• Energy Research

Over the past thirty years, externally-driven interventions for climate-change adaptation in rural Pacific Island contexts have largely failed to be effective or sustained. One reason is that traditional (culturally-grounded) autonomous community coping capacity has been overlooked, many external agencies viewing all such communities as both homogenous and helpless. A community’s autonomous coping capacity can be proxied by peripherality, a measure of the degree to which a particular community in archipelagic (island) countries engages with core agendas. In order to gauge the depth, breadth and efficacy of autonomous coping capacity, three indices of community peripherality were developed from research within thirteen communities in (peripheral-biased) Bua Province in Fiji. Index 1 concerns geography (travel time/cost to town), Index 2 concerns population and employment (community size, age distribution, employment), and Index 3 concerns tradition and global awareness (mobile phones per capita, traditional/western healthcare preferences, inherent coping capacity, diet, water and energy security). Mapping of Indices 1–3 allows the nature of community peripherality in Bua to be captured using a readily-reproducible tool for rapid assessment in similar contexts. It is demonstrated that an understanding of peripherality (as a proxy for autonomous community coping capacity) can inform the design of future interventions for climate-change adaptation.

A major reason for writing this book is to describe the evidence for last-millennium climate change and its effects on environments and societies from the Pacific Basin, a commonly marginalized region in global syntheses. The paucity of palaeoclimate datasets from the southern hemisphere has often been remarked upon, and many palaeoclimatologists have cautioned that their statements about global last-millennium (and earlier) climate change should be regarded as preliminary until a better balance is achieved. Yet there is also a marked west-east hemispheric imbalance between the Pacific third of the Earth and elsewhere, largely because the Pacific is mostly ocean, but also because there have been fewer scientific investigations of its recent palaeoclimatic history. In seeking to redress these imbalances, this book utilizes data about Pacific Basin palaeoclimate from numerous sources. Many of these data are imprecise, their relationships to presumed climate drivers often uncertain. For such reasons, some of the conclusions reached about last-millennium Pacific Basin climates are less compelling than would be ideal, not just for comparing with other parts of the world but also for testing whether or not particular changes were global in extent, globally or hemispherically synchronous, or otherwise constrained in time or space. Yet there are more than adequate data to produce a first synthesis for this vast and poorly researched region, a synthesis that the author regards as sufficiently compelling to command the attention of geoscientists, climatologists, geographers, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians interested in the Pacific. It is important to recognize that in the Pacific Basin – as in other parts of the world – the study of last-millennium climates is constrained by the effective reach of particular techniques back in time. Obviously, the last hundred years or so, for which there are instrumental records of climate in many places, is the least controversial time period. Beyond the reach of such directly monitored data series, it is necessary to use proxy data. There are three types of proxy used: those that directly proxy climate variables (typically temperature and precipitation), those that proxy climate through an environmental filter and finally those that proxy either climate or climate-driven environmental changes through changes in human societies. [Book Synopsis]

While different in emphasis, spirituality and sustainable development are intertwined concepts that cannot be meaningfully discussed in isolation from each other. This is especially pertinent in Pacific Island countries that are characterised by both high degrees of vulnerability to climate change and high degrees of religious engagement. There is a paucity of research that examines the relationship between spirituality and sustainable development in contemporary human development discourse. To address this gap in the literature, this research employs an inductive and exploratory methodological approach to the study of major development organisations in Australia. It investigates what significance contemporary NGOs ascribe to matters of spirituality in the design and implementation of their community aid and development programming in the Pacific and beyond. To achieve its goal, the study conducts a systematic term frequency analysis in the annual reports of government-funded and independently funded NGOs, both faith-based and secular. It extends previous research by focusing expressly on the intersectionality of sustainable development and spirituality as a fertile space for interdisciplinary inquiry. The findings link development policy and practice more closely to the needs and worldviews of Pacific peoples. A better understanding of the spirituality–sustainability nexus will enable more effective, sustainable, equitable, ethical, and culturally acceptable development programming. Crucially, integrated approaches promise to make ongoing community development programmes and adaptation responses to climate-driven environmental change more effective and sustainable. Finally, it is an important aim of this study to conceptualise various opportunities for future research, thus laying the foundation for an important emergent research agenda.

In the interests of improving engagement with Pacific Island communities to enable development of effective and sustainable adaptation strategies to climate change, we looked at how traditional oral narratives in rural/peripheral Fiji communities might be used to inform such strategies. Interviews were undertaken and observations made in 27 communities; because the custodians of traditional knowledge were targeted, most interviewees were 70-79 years old. The view that oral traditions, particularly those referring to environmental history and the observations/precursors of environmental change, were endangered was widespread and regretted. Interviewees' personal experiences of extreme events (natural disasters) were commonplace but no narratives of historical (unwitnessed by interviewees) events were found. In contrast, experiences of previous village relocations attributable (mainly) to environmental change were recorded in five communities while awareness of environmentally driven migration was more common. Questions about climate change elicited views dominated by religious/fatalist beliefs but included some more pragmatic ones; the confusion of climate change with climate variability, which is part of traditional knowledge, was widespread. The erosion of traditional environmental knowledge in the survey communities over recent decades has been severe and is likely to continue apace, which will reduce community self-sufficiency and resilience. Ways of conserving such knowledge and incorporating it into adaptation planning for Pacific Island communities in rural/peripheral locations should be explored.

Pacific Island Countries, despite significant variation in levels of exposure and internal adaptive capacities, are often portrayed homogenously as the world’s most vulnerable region to climate change. As such over the past few decades, a plethora of projects intended to assist communities across the region adapt to future climate change have been developed, channelled through multilateral and bilateral funding mechanisms and implemented in communities across a range of countries. Whether such adaptation projects have been effective in reducing the vulnerability of targeted groups remains unclear. This paper evaluates a climate change adaptation project focused on food security implemented across two communities on Abaiang Island, Kiribati (central Pacific). The project was independently evaluated using the following criteria: appropriateness, equity, efficacy, impact, and sustainability. Data was gathered from focus groups with recipient community members (n = 84) supplemented by interviews (n = 26) with relevant local stakeholders involved in implementation. Results show that while the project inputs (such as tangible and intangible goods and services) were provided, the outcomes of the project were largely ineffective and unsustained amongst the target communities. The main lesson is that local contextual factors—be they social norms, environmental, or local governance and decision-making structures—must be clearly identified, meaningfully acknowledged, and accounted for when designing and implementing local-level adaptation initiatives. This then raises broader questions about who is currently, and who should be defining “good” adaptation. The answer to this question has ramifications for social justice as well as broader issues for developing effective sustainable responses to the challenges of climate change in such places.

Island societies are being disproportionately affected by climate change, a situation likely to continue for some decades. Using an example of an island affected by multiple climate-linked stressors, a situation likely to become more common in the future, this paper examines the nature of these, the ways they are perceived and responded to by local residents, and how these people believe environmental changes might unfold in the future. Yadua Island has one settlement (Denimanu), where most of the 170 residents sustain themselves largely by fishing and farming. Like most Pacific Island settlements, Denimanu is coastal and has experienced progressive shoreline erosion that, a decade ago, washed away a row of houses. In 2012, a storm surge (during Tropical Cyclone Evan) demolished most of the remaining bure (traditional dwellings) in the village. The Fiji Government relocated the affected families to a new upslope location (Korovou), 80–230 m from the beach, and up to 20 m above mean sea level. In March 2017, heavy rain caused a landslide at the back of Denimanu that endangered the primary school, forcing its abandonment. Some questionnaires were given to representative members of the community in an attempt to understand and quantify the pressures that Yadua Island people are subject to, and how they plan to manage them. All respondents believed that climate change has affected their livelihoods and will continue to do so in the future. Clear majorities stated that climate change – especially higher temperatures and increased frequency/magnitudes of heavy-rain events – had negatively affected the supply of marine and terrestrial foods. Most respondents noted increased temperature and decreased precipitation. Clear majorities stated they would eventually relocate their homes further inland, and would consider planting mangroves. Most participants were contemplating the effects of climate change (especially sea-level rise) on food supply, prompting them to consider relocating lowland crop production further inland and planting crops that are more tolerant of saline groundwater and/or periodic wave over-wash. The people of Denimanu recognise how the environment has been changing but debate the ultimate cause of this and therefore how best to respond. It is likely that Yadua will become impacted more by tropical cyclones and sea-level rise (in particular) in the future. To be effective and sustainable, adaptation strategies should acknowledge residents’ worldviews and beliefs rather than try to uncritically substitute them. Keywords: Small Island Developing States, Fiji, Sea-level rise, Climate change, Environmental risk, Landslides

A proportion of the Australian public remains sceptical about the reality of climate change, its causes, impacts and the need for mitigatory action. To date, scepticism research largely focuses on factors highly resistant to change, particularly socio-demographic and value factors. This mixed-methods study investigated whether more malleable psychological factors: locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity, predicted climate change scepticism above and beyond socio-demographic and value factors. A sample of 390 participants ( Mean age = 41.31, standard deviation = 18.72; 230 male) completed an electronic survey. Using hierarchical regression, trust in forces of anti-reflexivity and external locus of control predicted impact scepticism. Decreased trust in forces of reflexivity also predicted attribution and impact scepticism. Finally, external locus of control predicted response scepticism. Key qualitative themes identified were, trust in alternative science; mistrust of climate science; belief in natural cycles; predictions not becoming reality; and ulterior motives of interested parties.

Peripheral communities across the Pacific are progressively being recognized as priority areas for the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. A key step in planning and implementing effective adaptation actions is to identify what elements are driving vulnerability and resilience. Building on existing vulnerability and resilience conceptual models, we developed and applied a conceptual framework to identify drivers of vulnerability and resilience in social-ecological systems. By unifying the two concepts of vulnerability and resilience into a single framework, it is possible to better capture drivers of coping, adaptive and transformative capacities, and how they relate to specific climate hazards. The aim of the framework is to provide the conceptual basis from which the two concepts can be applied in conjunction, rather than prescribing specific indicators. The proposed framework was applied using a participatory action research approach to identify drivers of resilience and vulnerability in three coastal villages on a peripheral rural island in Fiji. Results from the framework's application show that these communities are currently contextualized within multiple layers of vulnerability and resilience, driven by: dependency on external support to implement activities, lack of knowledge about novel management actions for dealing with rapid environmental change, high levels of agency, increased access to support and services, high levels of awareness about climate change impacts, disposition to implement change and learn, and capacity to mobilize community resources and support. The development and application of the framework highlights aspects of vulnerability and resilience that have been overlooked or undervalued in the past when designing and implementing strategies for climate change adaptation in small island developing states (SIDS). The proposed framework has the potential to help overcome existing barriers in designing and implementing successful adaptation strategies, optimizing their effectiveness and sustainability in ways that are aligned with the unique situations of many SIDS.