Lessons for adaptation pathways in the Pacific Islands

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Despite contributing only 0.03% of global carbon emissions, the Pacific Islands region is at the vanguard of climate change impacts and adaptation conversations [1].Varied aspects of Pacific Islander livelihoods are threatened by climate change, including food security due to predominately subsistence lifestyles (as highlighted in the photograph taken at Marobe market in Vanuatu as Fig 1), and these crises must be addressed through adaptation and resilience building.Local communities across the Pacific Islands region, however, have long prepared for and survived extreme environmental changes [2], managed and protected natural resources [3], and known what kinds of solutions would best support them in their specific local vulnerability context and everyday realities [4].In this Opinion piece, we lay out the persistent challenges for adaptation in the Pacific Islands before proposing four mutually reinforcing adaptation pathways that could lead to more equitable, sustainable, and impactful adaptation futures.The first challenge is the persistent 'deficit framing' that is often cast over the Pacific Islands region.The dominant narrative is one of negativity, problems, and weakness.Our concern with this framing is that donors, governments, practitioners, and academics uncritically focus on deficiencies, thereby creating 'problems' to be 'solved ' [5].This can lead to local efficacy and agency being undermined, Pacific Islanders' autonomous capacity to solve issues being undercut and local creativity and capabilities being stymied.This deficit framing is often perpetuated by outsiders, external parties and donors who tend to fly-in-fly-out and play the consultative role that imparts 'expertise' with little regard for local agency.The second challenge is the way community-based adaptation (CBA) has been used as the panacea for interventions in the Pacific Islands.Funding has been increasingly channelled to the local level to move away from top-down approaches but achieving effective and sustainable adaptation that ensures genuine community engagement has not been straightforward, with many issues emerging [6].Our recent study, which evaluated 32 CBA initiatives in 20 rural communities across four countries in the Pacific, found that initiative appropriateness was a strength, but that sustainability was a consistent challenge [7].The third challenge is that 'adaptation knowledge' is often tightly held.In the adaptation field, due to significant pressures to be successful and fears around ramifications on funding prospects, success stories are readily shared while the wisdoms and lessons around poor performance are largely obscured.This lack of reflexivity means that mistakes are often repeated by others, wasting precious resources in the process.The fear of sharing poor performance is also stifling reflections on, and the willingness to share, any heterogeneity in adaptation outcomes that can emerge from local-level power disparities.Standardised adaptation outcomes inevitably favour some views over others, thereby reinforcing the vulnerability of marginalised groups (see [8]).