The business FAO’s activities are divided into four main areas: the organization compiles and disseminates knowledge, advises member countries, offers a meeting place for intergovernmental negotiations and disseminates knowledge in the field through development...
Yearbook 2014 Vanuatu. At least ten people died when tropical cyclone Lusi pulled over Vanuatu in March. Vanuatu population in 2020 is estimated at 307,156. Several of the deceased drowned when a flood swept...
Yearbook 2014 Tuvalu. In January, the Tuvalu government sent a request to the Fiji government that retired Fijian elementary school teachers should be able to come to Tuvalu to teach there. Tuvalu population in...
Yearbook 2014 Tonga. Tonga population in 2020 is estimated at 105,706. Tonga was hit in January by tropical cyclone Ian, classified as Category 5 on the Saffir – Simpson scale, which means it reached...
Yearbook 2014 Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands population in 2020 is estimated at 686,895. Former Prosecutor Frank Kabui was re-elected in May as Governor-General. In November, parliamentary elections were held when 32 of the 50...
Yearbook 2014 Samoa. During the year, Samoa hosted a UN conference on the needs of small island nations, with around 3,000 delegates from close to 200 countries participating. Samoa population in 2020 is estimated...
Yearbook 2014 Papua New Guinea. At the beginning of the year, protests erupted in the asylum seeker detention camps set up by Australia on the Papuan island of Manus. Demonstrations rioted, many detainees broke...
Yearbook 2014 Palau. Palau population in 2020 is estimated at 18,105. Palau’s economic sea zone should become a marine nature reserve and all commercial fishing should be banned there. That is President Tommy Remengesau’s...
Yearbook 2014 New Zealand. An earthquake of magnitude 6.3 on the Richter scale shook the North Island in New Zealand in January. The quake occurred just over 11 miles northeast of the capital Wellington...
Yearbook 2014 Nauru. In January, Nauru shocked the fee foreign journalists have to pay to enter the country. In November, the government confirmed that no journalist applied for a visa to enter the country...
Yearbook 2014 Micronesia Federation. In May, the country was hit by two very powerful earthquakes, which, despite measuring 6.5 and 6.6 on the Richter scale, did not cause any major damage. In June, the...
Yearbook 2014 Marshall Islands. On March 1, the memory of the American hydrogen bomb called Caste Bravo was detonated on the Bikini Toll in 1954. The bomb was more than a thousand times as...
Yearbook 2014 Kiribati. In March, Kiribati was reported to have dramatically increased its income linked to the fishing industry last year. Kiribati population in 2020 is estimated at 119,460. The large revenues come from...
Yearbook 2014 Fiji. Fiji population in 2020 is estimated at 896,456. Eight years after Commander Voreqe (“Frank”) Bainimarama’s coup in 2006, democratic elections were held in Fiji. In March, Bainimarama left his post as...
Yearbook 2014 Australia. In January, Australian vessels stopped Indonesian boat refugees and sent them back to Indonesia. In connection with this, Australian vessels violated Indonesian waters, which weakened the already frosty relations with Indonesia....
Oceania, a collective term for the Pacific Ocean, first used by the Danish geographer Malthe Conrad Bruun in the early 1800s. The original definition only covers the Pacific Ocean Islands and thus not Australia,...