Pacific Islands

The drink - an earthy-tasting ground root which numbs muscles and has been used to treat anxiety and stress - has been used widely across the Pacific and among its diaspora for centuries.

But the West, commercial traction has been held back by a lack of education around Pacific culture and limited research into its effects, experts say. Although legal in New Zealand, kava imports been restricted in many Western jurisdictions, including parts of Australia.

Member countries are represented by their national tourism offices and these include Cook Islands Tourism Corporation, New Caledonia Tourism, Samoa Tourism Authority, Vanuatu Tourism and the Solomon Island Visitors Bureau.  Private sector participants are Turama Pacific, Air Caledonie International and Noumea Discovery Travel Company

The event will be attended on PNG’s behalf by the Chief Justice, Sir Gibbs Salika, and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jeffrey Komal, and Acting PNG High Commissioner to Australia, Sakias Tameo.

They will be accompanied by other Pacific Islands Nation dignitaries to attend the event which aims to promote peace around the world.

Major League Rugby completed its inaugural season last month with the Seattle Seawolves beating the Glendale Raptors in the grand final.

Former Fiji sevens captain Osea Kolinisau (Houston SaberCats) and 'Ikale Tahi first five Kurt Morath (Utah Warriors) were among the Pacific players to feature in the debut Major League Rugby campaign.

The competition's top try-scorer, Tonata Lauti, was born in Tonga before moving to Salt Lake City with his family in 1996.

The Pacific Island Leaders Meeting, known as PALM, is held in Japan every three years.

Japan's government hosts the PALM summits as a way to share its assistance programme with Pacific Island Forum countries.

Ahead of this summit, Tokyo said measures to help Pacific countries enforce maritime law within their maritime jurisdictions would be included in a joint statement for the eighth PALM meeting.

Pacific Island countries struggle to adequately police their exclusive economic zones which have become subject to regular incursions by so-called Vietnamese blue boats.

The body's chief executive, Nikki Johnson, said this reflected the current labour shortage facing the industry in the Bay of Plenty region.

The cap was increased from 10,500 to 11,100 for this year's season and around 2000 RSE workers would operate in the Bay of Plenty at some point, Ms Johnson said.

An extra 1200 workers were needed over the next month, however, to pick and pack the kiwifruit crop, she said.

The agreement came at the end of a week-long meeting of the International Maritime Organisation, a United Nations body, in London, where small countries were pitted against large shipping nations that were against such restrictions.

Friday's agreement calls for global shipping emissions to peak as soon as possible, and to reduce the total annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent of 2008 levels by 2050. It also calls for efforts to be pursued to phase out greenhouse gas emissions from shipping entirely.

The Okeanos Foundation is stationed across the Pacific mostly in remote islands where big freight companies don't usually operate.

Commander and master navigator Peia Patai says they're pushing for traditional Pacific navigation methods to be revived and raising climate change awareness.

"Our ways of propelling these vessels are sustainable," he says. "Using the sun, the wind and we have engines fitted on that use coconut oil that have been created by people on the islands so at the same time we're conscious of the ocean's health."

The money is on top of the $750,000 (US$552,000) that the Government has already contributed to the relief efforts.

“This additional funding will be directed to Tonga, Samoa and Fiji which have all felt the impact of the cyclone,” said Peters.

“A picture of the extent of damage caused by Cyclone Gita is emerging and it is clear a big response and clean-up job lies ahead. We are here to help our neighbours get through this,” he said.

Around 11,000 Pacific people are working in New Zealand's viticulture and horticulture sectors this season under the RSE scheme.

Since 2014, the number of RSE workers has risen each year, due to increased demand from employers.

The Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said he thinks the RSE scheme will keep growing.

"We're seeing the industries that make use of the scheme growing. There is potential for it to maybe expand into other industries as well in the future. That's something that we're considering at this stage.