Thailand scraps China-led project to blast open Mekong River

ENVIRONMENT FEBRUARY 5, 2020




FILE PHOTO: A fisherman is seen on the Mekong river bank outside Nong Khai, Thailand January 10, 2020. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand has scrapped a Chinese-led project to blast rapids on the Mekong River that had been opposed by local people and environmental groups, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

China initiated a plan to dredge the Mekong River in 2001 to make room for large ships to carry goods from its landlocked southern province of Yunnan to ports in Thailand, Laos, and the rest of Southeast Asia.

The plan had been opposed by conservationists and communities in Thailand living along the Mekong River. They feared it would harm the environment and benefit only China.


The Thai cabinet agreed to scrap the dredging plan during a weekly meeting on Tuesday.

“The communities affected and non-profit groups were against the plan, fearing it would affect the way of life, and China also had no funding for it ... So we ended the project,” said Trisulee Trisaranakul, a deputy government spokeswoman.

“It didn’t take off yet. We were only doing environmental and social impact assessments,” she told Reuters.


The Chinese embassy in Bangkok was not immediately available for comment.

A Thai cabinet document said that China had in any case informed countries on the Mekong River last year that it was not planning to pursue the project, but work had continued on stretches of the river in Laos and Myanmar.

The Mekong flows from China, where it is known as the Lancang river, through five southeast Asian countries.

Argentina's 'little trees' blossom as forex controls fuel black marketBUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - On the streets of Buenos Aires, money changers known as “arbolitos” or “little trees” are taking advantage of Argentina’s capital controls to take a slice of a booming black market trade in U.S. dollars.

One of the arbolitos, Martin, 47, spends his days shouting “cambio” to passersby, offering dollars outside the formal banking channels that currently limit purchases of the U.S. currency to $200 per month.

The black market trade has flourished since Argentina introduced the controls in September to stem a decline in dollar reserves and stabilize the peso amid an economic downturn and debt crisis.

Argentina’s boom-and-bust economy has suffered from high levels of inflation and a weakening peso for years, which has spurred savers to snap up dollars.

But the increase in the black market trade risks fuelling inflation which is already running at more than 50%, while the peso has lost close to 70% of its value against the dollar over the last two years.

“This whole business is growing more and more,” said Martin, who has been a arbolito for 10 months and pockets around 500 pesos ($8.35) a day. Like others traders Reuters spoke to he did not want to give his full name as the trade is technically illegal.

Argentina’s currency is being held artificially stable by the capital controls, which were introduced following a market crash that pushed up the cost of the country’s debt.

The new Peronist government, which took over in December, is racing to restructure around $100 billion in debt payments to avoid a damaging sovereign default.

“The danger is that you get multiple dollar prices, or a parallel dollar,” Ariel Coremberg, an economist at the University of Buenos Aires, said, referring to the black market trade. He said demand for dollars at higher rates risked fuelling inflation.

“This black market dollar can have a rapid knock-on effect on the price of all goods and services.”

Martin said the number of money changers had increased to meet demand that was around one-fifth higher than last year under the free-market government of conservative Mauricio Macri, who was defeated in the October election by center-left Alberto Fernandez.

“It’s better for us now. We earn 10% more than before,” said Martin, adding clients were a mix of Argentines and tourists.

Under Macri’s government, the official and black market price of dollars had been largely in step. But since the controls came in the two rates have diverged, with the black market rate now around 30% higher - a gap not seen since the end of the last Peronist government in 2015.

A second often-cited rate, a legal workaround to access dollars known as a blue-chip swap, is even more expensive.

Macri had scrapped currency controls when he came to power in late 2015, but was forced to re-impose them in September last year after his shock defeat in a primary election caused currency market turmoil.

The primary result - and the market crash that followed - helped to push the country further towards an economic crisis and made Macri the underdog in an election that most had thought would be close.

But the controls have managed to hold the peso-dollar ARS=RASL rate stable, even as other unofficial channels have flourished.

MONEY TABLES

The arbolitos, who say they receive between 0.5%-2% commission, take their clients to informal “money tables” where the currency transactions take place.

Aniuska, a 33-year-old Venezuelan working in the trade in the city, said she had seen around 70% more people buying dollars “due to the restrictions by the government.”

“Having these restrictions, people have no choice but to come and buy,” she said. Her group of arbolitos had grown from 3 people to 10.

“The truth is that if there are lots of us it does not suit me because there are fewer opportunities to get customers.”

The rise in demand echoes the situation under the previous Peronist government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who imposed capital controls during her 2007-2015 administration, creating a wide gap between official and black market rates.

Fernandez de Kirchner is now Vice President.

“Now it will be like it was with Cristina and that is better for us because there will be many more people who will want dollars. It suits us,” said one 26-year-old arbolito, who said she had worked in the trade for nine years.

The arbolitos said the work was not easy and meant long hours, but with the economy facing recession and employment down there were few alternatives.

“I earn on commission, but it’s practically cents,” said one arbolito who gave his nickname as “El Pitufo” - the dwarf - who said he had previously worked in a leather clothing factory.

“But in the face of unemployment, doing this is the only thing left.”


IMF sees 'important moment' for Argentine debt restructuring

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday that now was a “very important moment for Argentina” to enact policies for successful debt restructuring.

Speaking at a Vatican conference on economic solidarity, she told Reuters that the policies must stabilize the Argentine economy and ensure that the most vulnerable in society are not left out.

Georgieva and Argentine Economy Minister Martin Guzman, who is also at the conference, held what both said were constructive talks on the Latin American country’s debt crisis on Tuesday night.

“It is very important moment for Argentina to put in place policies that are going to stabilize the economy, lead to successful debt restructuring and respond to the expectations of people that those who are the most vulnerable not be left out,” she said.

Guzman told Reuters that his talks with Georgieva were “very good and constructive”, while she told reporters that it was a “very constructive meeting”.

Argentina needs to restructure $100 billion in sovereign debt with creditors, including the IMF, amid a steep recession with inflation above 50%

The Vatican conference at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences brought together more than 25 government officials, religious authorities, and economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel economics laureate.

“We are going to discuss how the world economy can be more oriented toward the needs of everyone, how it can serve the aspirations of all people and it (the Vatican) is a good place to have that discussion,” said Georgieva, who is Bulgarian.

Last Friday, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez met Pope Francis and said the pontiff, who is also Argentine and lived through a previous debt crisis when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, had promised him to do everything he could to help with the current one.

Fernandez has promised to bridge social divisions and roll out a massive credit system with low rates to bolster domestic demand, and to boost spending to address hunger and poverty.

Stiglitz told the conference that the current Argentine debt crisis gave the world an opportunity “to show that there is an alternative approach to the one that has failed persistently in the past”.

He called for “a framework that simultaneously should appeal to notions of economic rationality and to our sense of social solidarity, a common humanity, which at this point in history seems so under attack”.

GREEN WASHING

Budget carrier Ryanair ordered to drop low-emissions ad claims

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Budget carrier Ryanair was ordered on Wednesday to withdraw publicity describing it as a “low-CO2 emissions airline”, as Britain’s main advertising watchdog labelled the claim misleading.

Ryanair Holdings Plc’s print and broadcast adverts last September made environmental claims that were poorly substantiated and “must not appear again in their current forms”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled.

Under Chief Executive Michael O’Leary, the carrier has tangled repeatedly with advertising authorities, often over discount terms and conditions, and on Wednesday struck an unabashed tone.

“Ryanair is delighted with its latest environmental advertising campaign, which communicates a hugely important message for our customers,” spokeswoman Alejandra Ruiz said.

Under pressure from policymakers and “flight-shaming” campaigners, airlines are scrambling to convince consumers they are taking action to mitigate environmental impacts, even as their traffic grows.

Low-cost carriers tend to emit less carbon dioxide per passenger than legacy airlines because they operate younger aircraft on point-to-point routes with fewer empty seats. But they also account for a bigger share of total emissions growth.

Ryanair, which carried 152 million passengers in 2019 and is targeting 200 million by mid-decade, based its green message on emissions per passenger, per kilometre. Its 69 grammes of CO2 per passenger-km come in 23% below the average of Lufthansa, British Airways parent IAG, Air France-KLM and easyJet, its website says.

In absolute terms, Ryanair’s 9.9 million tonnes of CO2 output placed it among Europe’s top 10 emitters in 2018, a group dominated by coal-fired power stations, according to EU data.

In radio and television adverts, the company “did not give any information on the metric used” to underpin its self-description as a “low-CO2 emissions airline”, the ASA found.
The print version did outline the calculation but failed to acknowledge Ryanair’s higher seating density as a contributor or substantiate a claim to be Europe’s “lowest-emissions airline”, the watchdog ruled, upholding complaints against all three ads.

“We told Ryanair to ensure that when making environmental claims, they held adequate evidence to substantiate them and ... that the basis of those claims were made clear,” it said.

Transport & Environment, a European campaign group, said the decision offered “a reminder that the aviation sector’s climate impact is soaring because of a decades-long tax holiday and almost zero regulation of their pollution.”

A spokeswoman for the environmental organisation added: “Ryanair should stop greenwashing and start doing something to tackle its sky-high emissions.”

Ryanair said the same advertising message had been used in 10 European countries. “The message was approved in other markets and we provided all the supporting data they required,” Ruiz said.

---30---

Climate protests shut BP's London headquarters on CEO's first day

Greenpeace climate activist looks on as he is being removed by police officers near the entrance to BP's head office in London, Britain February 5, 2020. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleBP HIRES A  LOONEY AS CEO

LONDON (Reuters) - Climate protesters forced BP (BP.L) to temporarily shut down its London headquarters on Wednesday, the first day in office for the oil and gas company’s new CEO Bernard Looney.

RELATED COVERAGE
Police arrest nine people after protest at BP's London HQ

BP said more than 100 Greenpeace activists attempted to place 500 solar panels in front of BP’s building in St James’ Square in central London, and blocked the entrances with oil barrels.

Police said they had arrested nine people after the protest.

Greenpeace spokesman Stefano Gelmini said several activists had chained themselves to the oil barrels.

BP said Chief Executive Looney, who was visiting staff in Germany on Wednesday, shared the “deep concerns” of the climate protesters and understood their frustration and anger.

The 49-year-old Irishman will set out his vision for BP’s response to the low carbon energy transition in a speech next week where he is expected to unveil deeper commitments to reduce the company’s carbon emissions.

BP said Looney “hopes that what he has to say then will give people a sense that we get it and are very serious about working to address the problem.”

BP has faced growing pressure from climate activists and investors to meet to the 2015 Paris climate goals to battle climate change.

Police arrest nine people after protest at BP's London HQ

LONDON (Reuters) - British police arrested nine people after climate change protesters temporarily shut down BP (BP.L) headquarters in London on Chief Executive Bernard Looney’s first day in office.

More than 100 Greenpeace activists attempted to place 500 solar panels in front of BP’s office, blocking the building’s entrances with oil barrels.

The people were “arrested for offences including aggravated trespass, highway obstruction and conspiracy to commit public nuisance and have been taken to police stations in central London”, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Britain's Metro Bank hires lawyers over Cuba and Iran sanctions breaches
FILE PHOTO: People walk past a Metro Bank in London, Britain, May 22, 2019.

 REUTERS/Hannah McKay - RC1FD925C560/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s Metro Bank has hired a law firm to help it investigate payments routed through the bank that breached U.S. sanctions, a regulatory filing showed.

One Metro bank customer was subject to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, while another received payments from Iran, the bank said.

The Evening Standard newspaper reported on Tuesday that Metro Bank appointed law firm DLA Piper to conduct the review, which will look into how the lender’s internal controls were breached.

DLA Piper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Metro Bank declined to comment.

The bank notified U.S. regulators in 2017 about the sanctions breaches, according to a prospectus it released in September while raising funds.

Metro could face a fine proportional to the amount of money handled.

The disclosures follow a turbulent period for Metro Bank, after a major accounting error disclosed last January triggered a share price crash and the departure of its chairman and chief executive.

Metro Bank shares have fallen 90% since it disclosed the problems.

---30---

'Weird,' sharp-nosed thalattosaur species identified from Alaska fossil

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An iguana-like creature with a needle-sharp snout has been confirmed from a fossilized skeleton as a species of the marine reptile thalattosaur previously unknown to science that roamed the coast of what is now Alaska some 200 million years ago.

Dating from the Triassic period and identified from a lone fossil found the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the new creature has been named Gunakadeit joseeae, after a Native Tlingit name for a legendary sea monster, according to an article published on Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.

It is the only intact thalattosaur fossil ever found in North America, said paleontologist Pat Druckenmller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and lead author of the study.

“This animal is striking because it’s got this super-sharp pointed snout. Literally, it’s needle-like,” Druckenmller said, describing the creature as “weird.”

The snout and the fine bones in its throat suggest a reptile that dug into cracks in submerged reefs to suck out food, mostly small crustaceans and squid.

It’s fossil was uncovered through a stroke of luck, when an extremely low tide in 2011 exposed the typically submerged rock where it was embedded on an island beach as scientists happened to be surveying the area.

Fully separating the fossil from rock took years, said U.S. Forest Service geologist Jim Baichtal, one of the scientists who found the specimen.

Positively identifying it as a new species included a trip by Druckenmiller to China, one of the few places where intact thalattosaurs have been discovered.

That work confirmed what was obvious to those who saw the fossil’s skull and snout in 2011, Druckenmiller said: “We knew right away that it was totally different.”

At the time Gunakadeit joseeae was living, what is now the rugged temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska was a much warmer place – a coastal region only about 10-20 degrees north of the equator, Druckenmiller said.

That territory migrated northward, pressing into North America and creating the paleontologically interesting terrain of Alaska’s southeast panhandle.

The newly identified thalattosaur is the latest among several important paleontological discoveries in the Tongass National Forest.

They include the 1996 discovery of a 10,300-year-old human skeleton in a cave in the southern part of the largest U.S. national forest. Those remains, of a young man with a fish-based diet, contributed to knowledge about people who migrated to North America by coastal routes rather than over the Bering Land Bridge.

---30---

Cast out The women of Ghana’s ‘witch’ village
As women age in rural Ghana, signs of dementia, mental health issues, or even menopausal symptoms, can result in them being declared ‘witches’ and pushed out of their community

Photo Gallery  Feb 4, 2020

Cast out: the women of Ghana’s ‘witch’ village – in pictures

 \

Sex, saints and serpents: Pieter Hugo in Mexico – in pictures The impact of ritual on the body … 

The Snake Charmer, Hermosillo, 2019. Photograph: Pieter Hugo

The series reflects the artist’s long-standing interest in how history and environment can shape a culture and those living within it. Hugo looks both to rituals of rites of passage, and their associated formal codes of conduct and dress, and also the wider rituals of religion, theatre and community. In this series, he specifically looks to the impact on the physical body, creating powerful portraits that focus on tattoos, jewellery, sweat and scar


Named after the famous folk song which translates as The Cockroach, La Cucaracha is an exhibition of new photographs by South African artist Pieter Hugo exploring death, sexuality and spirituality in Mexico

Pieter Hugo: La Cucaracha is at Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London, from 19 February to 14 March.

All pictures © Pieter Hugo


The Wedding Gift, Juchitán de Zaragoza, 2018

The extraordinary and the everyday jostle for attention in the South African photographer’s examination of Mexican culture. This image shows a young bride in Juchitán de Zaragoza cradling an iguana, a creature considered a symbol of patience, understanding and kindness in Mexico. Read more on this image by Sean O’Hagan

Burning Bush, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018 For this series, Hugo has drawn on Mexican history, as well as cultural, art historical and literary references, such as the mural From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution (1957-66) by Communist artist David Alfaro Siqueiros. While referencing Mexico’s rich visual culture, Hugo’s work attempts to investigate how ritual, tradition and community inspire the complex reconciliation between the extremes of life and death.

• After Siqueiros, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018

  Recreation of a scene from David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural Del Porfirismo a la Revolución (1957-1966) O’Hagan writes: ‘In Hugo’s Mexican portraits, the mood moves between the heightened everyday and the grotesque: weatherbeaten peasants in work clothes, a woman dressed like Frida Kahlo, corpulent nudes, blood-covered faces and a man wearing a crown of thorns. Nothing is ever entirely what it seems, the complex nature of Mexican culture reflected through an outsider’s eyes as a mixture of ritual, role-playing and various degrees of exaggerated reality’

After Siqueiros, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018

Recreation of a scene from David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural Del Porfirismo a la Revolución (1957-1966) O’Hagan writes: ‘In Hugo’s Mexican portraits, the mood moves between the heightened everyday and the grotesque: weatherbeaten peasants in work clothes, a woman dressed like Frida Kahlo, corpulent nudes, blood-covered faces and a man wearing a crown of thorns. Nothing is ever entirely what it seems, the complex nature of Mexican culture reflected through an outsider’s eyes as a mixture of ritual, role-playing and various degrees of exaggerated reality’

Interview
Khashoggi fiancee: 'Saudi Arabia can get away with whatever it wants'

Hatice Cengiz tells Guardian world has failed to punish kingdom over journalist’s murder in Turkey

Tue 4 Feb 2020
 

Hatice Cengiz said if anything now happened to her,

 the world would be responsible. 

Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi has said the world has failed to hold Saudi Arabia to account over the journalist’s murder and the kingdom is being “encouraged to do whatever it wants”.

Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish scholar and activist, said the lack of meaningful global sanctions against Saudi Arabia more than a year after Khashoggi’s brutal killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, had sent a message that the kingdom “can do what it wants, and then get away with it”.

“Because these people were not punished for what they have done, and because the world has chosen to just move on, they can still do what they want,” she said.

Jamal Khashoggi murder: timeline of key events


Cengiz spoke to the Guardian in Washington, where she is to attend Tuesday’s State of the Union address as a guest of the Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly, who has called for a halt in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the possible closure of Saudi diplomatic facilities in the US.

In the wide-ranging interview, the 37-year-old spoke of her life since 2 October 2018, when Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, who had entered the Saudi consulate to retrieve documents he needed for their marriage, failed to emerge, leaving her waiting outside.

Jamal Khashoggi pictured in May 2018. 

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

An investigation into the murder by a UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, Agnès Callamard, later established that Khashoggi had been killed by a Saudi murder squad in what she described as a premeditated, state-sanctioned extrajudicial killing. US intelligence agencies have separately determined with a medium to high degree of certainty that the killing was ordered by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Subsequent investigations and a report in the New York Times have alleged that “MBS” – as the crown prince is known – discussed the idea of using a “bullet” against Khashoggi as early as 2017. The Saudi government has said that the murder was a “rogue” act and had not been ordered by Prince Mohammed. The crown prince told 60 Minutes in an interview that he took “full responsibility [for the murder], especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government”. 

 Cengiz said of Prince Mohammed bin Salman:

 ‘If he said he is responsible, and he is, he

 needs to answer our questions. It’s as simple 

as it gets.’ Photograph: Reuters

Since the murder, Cengiz has described her shock and overwhelming grief, and has described how she felt “detached from life for a long time”. But today Cengiz seems anything but detached.

Even as she describes the feeling of being “terrified” for her safety, her words are lit by a fierce demand for justice, and anger about what she describes as the world’s failure to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of the man she loved.

“They were encouraged to pursue their agenda even further,” she said. “If anything happens to me or to anyone now, how would they feel? The world would be responsible, double responsibility.”

Cengiz rarely holds back in her rebuke of the west – from the UN, to the US and the UK – and its response to the murder. While the world has witnessed Cengiz as a grieving partner, Callamard said Cengiz also has a “commanding personality”. When they first met, Cengiz spent 20 minutes interrogating the French investigator about her background and her intentions.  

Agnès Callamard. 

Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

“There were searching questions and I felt I needed to pass this test if I was planning to interview her. We had a long and fruitful meeting afterwards, an important one for my investigation,” Callamard said. “There is far, far more to Hatice Cengiz than a victim or than the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi. She is intelligent; she is brave, she has [defied] and continues to defy norms.”

The Guardian reported last week that US authorities urged British counterparts to keep a close eye on Cengiz in London last summer, because of their belief that Saudi Arabia had the “ambition and intention” to monitor Cengiz in the UK.

Cengiz said she was never alerted to the threat but that her fears for her safety have been a constant preoccupation. “Isn’t the fact that I was followed an attack on my private life? Because these things prevent me from being a normal human being.”

Cengiz described her connection to Khashoggi as an emotional one, and said the journalist did not share details of his work with her. But she recalled that he was mindful of the social media campaign against him on Twitter, and the retaliation against his critiques of the Saudi crown prince published in the Washington Post.

She recalled being surprised after Khashoggi said the Saudi trolls who were attacking him online made him feel “down”. “He said they can really mess with your psychology and your feelings,” she said, and that he tried not to pay too much attention to it.

The couple did not talk about whether Khashoggi feared being surveilled or having his mobile phone monitored or hacked. But Cengiz recalled that he did communicate with senior Saudi officials – princes and other authorities – over WhatsApp.

Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident and close associate of Khashoggi’s in Canada, has alleged in an Israeli lawsuit that technology owned by the Israeli firm NSO Group was used to hack into his phone on behalf of Saudi Arabia. It occurred at a time when he and Khashoggi were trading “hundreds” of messages on WhatsApp. NSO Group has denied the allegations and has emphatically stated that its technology was never used to personally target Khashoggi.

“There is obviously an international need to prevent people from using these [spyware] programmes,” Cengiz said. “We can see how spyware technology was apparently used to do something wrong by the government, something harmful. And is this not an international crime?”

Jamal Khashoggi: murder in the consulate

In December, prosecutors in Saudi Arabia announced that five men were sentenced to death, and another three would face time in prison, for their roles in Khashoggi’s murder. The secret trial was roundly criticised by human rights activists as a sham. The case “exonerated” three senior men of wrongdoing, including Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince who was sanctioned by the US for his alleged role in the planning and execution of the murder.

Cengiz flatly rejects the outcome of the trial. “If MBS is really responsible, as he said in an interview, why didn’t he explain the reason for the five to be sentenced to death? Who are these people, and what happens to the others? Did they really think we would accept this without any explanation,” Cengiz said.

“On the one hand, MBS has said he accepts responsibility, on the other, he is running away from it,” she said. ”

PARADE IN DUSSELDORF GERMANY 2019

The great kava boom: how Fiji's beloved psychoactive brew is going global


From trendy bars in New York, to anti-anxiety pills sold in Australia and New Zealand, the powdered root is taking off

Supported byAbout this content


Talei Tora in Suva Tue 4 Feb 2020

A woman enjoys a bowl of kava at the Kava Bure in Suva. 

Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

On a Friday night in Suva, the capital of Fiji, the Kava Bure is filling up. Groups of people have started arriving to meet friends for a post-work basin or three of kava, a drink made from the root of the piper methysticum tree.

The bar, which is out in the open air with wooden tables surrounded by bamboo fencing, sells $5 or $10 bags of powdered kava. These are mixed in a plastic basin by an elderly Fijian man, who asks patrons if they would like the mix “sosoko” – strong – or “just right”, before giving them the basin and coconut shell bowls for drinking.

“Kava Bure is a place where I can just sit, relax and enjoy myself with friends after a long day at work. Normally, we would go there to have a few basins,” says Ropate Valemei, a frequent patron.


Vanuatu leads push to make narcotic drink kava a worldwide favourite

Kava bars are relatively new in Fiji (compared to Vanuatu, where there are more than 300 bars) and reflect the shift of kava consumption from something drunk in traditional ceremonies or shared among family and friends while sitting on the floor around a tanoa (wooden kava bowl) or plastic basin to more commercial spaces.

But the appeal of the drink – known to have psychoactive qualities – is no longer confined to the Pacific. There are now roughly 100 kava bars across the US and Australia is preparing to allow commercial importation. In the meantime, the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory in Fiji has been set up, aiming to increase supply and sell kava in products from a brewable powder to anti-anxiety medication. 

 Kava for sale at Suva Market

 Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

‘The demand just went up’

Kava sessions can last anywhere from an hour to several hours, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. The taste is earthy and the strong aftertaste is sometimes counteracted by sucking on a lolly or mint after consuming a bowl. In Fiji, seasoned drinkers are “black belts”, who can drink kava for hours, sometimes every day of the week. But for the uninitiated, the drink has an almost immediate numbing effect, which starts from the mouth and then eventually makes its way down the body, leaving a person with a relaxed sensation that gets stronger with every bowl.

But while extremely popular in the Pacific, kava has, for the most part, struggled to cut through internationally, in part due to tight regulations in Western countries, where kava has been blamed for causing liver problems, though evidence suggests this is only the case if kava is taken in conjunction with alcohol or other drugs.

Kava export earnings in Fiji peaked in the 1980s, at more than $FJD35m (US$16m) per year, largely driven by exports to Europe. After kava was banned in Europe in the 1990s, exports plummeted. But there has been steady growth since then, with the export market growing from about 900 tonnes per year in the 1990s to 6,000 tonnes in 2015.

By 2018, kava export earnings were approximately $FJ30.7m, with the largest amount being exported to the United States at 148,000kg, 80,000kg to New Zealand and 13,000kg to Hawaii.

Fiji’s kava market suffered a major setback in 2016 when it was hit by Tropical Cyclone Winston, the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the southern hemisphere. Winston devastated the country, causing $US1.4bn in damages – more than one third of the country’s GDP – and wiped out huge swathes of the kava crop.
 Work has been selling kava for 18 years 

and has seen the huge spike in the growth 

of kava sales. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

But kava sellers who have been able to re-establish their businesses are experiencing a huge boom. The lack of kava supplies after the cyclone caused a spike in the price of A-grade kava from about $FJ40-60 to $FJ120 per kilogram. This dramatic increase, combined with a sudden interest in the drink from foreign markets, has meant that more people have begun planting kava crops, and even then they cannot keep up with demand.


Mary Work, a kava stall owner at Suva’s Municipal Market has been selling kava for 18 years and has had a front row seat to the spike in demand. “From my point of view, after the cyclone the demand just went up. And [even with] the high price, they just want it more now,” she adds.

“There is a lot of demand. My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand. One tonne a month ... And kava takes three to four years to mature.

“The people are flying over there, even from overseas … and a lot of people from Australia too, like Fijians living there are coming back and planting their kava now, which is good.


My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand.Mary Work, kava seller

“The demand for kava is so high they [are] beginning to harvest young ones. One year, two year [-old plants], you know, so you getting young ones coming and you don’t allow it to mature because there is a lot of demand.”

Going high-tech

At the other end of the kava market is Fiji Kava Limited, also known as Taki Mai, one of two large kava processing facilities in Fiji. It is the first kava company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and in 2019 opened the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory, which will clone parent kava plants and grow standardised, quality-controlled plantlets at its factory in Levuka, the old capital of Fiji.

Fiji Kava’s laboratory sits on a hill behind the 140-year-old Levuka public school, nestled between two kava nurseries. Its factory is unprepossessing from the outside but inside it is a different story. Visitors have to remove their shoes and put on protective plastic feet coverings. The dark rooms are lit by florescent lights and lined with small glass jars holding tiny kava samples.

Kava tissue culture samples at the world’s 

first kava tissue culture laboratory in Levuka, 

Fiji. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

The company is planning on initially growing 250,000 tissue culture plantlets and hopes to increase this by 500,000 plantlets annually. Fiji Kava Limited currently makes anti-anxiety capsules for the Australian, New Zealand and US markets and instant kava powder.

In October 2019, on a visit to Fiji, the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced that the personal kava import limit for people travelling from Fiji to Australia would be increased from 2kg to 4kg and that a pilot program would start by the end of 2020 allowing commercial importation of kava.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced the relaxation of laws regarding the importation of kava into Australia after a meeting with Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama during a visit to Fiji in October 2019. Photograph: David Mariuz/EPA

At the time of the kava announcement, Morrison described the relaxing of importation rules as a “further demonstration” of the countries’ close relationship. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, thanked him for the announcement, saying “the whole of Fiji” had been waiting for Australia’s rules on kava to change.

Kava retailer Pauline Benson says even this small increase in a personal importation allowance is welcome. “Australia has always had a huge demand for kava because there is a large Pacific Island population living in Australia and it’s so hard to get kava there… there is still a huge demand,” she says.

Back in Kave Bure in Suva, the tables are full as dusk arrives. Cries of “Bula!” – Fiji’s national greeting – ring out as someone in the kava circle takes a bowl to drink. Ropate Valemei says that while people often arrive at the bar with a few friends, over the course of an evening of drinking they will inevitably make many more. In the Pacific, whether it be for traditional ceremonies or in more modern social gatherings, kava continues to bring people together

KAVA NEEDS TO BE MASTICATED AND MIXED WITH SALIVA TO BECOME ACTIVE

LONG TIME USE WILL TINGE THE WHITES OF YOUR EYES BLUE, LIKE THE FOLKS IN DUNE, KAVA WAS WHAT FRANK HERBERT USED AS HIS MODEL FOR SPICE.

I FIRST USED IT IN THE SEVENTIES AND THE EIGHTIES, I CAME ACROSS IN DR. RICHARD MILLER'S MAGICKAL HERBS ALONG WITH ABSINTHE, DAMIANA, AND YOHIMBE.