmament Phil Goff speaking
at the World Without War conference in Auckland today. Image: Del Abcede
BEFORE Parisian car engineer turned-designer Louis Réard named the sexy two-piece swimsuit he created a “bikini” in 1946, it was the name of an obscure Pacific atoll in the Marshall Islands, lost among more than 1100 islets in the trust territory, now an independent republic.
And Bikini Atoll was the Ground Zero for 23 US nuclear tests in the Pacific – out of some 67 conducted over the next dozen years in the Marshall Islands. (Excellent background on this in Giff Johnson's Don't Ever Whisper).
Last year the little republic filed a controversial lawsuit in the International Court of Justice at The Hague against Washington and the eight other nuclear powers – Britain, China, France, India, Israel (although it denies possessing a nuclear arsenal), North Korea, Pakistan and Russia.
The Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear club members of “violating their duty” to negotiate in good faith for the elimination of these weapons.
Now, over this weekend in New Zealand, some 200 people have participated in a World Without War conference drawing up a list for proposed action for peace and the Marshall Islands action came in for some strong support from several speakers.
AN innovative community publisher has teamed up with Café Pacific and the Pacific Media Centre to launch a dynamic microsite to honour the courage and commitment of the Rainbow Warrior nuclear-free campaigners.
And to inspire activism for the environmental causes still to be won – like seriously addressing climate change before it’s too late.
Or continuing the struggle for the Rongelap, Tahitian and other islanders whose lives have been ravaged by the legacy of nuclear testing.
Little Island Press, which specialises in Pacific projects, has teamed up with author David Robie and the centre to collaborate with journalism and television students.
The digital microsite – “Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On” – has gone live this week. Over the next few weeks some 13 news stories and five full studio interviews will be rolled out on the website or on the PMC’s YouTube channel.
The campaign will run until the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985 and climax with publication of the new edition of Eyes of Fire.
Pacific Media Watch editor Alistar Kata interviewing Kiribati Independent editor Taberannang Korauaba
about his climate change research in Micronesia at last night's seminar. Photo: Del Abcede/PMC
FIVE YEARS ago, as an environmental journalist and journalism educator, I attended “Oceans, Islands and Skies” – the Oceanic Conference of Creativity and Climate Change – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
I found this a very moving, stimulating and inspiring experience. Until then, I had largely worked on the global and Pacific political dimensions of climate change.
At that conference I found myself thrust among a tremendously talented group of people from all over the globe. And it was where I first encountered Briar March’s remarkable documentary There Once Was An Island: Te Henua e Nnoho about the plight of the people of Takuu, a tiny Polynesian atoll in Papua New Guinea, also known as Takuu Mortlock.
The islanders were confronted with the harsh reality of rising seas and climate change and were forced to make a decision about whether to abandon their traditional Pacific homeland for the coast of Bougainville. (They were divided, some left for Bougainville - mostly younger people, others stayed).
In many ways this is an iconic storytelling of the reality of climate change told by the islanders themselves.
Raging fires around Athens, a still from the devastating Alister Barry climate change film Hot Air
by photographer Nikos Pilos.
IN THE wrap-up session of the Pacific Journalism Review 20th anniversary conference at the weekend, independent film maker Alister Barry was beaming.
"I've never had such a tremendous reception for the film," he admitted to Café Pacific. He was blown away by the tremendously engaged and enthusiastic response of a packed audience. Many said his climate change film Hot Air, premiered at the NZ International Film Festival in July, was inspirational.
But what needs to be done? The Vanguard Films investigation reveals in a devastating way how politicians are shackled when trying to confront such a critical global challenge as climate change. It also exposes the weaknesses of the NZ democratic system.
The lively discussion at AUT University centred on what strategies need to be followed. Some called for another documentary about climate change in the Pacific. A graduating student journalist from AUT was on hand to report the discussion.
I NEED to tell you: Typhoon Haiyan was worse than any of us could ever have imagined. The Philippines receives 20+ typhoons every year - floods, landslides and partly-blown off roofs are par for the course.
Believe me when I say we have never before seen the likes of Yolanda /Haiyan.
I need to tell you: Everyday, I read the news and reports from the field, thinking we've reached the bottom of suffering and despair, only to find new depths.
Just when I think my heart can't break any further from the stories of loss and tragedy, something new turns up to break it all over again.
I need to tell you about the bodies decomposing on tree branches, under piles of rubble from collapsed houses, in churches, on the sides of roads, wrapped in blankets or straw mats.
I need to tell you that the news cameras cannot show their faces - features frozen in fear as they died.
I need to tell you about the storm surge - the 6-metre wall of water that rose out of the sea, rushed several kilometres inland and crashed over every building and house by the coastline.
You need to understand that our nation is made up of 7107 islands; nearly everything is by the coastline.
CLIMATE CHANGE is top of the agendain Majuro as the Pacific Islands Forum meets for the 44th time.
The Marshall Islands is calling for strong committed action on preventing and responding to climate change, as it welcomes delegates from 16 member states (minus suspended Fiji) to the renewable village that will play host to the next four days of talks.
Marshall Islands Forum Minister Phillip Muller said the Majuro Declaration was about “tangible action” rather than a “you-go-first” approach to climate policy.
“In the Pacific, we cannot afford to wait. We want the Forum to set the stage for a new, bolder approach,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in June.
“We call on not just governments but also intergovernmental organisations, the private sector and civil society to sign on to our declaration with their own measurable commitments aimed at averting a climate catastrophe.”
The Hungry Tide, one of the documentaries featured in Professor David Robie’s Suva paper on Pacific journalism’s own challenges of adaptation to environmental changes. Trailer: Ronin Films
A former USP academic says global environmental challenges – especially in the Pacific region – give the opportunity for deliberative journalism to help Pacific communities become empowered.
At a symposium organised during the recent 12th Pacific Science Inter-Congress, Professor David Robie, based at the Auckland University of Technology and a former head of USP Journalism, talked about a variety of issues stemming from the challenge of environmental reporting in the Pacific.
Deliberative journalism is issues-based reporting, and looking at daily news as issues and not merely events. In the Pacific context, reporting on environmental issues such as climate change have become more prevalent, with countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu bearing the brunt of these global challenges.
Dr Robie was speaking at a parallel social sciences symposium entitled “Oceans and Islands: ‘Failed states’ and the environment in the Pacific”.
New Zealand Labour MPs Louisa Wall and Kris Fa'afoi, a former
journalist, speaking about the Marriage Amendment Bill and Pacific
culture in Parliament. The bill, designed to amend the 1955 Marriage Act
to enable gay couples to marry, decisively passed its third reading.
The MPs also spoke at this week's Pacific Parliament and Politics Forum
in Wellington. Video: Tagata Pasifika/NZ Parliament
GOVERNMENT and opposition MPs and NGO representatives from 18 countries made a significant commitment to gender equality and sustainable development last weekend, but the forum received limited coverage from New Zealand and international media.
Barred West Papuan leader Benny Wenda with
PMC journalist Henry Yamo.
Image: Del Abcede/PMC
More than 70 delegates from across the Pacific were in Wellington for the Pacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum, including New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and other National, Labour, Green and independent MPs.
Delegates agreed on the need for greater action around gender equality, climate change and healthcare - but overwhelmingly rejected a push from the World Bank to free up trade conditions and deregulate economies.
NZAid invested $330,000 in the forum - the first of its kind in New Zealand history - but media coverage was scarce.
In a city park girding the gray Atlantic ocean, dozens of people stood on line before a giant tent, each toting small bags of garbage. They waited patiently, each one eager to add their bit to the work in progress—plastic artist Vik Muniz’s giant montage of the Rio de Janeiro made of recycled trash. Turning waste into art is Muniz’s specialty and a sorely needed skill set for the occasion.
Across town, in a cavernous convention hall, delegates from 192 nations were putting the finishing flourishes—and their bravest faces—on another piece of work, the final statement of Rio+20. But to hear it from green groups, social activists, and even some conference-goers, global leaders had turned Muniz’s idea on its ear, converting a precious and rare international summit into a squandered opportunity.
For the past three days, heads of state and ministers had gathered at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to hash out a global road map for reversing climate change and achieving economic growth for all without trashing the environment. They congratulated themselves on a job well done.
“I have not the slightest doubt that the outcome document you have adopted will provide an enduring legacy,” said Sha Zukang, secretary-general of the Rio+20 conference. “During this conference, you, the world’s leaders, renewed your political commitment for sustainable development.”
Marine life in peril
Others were not so sure. Optimistically dubbed “The Future We Want,” the conference statement read more like “The To-Do List From Hell.” With marine life in peril, global carbon emissions reaching a record 32 billion tons last year, and emerging market powerhouses led by China adding to the fumes, expectations were bright for concrete action. But by the end, world leaders were as conspicuously short on goals, timetables, and commitments as they were high on rhetoric.
In a speech in Rio, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called sustainable development “the only viable development” possible in the 21st century. “The only way to deliver lasting progress for everyone is by preserving our resources and protecting our common environment,” she added.
Part of the problem was the gymnastics of striking a balance among 192 nations, ranging from juggernauts to poorhouses. Brazilian wordsmiths who edited the final-document draft reportedly had to hit the delete button repeatedly to accommodate outliers and to keep talks from derailing. That they produced a document at all was already something of a triumph, an effort hailed by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as a “victory for multilateralism.”
Brazilian wordsmiths who edited the final document draft reportedly had to hit the delete button repeatedly to accommodate outliers and to keep talks from derailing.
To others it was a pearl of underachievement. No new targets were set for slashing gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that scientists warn are overheating the atmosphere. When developing nations proposed creating a $30 billion fund to back green jobs and environmentally sustainable initiatives, the richest countries played deaf, distracted perhaps by the euro-zone crisis.
Protection measures
Likewise, specific measures for protecting the high seas and endangered reefs and marine fauna ended up on the cutting-room floor, with further discussion deferred to another environmental parley in 2015.
“It is frankly astonishing that world leaders all agreed that this is a major problem needing an international, coordinated solution and then deferred any decision on action for another two and a half years,” Susan Lieberman, international policy director for the Pew Environment Group, said in a statement. The International Union for Conservation of Nature reports that one in 10 natural heritage sites around the globe are endangered.
But while many in Rio despaired, others lobbied. Ivonne A-Baki, the secretary of state for Ecuador, worked the corridors in Rio to drum up support for protecting a 1 million–hectare patch of unspoiled rainforest. Yasuni Natonal Park, where the equator meets the Andes, is famed for its fabulous variety of plants and animals. It also sits on 846 million barrels of oil, fully a fifth of Ecuador’s proven reserves, worth an estimated $7.2 billion, a treasure trove for a poor country. But instead of cashing in that wealth, Ecuador declared the Yasuni off-limits to drilling and wants the world to pitch in.
“By leaving the oil in the ground, we avoid releasing 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” says Baki. “That’s about as much as France or Brazil emit in a year.”
In exchange for leaving the area intact, Ecuador is looking to raise $3.6 billion from international donors to help protect the park. Though Rio+20 failed to pass the vaunted $30 billion green fund, it was the perfect venue to tout the project.
“Sometimes in a big meeting like this, the good intentions stay on paper,” she said. “But we were in Rio to raise awareness. We have to understand that climate change is going to be a lot more expensive for the world than the current economic crisis.”
PACIFIC hopes were high. The compelling climate change documentary Sun Come Up was shortlisted for the Oscars. Astonishingly, an environmental film about Papua New Guinea was in the running for a short subject documentary award.
Several commentators were tipping Sun Come Up for final honours. But no. It was pipped by another deeply moving film, Strangers No More, a delightful Israeli documentary telling the tale of the children and their survival stories from 48 countries. The youngsters take their lessons and share their experiences at Bialik-Rogozin School in south Tel Aviv.
This is an inspiring parable of peace.
The films opens with these lines:
For most children, getting to school is as simple as going around the block. But for others it’s a dangerous journey across hostile borders.
Once child: “I [saw] my father killed in front of me.”
Another schoolboy: “They shoot people and kill them”.
A schoolgirl: “I just had to find a safe place.”
Disappointing as it may be for Sun Come Up’s filmmakers, Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger, and supporters to miss out at the final hurdle, one correspondent of Pacific Scoop summed up the views of many by saying:
Heads up to the media for taking climate change issues to this level…the Oscars…this is amazing! It’s also a brilliant way to get climate change out there to a totally different set of audience….new mindset…probably a new approach to tackling the issue will spring up….and more empathy rather than sympathy derived from this.
I actually have a lot of optimism in Hollywood stars doing something about it compared to politicians who have been doing nothing more than talking about it all these years….we’re so totally over their senseless negotiations!
The truth is that Sun Come Up had really tough competition this year with three other strong environmental and social justice films also in the frame. Shortlisted were: Gasland (this takes a critical look at the natural gas extraction industry, which has been blamed for polluting local water supplies; Waste Land, which exposes the life of catadores, or scavengers, in the world’s largest garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro; and The Warriors of Qiugang, which tells the story of poor villagers challenging “runaway pollution” by three local industrial sites.
Also spare a thought for another inspiring climate change documentary from New Zealand, Briar March's There Was Once an Island (about the plight of Takuu atoll in Papua New Guinea). This wasn’t nominated, but it ought to have been.
NEWSPAPER of the Year – The Fiji Times: This is thesecond year running it has won the Café Pacific newspaper prize. Although The Fiji Times went off the boil under Netani Rika’s leadership and headed for a disastrous demise with it uncomprising but unrealistic stance when dealing with a military regime, the newspaper wins the award again - this time for its change of ownership, change of tactics and a realistic overhaul of its strategic direction. Under the naïve management in the last stages of the News Ltd era, the 141-year-old newspaper was heading for closure under the 10 percent local ownership ultimatum under the regime’s Media Industry Development Decree. This fate would have sealed the end of any credible fightback for an independent media in Fiji.
However, under the new ownership of the Motibhai group (“Mac” Motibhai Patel was a Fiji Times director for about four decades) and with the recall of a previous outstanding Australian publisher, Dallas Swinstead, to the hotseat, the paper now has the chance to fight another day. Neogotiation rather than confrontation seems to be the new approach under editor Fred Wesley. Time will tell whether this succeeds.
But paradoxically The Fiji Times also blots its copy book with the Most Toadying Story of the Year – a front page story on Fiji Water that ran as a sort of advertising wrap around given the marketing image displayed. When the US-based company Fiji Water announced its closure this was a petulant response to a massive tax clampdown on the company, many breathed an “about time” sigh – they regarded the company as having exploiting Fiji for years. While some in the media fraternity expected the regime to cave in – as it had done on a previous attempt to boost the state tax returns - this time it was the company that surrendered with a reversal of its close down edict and a vow of business as usual. The Fiji Times needed to have published a more exhaustive inquiry into the economics of Fiji Water and also ought to have a higher level of scrutiny of other foreign-owned companies operating in the country. This is revelatory about the level of business journalism on the paper at the moment.
Media film – There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Noho: Strictly speaking, this isn’t a media film at all, but a powerful and heart-rending documentary about the realities of climate change in the Pacific, a film that every journalist working on environmental issues should watch. It is extremely educational about the power relationships between politicians in far-away Pacific capitals and their incompetent functionaries and island communities struggling for survival on remote islands with the political odds stacked against them. Filmmaker Briar March lived with the community on the Polynesian atoll of Takuu (also known as the Mortlock islands) as they wrestled with their life-and-death decisions over a move to the Bougainville autonomous region mainland some 250 km to the south-west.
This film had its premier in the New Zealand International Film Festival in July and was also screened at the Oceans, Islands and Skies creativity and climate change conference at the University of the South Pacific in September. Sadly, not one local Fiji journalist took the trouble of seeing it, let alone write about it. It has already won four awards in 2010 and was the runner-up as the best political film for the AOF Festival 2010.
Media monitoring agency – Reporters sans frontières (RSF): Again, this award is well-deserved globally for 2010, but the agency is also now boosting its Asia-Pacific coverage with several new nations now being included in its Pacific section of the annual media freedom survey. Its coverage of East Timor and Papua New Guinea is particularly welcome. According to RSF's 2010 end-of-year report:
57 journalists killed (25 percent fewer than in 2009) 51 journalists kidnapped 535 journalists arrested 1374 physically attacked or threatened 504 media censored 127 journalists fled their country 152 bloggers and netizens arrested 52 physically attacked 62 countries affected by internet censorship Check out the full report.
Independent new website - Taimi Media Network Online: This new website is a hybrid offering from both the feisty independent newspaper Taimi ‘o Tonga and the government-owned Tonga Chronicle and TMN-Television 2. Congratulations Kalafi Moala and his team. This could not be better timed as the momentous post-election changes are settling down in Tonga. Scrutiny is needed now more than ever.
Also, a special mention of the Pacific Media Centre’s new revamped regional website: www.pmc.aut.ac.nz – unlike some of the regional media websites, this is genuinely independent and carries no vested interests baggage.
Greenpeace isn't on the port of Lyttelton's Christmas card list any more - if it ever was! But the charmed public image of the global environment lobby and activist group in New Zealand took a beating with a high profile attempted blockade of a "legal" shipment of coal to China late last month. This spectacular protest against the Hellenic Sea led to six arrests and ill-informed mutterings by the local establishment about Greenpeace tactics. In a Press article this weekend , Philip Matthews raised the question of whether the message about climate change is a harder sell than the old "black-and-white" issues of nuclear-testing and waste. But current Greenpeace executive director Bunny McDiarmid, who was a crew member on the original Rainbow Warrior at the time of the bombing by French state-terrorists in July 1985, reminds us about the harsh reality of back then. The RW's tactics were to try to get in the way of ships before barrels of nuclear waste could be kicked overboard. It's a shocker: back then, dumping nuclear waste was entirely legal. Greenpeace's action, both at sea and behind the scenes, were instrumental in having nuclear waste declared illegal. "A lot of things that are considered legal today will be illegal tomorrow," she says. I am quoted in the article about "classic Greenpeace" tactics to boost public awareness of the broader issue - in this case climate change. In the earlier post-bombing years, Greenpeace - small, non-violent, determinedly independent in terms of not taking money from governments or corporations - was like an idealised version of New Zealand itself in the early years of the nuclear-free legislation. But the movement took a dip in membership in the 1990s as self-interest began to dominate community values. It's refreshing to see these grassroots protests making their mark.
