The Samoan government has enacted a law establishing a plan to sustainably manage 100% of its ocean by 2030. The plan creates nine new marine protected areas that cover 30% of Samoa’s ocean, an area roughly the size of Taiwan. The MPAs mean that Samoa meets its 2020 agreement to protect 30% of Earth’s land and ocean by 2030. They ban activities that harm marine life or habitats, including fishing, mining, and drilling.
“She was already very much a role model for women in Samoa, but now she’s broken through yet another glass ceiling,” said Kerryn Baker, Pacific affairs expert at the Australian National University.
Samoa’s land mass accounts for less than three percent of its territory, and the country is largely dependent upon the ocean for food and income. To preserve this vital resource, the Samoa Government has committed to fully managing its ocean area and protecting 30 percent by 2025 through the Samoa Ocean Strategy.
The local utility has worked with Tesla to install a key piece of that plan, battery storage, and also a software system that can control Samoa’s entire electricity supply.
New Zealand’s prime minister Helen Clark formally apologized for two incidents during the period of New Zealand’s administration: a failure in 1918 to quarantine the SS Talune, which carried the ‘Spanish ‘flu’ to Samoa.
The Mau was a non-violent movement for Samoan independence from colonial rule during the first half of the 20th century. The movement had its beginnings on the island of Savai’i with the Mau a Pule resistance in the early 1900s with widespread support throughout the country by the late 1920s.
Jacob Roggeveen was a Dutch explorer who was sent to find Terra Australis, but instead became the first European to visit Easter Island, Bora Bora, Maupiti of the Society Islands, and Samoa.
Salamasina drew together all the great aristocratic bloodlines and links to supernatural power in a period of political transformation, to create a basis of legitimacy for the new power-brokers of Samoa.
Samoa was discovered and settled by their Lapita ancestors (Austronesian people speaking Oceanic languages), with New Zealand scientists dating remains in Samoa to about 2900–3500 years ago.
