Palestinian supporters and protesters against the 21 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza marched after a rally in downtown Auckland today across the Viaduct to the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior — and met a display of solidarity.

Several people on board the campaign ship, which has been holding open days over last weekend and this weekend, held up Palestinian flags and displayed a large banner declaring “Sanction Israel — Stop the genocide”.

About 300 people were in the vibrant rally and Greenpeace Aotearoa oceans campaigner Juan Parada came out on Halsey Wharf to speak to the protesters in solidarity over Gaza.

• READ MORE: At least 70 killed as Israel targets food aid sites in Gaza again
• Other Rainbow Warrior protest reports, videos
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“Greenpeace stands for peace and justice, and environmental justice, not only for the environmental damage, but for the lives of the people,” said Parada, a former media practitioner.

Global environmental campaigners have stepped up their condemnation of the devastation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories as well as the protests over the genocide, which has so far killed almost 59,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Department, although some researchers say the actual death toll is far higher.

Gaza war emissions condemned
New research recently revealed that the carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza would be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of 100 individual countries, worsening the global climate emergency on top of the huge civilian death toll.

The report cited by The Guardian indicated that Israel’s relentless bombardment, blockade and refusal to comply with international court rulings had “underscored the asymmetry of each side’s war machine, as well as almost unconditional military, energy and diplomatic support Israel enjoys from allies, including the US and UK”.

The Israeli war machine has been primarily blamed.

The report, titled “War on the Climate: A Multitemporal Study of Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Israel-Gaza Conflict” and published by the Social Science Research Network, is part of a growing movement to hold states and businesses accountable for the climate and environmental costs of war and occupation.

Greenpeace open letter
Greenpeace Aotearoa recently came out with strong statements about the genocidal war on Gaza with executive director Russel Norman earlier this month writing an open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, expressing his grave concerns about the “ongoing genocide in Gaza being carried out by Israeli forces” — and the ongoing failure of the New Zealand Government to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel.

He referred to the mounting death toll of starving Palestinians being deliberately shot at the notorious Israeli-US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) food distribution sites.

Norman also cited an Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz report that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to deliberately shoot unarmed Palestinians seeking aid, quoting one Israeli soldier saying: “It’s a killing field.”

Today’s rally featured many Palestinians wearing thobe costumes in advance of Palestinian Traditional Dress Day on July 25.

This is a day to showcase and celebrate the rich Palestinian cultural heritage through traditional clothing that is intricately embroidered.

Traditional thobes are a symbol of Palestinian resilience.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The International Court of Justice heard last month that after reconstruction is factored in Israel’s war on Gaza will have emitted 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. A figure equivalent to the annual emissions of 126 states and territories.

It seems somehow wrong to be writing about the carbon footprint of Israel’s 15-month onslaught on Gaza.

The human cost is so unfathomably ghastly. A recent article in the medical journal The Lancet put the death toll due to traumatic injury at more than 68,000 by June of last year (40 percent higher than the Gaza Health Ministry’s figure.)

• READ MORE: Historic climate change advisory: what the case before the International Court of Justice might mean
• Israel’s raid renders Jenin ‘nearly uninhabitable’; 808 trucks enter Gaza
• Other Gaza and climate crisis reports

An earlier letter to The Lancet by a group of scientists argued the total number of deaths — based on similar conflicts — would be at least four times the number directly killed by bombs and bullets.

Seventy-four children were killed in the first week of 2025 alone. More than a million children are currently living in makeshift tents with regular reports of babies freezing to death.

Nearly two million of the strip’s 2.2 million inhabitants are displaced.

Ninety-six percent of Gaza’s children feel death is imminent and 49 percent wish to die, according to a study sponsored by the War Child Alliance.

Truly apocalyptic
I could, and maybe should, go on. The horrors visited on Gaza are truly apocalyptic and have not received anywhere near the coverage by our mainstream media that they deserve.

The contrast with the blanket coverage of the LA fires that have killed 25 people to date is instructive. The lives and property of those in the rich world are deemed far more newsworthy than those living — if you can call it that — in what retired Israeli general Giora Eiland described as a giant concentration camp.

The two stories have one thing in common: climate change.

In the case of the LA fires the role of climate change gets mentioned — though not as much as it should.

But the planet destroying emissions generated by the genocide committed against the Palestinians rarely makes the news.

Incredibly, when the State of Palestine — which is responsible for 0.001 percent of global emissions — told the International Court of Justice, in the Hague, last month, that the first 120 days of the war on Gaza resulted in emissions of between 420,000 and 650,000 tonnes of carbon and other greenhouse gases it went largely unreported.

For context that is the equivalent to the total annual emissions of 26 of the lowest-emitting states.

Fighter planes fuel
Jet fuel burned by Israeli fighter planes contributed about 157,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Transporting the bombs dropped on Gaza from the US to Israel contributed another 159,000 tonnes of CO2e.

Those figures will not appear in the official carbon emissions of either country due to an obscene exemption for military emissions that the US insisted on in the Kyoto negotiations. The US military’s carbon footprint is larger than any other institution in the world.

Professor of law Kate McIntosh, speaking on behalf of the State of Palestine, told the ICJ hearings, on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, that the emissions to date were just a fraction of the likely total.

Once post-war reconstruction is factored in the figure is estimated to balloon to 52 million tonnes of CO2e — a figure higher than the annual emissions of 126 states and territories.
Far too many leaders of the rich world have turned a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza, others have actively enabled it but as the fires in LA show there’s no escaping the impacts of climate change.

The US has contributed more than $20 billion to Israel’s war on Gaza — a huge figure but one that is dwarfed by the estimated $250 billion cost of the LA fires.

And what price do you put on tens of thousands who died from heatwaves, floods and wildfires around the world in 2024?

The genocide in Gaza isn’t only a crime against humanity, it is an ecocide that threatens the planet and every living thing on it.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Singapore cargo ship Dali chartered by Maersk, which collapsed the Baltimore bridge in the United States last month, was carrying 764 tonnes of hazardous materials to Sri Lanka, reports Colombo’s Daily Mirror.

The materials were mostly corrosives, flammables, miscellaneous hazardous materials, and Class-9 hazardous materials — including explosives and lithium-ion batteries — in 56 containers.

According to the Mirror, the US National Transportation Safety Board was still “analysing the ship’s manifest to determine what was onboard” in its other 4644 containers when the ship collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing it, on March 26.

• READ MORE: Baltimore Key Bridge collapse investigation begins

The e-Con e-News (ee) news agency reports that prior to Baltimore, the Dali had called at New York and Norfolk, Virginia, which has the world’s largest naval base.

Colombo was to be its next scheduled call, going around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, taking 27 days.

According to ee, Denmark’s Maersk, transporter for the US Department of War, is integral to US military logistics, carrying up to 20 percent of the world’s merchandise trade annually on a fleet of about 600 vessels, including some of the world’s largest ships.

The US Department of Homeland Security has also now deemed the waters near the crash site as “unsafe for divers”.

13 damaged containers
An “unclassified memo” from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said a US Coast Guard team was examining 13 damaged containers, “some with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and/or hazardous materials [HAZMAT] contents.

The team was also analysing the ship’s manifest to determine if any materials could “pose a health risk”.

CISA officials are also monitoring about 6.8 million litres of fuel inside the Dali for its “spill potential”.

Where exactly the toxic materials and fuel were destined for in Sri Lanka was not being reported.

Also, it is a rather long way for such Hazmat, let alone fuel, to be exported, “at least given all the media blather about ‘carbon footprint’, ‘green sustainability’ and so on”, said the Daily Mirror.

“We can expect only squeaky silence from the usual eco-freaks, who are heavily funded by the US and EU,” the newspaper commented.

“It also adds to the intrigue of how Sri Lanka was so easily blocked in 2022 from receiving more neighbourly fuel, which led to the present ‘regime change’ machinations.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

One of the world’s top leaders and G7 member French President Emmanuel Macron had his one-on–one bilateral talks with PNG leaders at a forest lookout in Central Province today.

Prime Minister James Marape told media at APEC Haus yesterday that Macron himself wanted a walk through the famous Varirata Park in Sogeri and spend a few minutes at the lookout before heading back for more bilateral talks.

With his interest in climate change, Papua New Guinea will seek France’s support for an ultimate climate financing — a suggestion for a “Green Bond”.

• READ MORE: France, Vanuatu agree to sort out ‘southern land’ border dispute
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• Vanuatu traditional leaders call for Macron to address islands dispute
• Other France in the Pacific reports

Prime Minister Marape presented a ceremonial eagle wood spear with PNG totems to President Macron as a symbol of friendship with a message — “this spear will go with you all over the world and back to your country”.

“It may be just a piece of wood but this is a historical symbol of you taking a piece of PNG with you PM,” Marape said.

“Long live our friendship.”

Marape told media yesterday security and other details for Macron’s visit were all in place.

Forest nation identity ‘amplified’
“Everything is set, police and every security personnel are on standby,” Marape said.

“He himself said he wants to go to a forest. Papua New Guinea is a forest nation, with heaps of tuna, oil and gas.

“We are a forest nation so our identity as a forest nation will be amplified.

“The French President is a big leader in his own right — [leader of] a G7 member country, so him coming here is a privilege for us.

“There are conversations we cannot converse in terms of our forest conservation.”

France is member of the Group of Seven (G7) which is an informal grouping of seven of the world’s most advanced economies, including Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union.

“I had asked him in our Gabon meeting for him to be a forest advocate for the global nations so that’s why we going to Varirata is symbolic,” Marape said.

“We will have a 30-minute walk in the forest and then instead of having a one-on-one meeting here (APEC Haus), we set the Varirata Park and at the Lookout Point,” he said.

“Then much of these will be, you know, for me as a nation, forest is a resource. If we have to conserve, people must pay especially those with big carbon footprints, they must pay for the conservation of our forest.”

President Macron is also visiting Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu on his historic Pacific tour.

Gorethy Kenneth is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.