The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell,
said despite enduring strategic and political interests in the region
dating from before World War II, Washington has reduced diplomatic
missions there and assistance over the past 20 years.
As part of efforts to reverse that trend as the Obama
administration steps up engagement across the Asia-Pacific, the U.S.
Agency for International Development will open a regional office in
Papua New Guinea this year to administer a $21 million grant to help
islands cope with the effects of climate change.
Campbell described low-lying atolls in the Pacific as the "canary in
the coal mine" for climate change.
Read the entire article here
Or maybe the new "regional office" will use the money to cope with this "effect" of "climate change" ?:
"200 new species found in Papua New Guinea"
With the rate at which new species are being found and extinct species are being rediscovered and with unknown marine species being estimated to be between 1 and 10 million and micro-organism species thought to be in excess of one billion, I am beginning to wonder if humans are not soon going to be crowded off the planet.
From Reuters today: Some 200 news species of animals and plants, including an orange spider, a jabbing spiny-legged katydid (bush cricket) and a minute long-nosed frog, have been discovered in Papua New Guinea‘s remote jungle-clad mountains. A team of international scientists made the discoveries during a two-month expedition in the remote Nakanai and Muller mountains in 2009, Conservation International said on Wednesday. In the Nakanai mountains on New Britain island, the team found 24 new species of frogs, two new mammals, nine new species of plants, nearly 100 new insects including damselflies, katydids and ants, and approximately 100 new spiders.