Lady Moxon said the Crown response "signifies a systematic breakdown of the principles outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi across all government levels."
In its response, the Crown acknowledged it had not consulted with its Treaty partner and it currently had no alternative solution to addressing health inequities for Māori.
The Crown said its decision to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora was "made by the government at the political level following political parties campaigning on this issue ahead of the recent General Election."
A submission responding to the Crowns opposition was filed on behalf of claimants on Wednesday which said the Crown "clearly intended to create backlash against Māori."
It said, the government intentionally created the "false impression of special treatment for Māori" and that "special treatment was presented as a problem politicians could promise to solve if elected, as a means to gain votes."
Mashiku’s Namibian co-accused have been charged with contravening the Forest Act, which carries fines of up to N$8 000, or two years’ imprisonment, or both.
Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism spokesperson Romeo Muyunda said yesterday there is a growing trend of criminal syndicates using locals to illegally harvest Namibia’s unique plant species.
“This case is one of many where international poaching syndicates use Namibian enablers to persuade local community members to find and harvest the plants for a small fee. The plants are then smuggled across international borders to be sold to plant collectors for substantial sums of money,” he says.
Muyunda says Mashiku’s capture was a major breakthrough.
The Kunene region’s crime investigations head, deputy commissioner Paavo Iiyambo, urges citizens to report any suspicious activity. “I would like to encourage the community members of the Khorixas, Sesfontein, Puros and Okondjombo areas, where these protected plant species are illegally harvested, to report to the authorities any suspicious movement in their area of jurisdiction,” he says.
Executive director of environment, forestry and tourism Teofilus Nghitila says the ministry takes biodiversity crimes very seriously. “These criminals will not stop until our plants are all gone, and there is nothing left for Namibians to benefit from and enjoy. We simply cannot let that happen, therefore I charge all our officials across the country to be on high alert to apprehend perpetrators,” he says.
Adenia pechuelii is a threatened plant species due to the high level of harvesting and slow growth and reproduction rates.
“Let’s continue to work together to ensure a safer and more secure future for Inuit women, girls and gender-diverse Inuit, wherever they live in Canada,” said former Iqaluit mayor and MLA Elisapee Sheutiapik, who represents Iqaluit on Pauktuutit’s board.
Sheutiapik said her family has been impacted by gender-based violence. She called for more resources such as better mental health supports and education, to address the root causes of violence.
Marked annually on Dec. 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women commemorates women’s lives lost to violence on the anniversary of the 1989 mass shooting at École Polytechnique in Montreal.
On numerous occasions, Félix Tshisekedi has denounced Rwandan "aggression" "under the guise of the M23", accusing Rwanda, which he described a few months ago as a "horrible neighbor", of wanting to monopolize the wealth, particularly mining, of eastern Congo.
"But this time, (Paul Kagame) has met a son of the country determined to protect his country against all kinds of foreign aggression", said Félix Tshisekedi, whose remarks in French were translated into Swahili (a language spoken in eastern DRC and several East African countries), in front of thousands of people gathered in Bukavu's Place de l'Indépendance.
In power since January 2019, Félix Tshisekedi is seeking a second term in the elections scheduled for December 20 in the DRC, and is multiplying his travels across the country. After South Kivu, he is scheduled to visit Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, this weekend.
Didiza‘s spokesperson Reggie Ngcobo said the minister is concerned about the negative impact the import restrictions will have on bilateral trade between the two countries.
“The minister will seek an urgent meeting with her Botswana’s counterpart in order to raise her concerns and further listen to her colleague on what may be the underlying concerns that has made Botswana to take this move.
“Minister Didiza raised South Africa’s concerns on these restrictions during the SACU [Southern Africa Customs Union] Summit in July 2023. There was hope that a broader bilateral engagement will take place between agriculture and trade ministers of the two countries to try and have a better understanding on what has occasioned such a move from Botswana,” said Ngcobo.
“We hope that the engagements will assist in resolving this challenge for the benefit of our countries and industry,” said Didiza.
...A Paraguayan government official has been replaced after it was revealed that he signed a memorandum of understanding with representatives of a fugitive Indian guru’s fictional country, who also appear to have duped several other officials in the South American country.
Arnaldo Chamorro was replaced as chief of staff for Paraguay’s agriculture ministry on Wednesday shortly after it was revealed that he signed a “proclamation” with representatives of the United States of Kailasa...
The revelation sparked a scandal – and lots of social media mockery – in Paraguay but it’s hardly the first time self-described representatives of the United States of Kailasa duped international leaders. Earlier this year, they managed to participate in a UN committee meeting in Geneva and also signed agreements with local leaders in the United States and Canada.
The thing I don't get is it claims to be several states therefore presumably relatively big. If it were just one small group of separatists that would be more plausible.
Reed Brody, a human rights lawyer who works with victims of Jammeh told JURIST that:
"The long arm of the law has caught up to Bai Lowe in Germany, just as it’s catching up to Yahya Jammeh’s henchmen all around the world, and as it will hopefully soon catch up to Jammeh himself. Today’s conviction shows that these men can run but they can’t hide. But Bai Lowe was only a little man. He wasn’t the one who planned these killings. We know that it was Yahya Jammeh himself who was behind these crimes. The verdict should ecourage the Gambian government to begin the criminal justice process at home. Victims shouldn’t have to go abroad to seek redress for what happened to them in Gambia."
In May 2022 Gambia’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dawda A. Jallow, extended governmental approval to prosecute former President Yahya Jammeh for alleged atrocities. Jallow relayed the confirmation while releasing the government’s white paper on the report of the country’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC). In 2021, the TRRC delivered its report to President Adama Barrow, recommending the prosecutions of anyone who was associated with atrocities committed during Yahya Jammeh’s 22 years in the presidency.
This is approximately 800 baby giraffes in height. And about 1/135th the area of Lake Okeechobee in the peninsular state of Florida. So people will have common useful size references. :-) FWIW, I've never been to Burj Khalifa.
Edit: The sea mount has the same area, 14 square km, as Laguna de Ayarza.
Experts from the Schmidt Ocean Institute discovered the seamount, which covers 14 square km, using a multi-beam echosounder on the Falkor (too) research vessel...
The seafloor feature was discovered 84 nautical miles outside the Guatemalan Exclusive Economic Zone during a six-day crossing this summer from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, towards the East Pacific Rise.
The Schmidt Ocean Institute on-board crew included a GEBCO-trained hydrographic expert, who confirmed that the seamount is not in any seafloor bathymetric database.
It was the ninth seafloor discovery since the research vessel Falkor (2), was launched in March.
Discoveries have included two additional uncharted seamounts in the Galápagos Islands Marine Reserve, three new hydrothermal vent fields, a new ecosystem underneath hydrothermal vents, and two pristine cold-water coral reefs.
Seamounts are biodiversity hotspots, providing surfaces for deep-sea corals, sponges, and a host of invertebrates...
Last week, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told RNZ Pacific that Cook Islands will continue its seabed "exploration phase", despite facing criticism from campaign groups.
The current meeting is a continuation of what was discussed in July, where member states agreed on a non-binding timeline for mining rules to be adopted in 2025.
Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition international lawyer Duncan Currie said there were "opposite currents" within the ISA with the growing list of countries calling for a moratorium.
"There is a crosscurrent going on," Currie said.
Duncan Currie speaking at a nuclear conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, 2022
"You have 23 countries including Aotearoa New Zealand and now the United Kingdom and other significant countries, such as Canada, Switzerland, that are now saying we want a moratorium. "That directly cuts across the regulations, because of course, the regulations will allow seabed mining to start."
Currie said although it is a strange situation, a similar thing happened in the late 1980s when the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities was negotiated.
"That was actually finished as a template for mining in Antarctica and then after that, a number of countries said 'no, we don't want mining in Antarctica, we want a moratorium', so they agreed on a 50-year moratorium.The law is different, but the international political dynamic is the same.I think the majority of public opinion gets their way then we'll get a moratorium, but a number of other countries feel differently."
A big discussion point during the July meeting was the two-year rule - a provision under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that once triggered means if regulations are not adopted within two years, mining licenses could be granted under whatever rules exist.
Nauru triggered the rule in 2021 that lapsed on 9 July of this year.It means The Metals Company can apply to mine under its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources and the ISA would have to consider the application.
"Nauru is expected to file this application to go seabed mining after the July meeting in 2024," Currie said.
"There's a lot of countries that do not want to see unregulated seabed mining happen.
"This is a very contentious, very legalistic and very politically contentious area, so that will really come to pass in July of next year."
Currie believes there will be a lot of "legal and political wrangling" around the two-year rule between now and June next year.
A comedian who does silly skits about Australia (complete with cheap wigs and accents), who also does hard-hitting journalism about Australia and its corruption to the point of having his house firebombed by “someone.”
@boywar3 thanks, that's interesting. I will have to watch more. Crazy about the firebomb. I did wonder when I noticed some people in the comments referring to potential attackers!
Comedians and hard-hitting journalism is shaping up to be a bit of a phenomenon. E.g. I really like John Oliver's show.
It finds that all the critical water basins on the continent were experiencing distress and turbulence due to, among other reasons, unsustainable use of resources besides climate, becoming hotspots for competition over water.
The basins include Lake Chad, shared by Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger, the river Nile shared by Egypt, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia; Lake Victoria, Shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; and the river Niger used by communities in Niger, Mali and Nigeria.
Also on the list is the river Congo basin, a joint resource used by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and the Lake Malawi basin shared by Tanzania and Malawi. Also on the list is the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Examples show that the Lake Chad basin disputes started in 1980, and the water body has diminished by 90 percent since the 1960s due to overuse and climate change effects.
“For years, the lake has supported drinking water, irrigation, fishing, livestock and economic activity for over 30 million people; it is vital for indigenous, pastoral and farming communities in one of the world’s poorest countries. However, climate change has fueled massive environmental and humanitarian crises in the region,” the report notes.
It notes that international actors and regional governments have long ignored the interplay between climate change, community violence and the forced displacement of civilians.
“Conflict between herders and farmers have become common as livelihoods are lost, and families dependent on the lake are migrating to other areas in search of water,” the report says.
“In the Congo basin, disputes started in 1960. The basin witnesses multifaceted crises, including forced displacement, violent conflicts, political instability, and climate change impacts,” it concludes.
On the other hand, it traces conflicts in the Niger basin to 1980, blaming climate change for disagreements over “damage to farmland and restricted access to water, while in the Nile, disagreements began around 2011 stemming from the construction of the Grand Renaissance dam by Ethiopia, which Egypt fears will impact water flow.
Conflicts over Lake Turkana resources are fairly recent, traced to 2016 when it was observed that with 90 percent of its water from the Omo River in Ethiopia, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have contributed to the lake’s ‘retreat’ into Kenya.
To survive, the Ethiopian herder tribes began following the water, resulting in inter-tribal conflict with their Kenyan counterparts. The construction of Ethiopia’s Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the river worsened matters.
It notes that in 2020, between 75 and 250 million people on the continent were projected to be “exposed to increased water stress” due to climate change, warning that in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could drop up to 50 percent due to drying up of traditional water sources including lakes, rivers, and wells.
“How Africa manages its water resources will define how water-secure the world would be. Africa’s aquifers hold 0.66 million KM3 of water. This is more than 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resources stored in dams and rivers.”...
...Africa, the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, hosts a quarter of the planet’s animal and plant species, but the species extinction and general biodiversity loss rate in the continent are higher than in the rest of the world.
As a result, total deaths from extreme weather, climate or water stress in the world in the last 50 years, 35 percent of them were in Africa. Predictably, Africa will account for 40 percent of the world’s migration due to climate change.
“While the Global South will bear the maximum burden of internal migration, the reasons might vary from region to region, depending on climate change-related issues like water scarcity or rising sea levels. However, water scarcity will be the main driving force of the total migration, the report explains.
Citing the example of chimpanzees, the SOE 2023 reports that there are only 1.050 million to 2.050 million of the species on the continent, limited to Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, with populations having disappeared in Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo.
On the brighter side, it says that African countries have some pioneering conservation models that, among other things, put communities at the centre of conservation efforts, noting that if Africa protects its biodiversity, the whole world will also gain.
Protected areas in Africa, if sustainably used, can eradicate poverty and bring peace, it asserts.
South Africa will be worst impacted by extreme weather events, making some areas inhospitable because of weather events, where already people are being forced to migrate within their own countries or regions in search of more hospitable and better living conditions, said Sunita Narain, CSE Director General.
Explaining the rationale behind the report, Narain said: “We can read and get the immediate story today, but often we do not get the big picture. The report will help us get that big picture. It will enable us to understand the different aspects of the environment by putting together a comprehensive picture that makes the links clearer between the environment and development. Environment and development are two sides of the same coin.”
She added that the report, produced with input from scientists and Africa-based journalists, also helped people appreciate the link between development and the environment.
According to Mamo Boru Mamo, director of Kenya’s National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the issues raised in the report are important and pertinent to the environment in Africa.
Among other things, the SOE 2023 had captured the plight of East Africa’s agro-pastoral communities whose migration from arid and semi-arid areas of Africa to urban centres and out of the continent has risen over the recent years, thanks in part to accelerated degradation of the environment.
“The continent has a collective responsibility to manage the environment sustainably while giving direction on the position Africa should take in the upcoming UN’s COP28 in Dubai,” he said.
Citing the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022”, it finds that in East Africa, rainfall has been below average for four consecutive wet seasons, the most extended sequence in 40 years.
The region recorded five consecutive deficit rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with the rainy season of March to May 2022 being the driest in over 70 years for Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, partly due to the destruction of the environment and climate change.
Overall, the report confirms that the climate crisis in Africa was an existential problem facing millions of people who have endured the wrath of nature for years.
Over 100 journalists, researchers and experts from across Africa have contributed to the preparation of this annual publication.
Not saying it's the case here, but whenever there's an international crisis or something that drowns out everything else, people will deliberately 'bury' bad news by releasing it.
Like Farrah Fawcett dying the same day as Michael Jackson, the papers spent little time covering the former.
@Hyperreality I don't think there was any alternative in Farrah Fawcett's case but I know what you mean.
People take unpopular actions too. Might be my imagination but the Tatmadaw seems to bomb villages during major battles in Ukraine.
That said, in this case I think the verdict has just been arrived at by the court. Though, I can imagine if they knew it would be an unpopular verdict they may have delayed it.
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