Patrick Nunn

Final Report to British Academy (grant TGC\200274).
The aim of this project was to evaluate if and how exposure to climate change risks is affecting the development and wellbeing of young people in Pacific Islands. The project is considered novel in its approach to identifying Pacific Islander groups of young people that are vulnerable or resilient to climate change and using this information to determine optimal strategies for effectively and sustainably improving young peoples’ wellbeing in Pacific Island countries.

There are many places around the world where western/global science-informed solutions for climate-change adaptation and disaster management are valued less than ones based on local people’s worldviews and understandings of the environments they occupy. This helps explain why many outside aid-funded investments in such places have failed to be either effective or sustained, a situation which has led to increased calls for the documentation and critical evaluation of traditional and local knowledge (TLK) for climate change and disaster management, and its meaningful incorporation into future adaptation strategies.

Asia-Pacific Human Development Report Background Papers Series 2012/07. Since being first settled by humans more than 3000 years ago, the Pacific Islands region has experienced innumerable changes in climate that have affected livelihoods, something that underlines the sensitivity of such comparatively small and resource-constrained landmasses to extraneous change but also helps explain why their inhabitants developed resilience strategies that remain important today. During the past 100 years, the region has been affected by increased temperatures and sea-level rise, together with other climate-linked changes including variability in ENSO periodicity and tropical-cyclone frequency. Owing to the increasing pace of globalisation in the region during the same period, together with growing populations and demands on island resources, it is difficult to isolate changes ascribable to climate change; some of the clearest of these are the increases in coral bleaching, incidences of coastal flooding and shoreline erosion. Despite knowledge about the causes and effects of climate-related environmental (and related) changes in the region, supported by considerable financial aid and other external assistance, the awareness of most Pacific people about climate change and the extent of community buy-in to appropriate adaptation agendas have been negligible. Many governments have been unable to effectively disseminate awareness about climate-change stressors and adaptive solutions; most community-level decision-makers are unable to make informed decisions about long-term adaptation to observed changes. Warming and sea-level rise are both expected to accelerate within the next 100 years or so, causing profound changes to environments, societies and development aspirations within the region. Re-location of people from vulnerable to less-vulnerable locations within the region is unavoidable and should be planned for sooner rather than later. International partners of Pacific Island nations should become more aware of the pathways for embedding effective adaptation in the region. Regional agencies and governments should challenge and re-define their roles in promoting and disseminating climate-change adaptation strategies within the region. Awareness-raising should focus on persons of influence in Pacific Island communities to allow them to make informed and sustainable decisions about the environments they occupy.

For more than 20 years, climate-change assistance to Pacific Island countries has been predicated on the assumption that the most effective ways to raise preparedness is topdown, largely by influencing national policy and bringing it into line with international agendas. This research project was intended to understand the effectiveness of this approach by learning exactly how decisions regarding the environment and its changes were made. The approach taken was to target representative communities with experience in addressing climate-change linked decisions in representative countries of the Pacific islands region. It is clear from this research project that national policy has little or no influence on most decisions undertaken with reference to the environment in rural parts of the Pacific Islands. In fact there is very little evidence that such decisions pay attention to science or other sources of insights concerning climate change. Most such decisions are made on the basis of emulation, experience, and inferred best-practice. This is not a satisfactory situation for any organizations like APN that seek to develop strategies to minimize the undesired impacts of climate change in vulnerable parts of the world like the smaller countries of the Pacific Islands region. The suggested way forward is to engage community-level "persons of influence" and ensure that they are given the knowledge needed to make and sustain sensible decisions about the environments over which they have control well into the future.