By foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic

Vanuatu's representative to the United Nations said 105 states back its push.(Supplied: Vanuatu Department of Tourism/Kirkland Photos)

Australia will join more than 100 nations and co-sponsor Vanuatu's landmark bid to have the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rule on the legal obligations that states have to deal with climate change and the damage it has caused.

Vanuatu's representative to the United Nations said on Thursday that 105 states — including several European countries, Pacific island nations and a host of smaller developing countries — would join its push to get the UN General Assembly to formally seek an opinion on the international legal obligations countries have to respond to global heating.

Neither China nor the United States, the world's two largest emitters, have signed on as co-sponsors for the motion, and neither have some larger developing countries that remain dependent on coal, including Indonesia and India.

However, an actual vote at the United Nations will not be held until later in the year.

Australia's move to join as a co-sponsor has been welcomed by Vanuatu and environmental groups, which have been urging the government to ramp up its ambition on tackling climate change.

Ruling would not be binding

Vanuatu was slammed by Cyclone Judy on Wednesday, and its foreign minister, Jotham Napat, said the disaster was another reminder of his nation's vulnerability to extreme weather events supercharged by climate change.

"While severe Cyclone Judy is today showing no mercy on the people of Vanuatu, it is welcome news that countries are committing to co-sponsor Vanuatu's UN Resolution on clarifying international climate obligations," he said.

Pacific advisor to Greenpeace Australia Pacific Shiva Gounden said he was also heartened by the strong international support for the motion.

"As the people of Vanuatu look ahead, yet again, to repairing their communities and counting their losses, the support of Australia and other countries around the world will provide hope for a better future," he said.

If the ICJ does agree to take on the issue and delivers an opinion, it would not be binding.

However, Pacific Island officials — who are championing the move — say it will still set a powerful precedent.

It could shape future rulings around the international legal obligations of states to protect people from climate change, and to compensate individuals and countries that suffer as a result of the resulting environmental chaos.

Previously, Australia argued the ruling should not focus solely on the responsibilities of the historically largest emitters, but must also capture the obligations of countries that are currently increasing emissions or that will continue to pollute in future years.

The government hasn't yet issued a public statement on its decision to join as a co-sponsor, but the ABC has approached the office of Foreign Minister Penny Wong for comment.

Source: ABC News

They expressed strong disagreement to the proposal through a campaign led by the Santo Sunset Environment Network (SSEN), an indigenous environment Non-Government Organisation (NGO) set up to protect West Coast Santo Mountain Chain, home to Vanuatu’s largest biodiversity hotspot.

“We do not need a logging company that will destroy our place and biodiversity,” the Chairman of SSEN, Allan Taman, said in a video posted on SSEN Facebook Page.

“This logging proposal must be stopped. It will destroy natural habits in our environment. Some of our trees will disappeared and our future generation would not be able to know them, said Daniel Saul, a chief from Vasalea village.

“We have seen logging impacts on the environment in other places. Our rivers will dry up if we cut down our trees. I don’t accept the company coming to our area,” said SSEN’s Coordinator, Benua Jamu.

“Our community will suffer if we allow logging to happen. I don’t agree to logging,” said Tarsolui Richard from Tanokovo village.

“As a youth, I’m not happy about this proposal. Logging will affect my future,” said Yannick Benua from Elia village.

“I don’t want any logging activities happening in my community. We have a conservation area, I don’t want to see us selling our land, accepting logging or even mining,” Barex Laban from Wusi village stressed.

Chief Lency Rovo from the Jarai Alo Kolo Council of Chiefs said: “We have our custom sites which we want to preserve and not destroy. I and other member chiefs do not agree to the company coming over.”

According to a statement from SSEN, a contract prepared by Vanuatu Forest Industry Limited leaked to SSEN, represents a serious threat to indigenous land stewards as the rightful owners of natural resources.

“The contract gives the logging company ownership of all the timber and is free to use for any purpose... can dispose of them at will and can...profit from disposal proceeds.

“It was circulated amongst local chiefs by a paid agent of the company, without telling landowners that the road they have proposed to build comes as the price of their timber.

“Elsewhere in the Pacific, logging companies have offered to build roads in exchange for timber and have devastated vast areas of land in the exploitation of resources.”

The Daily Post approached the Department of Forestry on Thursday this week to seek response from the Director Rexon Viranamaga on the concerns from the locals and mainly the licensing of the company but he declined.

He told the receptionist to convey that he would not be available for comment yesterday also.

Spokesperson of the company said they got approval from the ministry responsible for the proposal and Sanma Provincial Council is also aware of it.

The company will connect all villages in west coast Santo through the proposed road, which is the main component of the proposal, he said.

He added that they are yet to finalise the operation plan and carry out consultation with land landowners and communities.

Source: Vanuatu Daily Post

Australia's first people are thought to have arrived when the continent was a much bigger place, with lower sea levels connecting Papua New Guinea and Tasmania to what we now know as modern Australia, forming the mega-continent of Sahul. 

Key points:

• Aboriginal Australians arrived on the shores of a larger continent around 60,000 years ago
• A Flinders University researcher says they moved across it on 'super-highways' similar to modern transport routes
• While not exact, researchers hope Aboriginal communities can help fill in the gaps of their work

New research from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage shows the paths that were likely trodden by the ancient Aboriginal people as they moved across the continent from the Kimberley to Tasmania.

A map showing the migration routes in the ancient mega-continent of Sahul.(Supplied)

"We really wanted to understand not just how they got here, but what they did once they got here," he said. 

The models take data from archaeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, geneticists, climatologists, geomorphologists, and hydrologists, and analyses the information to come up with the most likely routes around the country. 

'Super-highways' for super movers 

The models hypothesise the first Australians landed on the shores of Western Australia, around the Kimberley region, about sixty thousand years ago, and in as little as 6,000 years they had settled across the country, from the far north of the tropics to the deep south of Tasmania. 

"You know, people probably made it from out of Africa ... within 10–15 thousand years and then bam, they were in Australia.

"That's just remarkable considering that the technology that was available at the time, and I'm talking settlement, not just walkabouts here and there."

The super-highways bear striking similarities to Australia's current highways and stock routes, and Professor Bradshaw said there was a good reason why. 

Professor Corey Bradshaw developed the new migration map.(

"The fact that they settle this entire continent so quickly and establish these long-term relationships suggests that, yes, there were oral histories passed down for tens of millennia," he said.

"A lot of the European explorers — those that were smart enough to talk to the local people about which way to go and how to survive, I imagine that those would have passed down for a long time."

Data meets Dreamtime 

While the models show the most likely routes based on available data, they're not definitive, and researchers are hoping to collaborate with the Indigenous community to fill in the gaps.

With decades of experience as an Indigenous historian and archaeologist, Laureate Professor Lynette Russell said both science and stories have a place in uncovering Indigenous history.

"No-one has 70 thousand years of oral history, but it doesn't mean that there's not deep stories that are associated with land," Professor Russell said.

"People talk about that when the land was made when the ancestors came when the creators created the land.

"I think in those stories, and particularly in those songs and song lines, we may well find information that tallies with, but also may contradict the scientists approach."

Professor Russell said the new maps are a starting point, rather than exact facts, when it comes to Aboriginal history.

"These modelling papers are important because they give us they're a heuristic device for which we can then start to imagine what the past might have been like."

When it comes to coming up with more answers about the past, both academics agree collaboration is key.

"Aboriginal communities are partners in the research. They're not the stakeholders, and we're not stakeholders alongside them," Professor Russell said.

It's work Professor Bradshaw wants to see his team undertake next.

"We want to extend this through later periods," he said.

"Compare those differences in Dreaming stories between sites, or the linguistic similarities or differences between different nations, or the similarities in rock art, and using all these different cultural elements in deep association with Indigenous knowledge from different groups.

"Having that sort of multiple cultural layers being, in a sense, validating the scientific predictions, that's a real marrying of Indigenous knowledge and Western knowledge and that's an exciting next step."

Source: ABC