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This chapter situates the South Pacific region’s engagement in progressing gender equality and women’s empowerment within broader gender and development (GAD) debates. It explores the international ‘gender agenda’ and how its associated frameworks, platforms, policies and metrics have diffused throughout the South Pacific. Limited progress in achieving gender equality and empowerment goals has been made, globally and regionally, with considerable challenges yet to be overcome. Complementing the book’s focus on the integration of gender into agricultural research and development projects, the chapter reviews rural women’s access to income and land in the South Pacific, and their contributions to agricultural production and marketing.

A wide variety of factors influence international tourism; the number of trips taken, the distance traveled, the destinations selected for visits, and so forth. An understanding of these factors and their impacts is essential for the optimum development of tourism. The objective of this paper is, however, not to analyze or even identify all such influencing factors but rather to provide a framework for quantitatively examining the major elements or factor‐groups that influence travel in order to facilitate an identification and understanding of the various factors. The paper seeks to present a model or a tool that can be used for this needed analysis; the Pacific basin is used as en example.

Activism in the sport world is often connected to iconic images like the raised fists of John Carlos and Tommie Smith in a Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics or the figure of Cathy Freeman, wrapped in the Aboriginal flag, taking her victory lap at the 1994 Commonwealth Games and the 2020 Sydney Olympics. Activism, be it individual or through collective action, is a contemporary reality in sport. These actions reverberate out, sometimes joining with or magnifying other significant social and political currents to create waves that shift society. They may take the form of supporting mental health conversations, developing sporting infrastructure and support to expand opportunities for the next generation, concerted efforts at changing governance representation, or challenging sexist policy in sports, for example. This chapter draws from a talanoa on activism in Pacific sport, bringing these various activities together in order to surface the activism taking place, and better understand and reframe how we think about sport activism in Pacific communities. On the one hand, we recognize that particular cultural values like humility, respect, and orientations to servant leadership naturally encourage activism in the form of everyday advocacy and grassroots interventions. On the other, we discuss whether these values also prevent more outspoken and disruptive forms of activism which are often required to challenge systems of injustice and enact structural change. In this preliminary look at Pacific activism in sport, we surface some insights and raise questions for future research.

Countries across the Pacific are going through significant educational reforms. One of the most significant reforms within the education sector relates to education of children with disabilities. There is a push at the regional level to include students with disabilities in mainstream schools. Many countries are in the process of either revising existing policies or drafting new policy documents to implement inclusive education practices. One group of stakeholders that is going to be directly influenced by the policies is the families of children with disabilities. No attempts have been made to understand what parents think about the new policy directions. In this chapter, we make an attempt to present parental perspective about inclusive education from four countries of the Pacific (Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu). We believe understanding parental perspectives about inclusive education from the Pacific will shed some light on how likely the new reform will be embraced by them. It will also identify any significant issues of concern that may need to be considered for successful implementation of inclusive education reform in the Pacific.

TO WRITE that Robert Louis Stevenson in his books and essays draws deeply upon his own experiences to an unusual degree would be commonplace, but it is precisely because of this characteristic that we are able to catch a glimpse of the early beginnings of the library finally established at Vailima on the island of Upolu in the Samoas, where Stevenson's restless wanderings at last came to an end. Almost incredibly, some of his own childhood books, together with many inherited from his father and grandfather, were shipped half way across the world to Samoa. There they were varnished against the tropical humidity to form the nucleus of his library.

The aim of the paper is to examine the renewable energy resources for enhancing a green energy development in the face of energy crisis and climate change, and to explore the prospects for “new” renewable energy sources and the green energy initiatives taken in the Pacific Island countries (PICs).

The data were collated from a wide variety of sources including policy documents, road maps, reports, research articles on renewable and green energy sources. The methodology adopted was primarily a qualitative one based on a “content analysis”.

The findings reveal that increasing emphases have been given recently to “new” renewable and green energy sources in the Pacific Island countries as mitigation and adaptation strategies to fuel crisis and climate change. PICs have taken a wide range of green energy initiatives including “biomass”, solar, wind and other non‐traditional renewable energy sources and bio‐fuels development. Prospects for coconut, copra and palm‐oil based bio‐fuels do exist in many PICs. Opportunities for ethanol bio‐fuels also exist especially in Fiji.

Renewable and green energy sources are of practical implications to PICs. There is, however, a greater need for framing sound energy policies by the PICs.

The author has brought out clear linkages between climate change and green energy development and analyzed the importance of new renewable energy sources, especially in PICs. The paper has higher policy relevance and it is of great value in the context of sustainable energy development in PICs.