Perspectives:Asia | In search of safe ground in the Pacific

Perspectives:Asia  |  In search of safe ground in the Pacific
Perspectives:Asia | In search of safe ground in the Pacific

Principal speaker

Mr John Rodsted

John Rodsted has had a rich and varied career. He has worked as a photographer for 40 years, activist, parachute instructor, stuntman, author, film maker, wilderness guide, expedition leader and professor.

He has just returned from the United Nations in Geneva where he launched his book In Search of Safe Ground in the Pacific. This is a study of left over munitions throughout the Pacific from World War 2 and how they impact today's Pacific societies. The research has been conducted through mountains, jungles and oceans in the Solomon Islands and Palau and covers civil safety, instability due to munitions, impact on civil unrest, commercial use for explosive fishing, retarded commercial development and lack of international interest and engagement.

Join us as John shares his message on how he is focusing on engaging international governments and donors and bring focus and budgets to the Pacific for the clearance of these explosive remnants of war and oil removal from ship wrecks.

Originally trained as a commercial photographer he soon turned away from the Press and turned the world into his studio. Since 1986 he has worked in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Bosnia, Kosovo, Eritrea, Sudan, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, West Sahara and more. His subject has been "Communities at Risk" where he focuses on the plight of ordinary people trying to survive the horrors of war when their world goes mad. He was official photographer and field researcher to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and part of the team that won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. His work has been exhibited and collected world wide in some of the most prestigious locations such as the United Nations, Royal Geographic Society, Sydney Opera House, The Hague, The Smithsonian Institute, Nobel Peace Institute and others.

For the past 16 years he has spent considerable time in the Arctic and Antarctic wilderness guiding and expedition leading. He has also begun a project on climate change and changing ice and what this means to our planet.


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RSVP on or before Monday 3 December 2018 , by email events-gai@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 07 3735 5322 , or via https://events.griffith.edu.au/safeground

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