1 Beyond Belief
5
privilege at least its most useful aspects,
4 in order that Pacific Island countries can
better prepare for a future in which they will be forced to stand alone far more than
they do at present.
Religion will play a huge role in this, so we consider that the timing of this
book—which captures the gamut of faith-grounded understandings of the natural
world across the Pacific Islands region—to be especially opportune. Together with
traditional knowledge, the spiritual and religious beliefs of Pacific Island peoples
will form the foundation of their survival into the future. The time is thus opportune
to elevate the role of religion in climate-change adaptation discourse from footnote
to foreground, welcoming it at the table of interlocking climate change adaptation
concerns.
The Pacific Islands region has suffered for more than a hundred years from the
consequences of outsiders’ superficial judgements about what is right and what is
deviant. For example, when James Cook landed on the Pacific Island of Niue on 2
nd
June 1774, he encountered islanders whose faces were coloured with the juice of
red bananas; quick to judge, he wrote “The Conduct and aspect of these Islanders
occasioned my giving it the Name of Savage Island”, an uninformed interpretation
that coloured outsiders’ views of Niuean society for centuries thereafter. Today, the
‘suffering’ continues; outsiders with little experience of them adjudge ‘small’ islands
to be inherently ‘vulnerable’, their peoples clearly lacking ‘resilience’, unquestionably ‘exposed’; millions of dollars are poured into the region to try and reduce this
abominable problem … and most Pacific Islanders wonder why.
In this book, we have strived not to exhibit or indulge such biases. There is nothing
wrong with having religious beliefs, in believing in a God, following His tenets, living
His values. Neither faith nor secularism are the human norm; one is not better than
the other, although people on either side often argue otherwise. And climate change,
while certainly a wicked problem that is robustly explainable by western science,
does not require in any particular place on earth either a secular or a faith-grounded
solution; such choices refer to process and pathways, not to outcomes.
Yet one of the key audiences for this book are climate-change influencers—like
donor representatives, scientists, politicians and members of international agencies—
who develop and implement policy to enable climate-change adaptation in places
like the Pacific Islands region that are assumed to be unable to do this alone. And
the key message for you is that, not only do the spiritual and religious beliefs held
by almost all Pacific Islanders contribute hugely to resilience, but that your help can
be overdone, almost to a point of being maladaptive. There is now ample scientific
research supporting the points made above, all of which have led to the conclusion that
“the role that implementers and donors should and can play is to become ‘facilitators’
of the desired adaptation aspirations for communities, rather than ‘doing’ adaptation
‘to communities’” (McNamara et al. 2020, p. 638).
4 This extends beyond traditional ways of coping with environmental adversity into things like the
use of traditional pharmacopoeias for primary health care and the attainment of food and nutritional
security through a return to more traditional diets.
5
privilege at least its most useful aspects,
4 in order that Pacific Island countries can
better prepare for a future in which they will be forced to stand alone far more than
they do at present.
Religion will play a huge role in this, so we consider that the timing of this
book—which captures the gamut of faith-grounded understandings of the natural
world across the Pacific Islands region—to be especially opportune. Together with
traditional knowledge, the spiritual and religious beliefs of Pacific Island peoples
will form the foundation of their survival into the future. The time is thus opportune
to elevate the role of religion in climate-change adaptation discourse from footnote
to foreground, welcoming it at the table of interlocking climate change adaptation
concerns.
The Pacific Islands region has suffered for more than a hundred years from the
consequences of outsiders’ superficial judgements about what is right and what is
deviant. For example, when James Cook landed on the Pacific Island of Niue on 2
nd
June 1774, he encountered islanders whose faces were coloured with the juice of
red bananas; quick to judge, he wrote “The Conduct and aspect of these Islanders
occasioned my giving it the Name of Savage Island”, an uninformed interpretation
that coloured outsiders’ views of Niuean society for centuries thereafter. Today, the
‘suffering’ continues; outsiders with little experience of them adjudge ‘small’ islands
to be inherently ‘vulnerable’, their peoples clearly lacking ‘resilience’, unquestionably ‘exposed’; millions of dollars are poured into the region to try and reduce this
abominable problem … and most Pacific Islanders wonder why.
In this book, we have strived not to exhibit or indulge such biases. There is nothing
wrong with having religious beliefs, in believing in a God, following His tenets, living
His values. Neither faith nor secularism are the human norm; one is not better than
the other, although people on either side often argue otherwise. And climate change,
while certainly a wicked problem that is robustly explainable by western science,
does not require in any particular place on earth either a secular or a faith-grounded
solution; such choices refer to process and pathways, not to outcomes.
Yet one of the key audiences for this book are climate-change influencers—like
donor representatives, scientists, politicians and members of international agencies—
who develop and implement policy to enable climate-change adaptation in places
like the Pacific Islands region that are assumed to be unable to do this alone. And
the key message for you is that, not only do the spiritual and religious beliefs held
by almost all Pacific Islanders contribute hugely to resilience, but that your help can
be overdone, almost to a point of being maladaptive. There is now ample scientific
research supporting the points made above, all of which have led to the conclusion that
“the role that implementers and donors should and can play is to become ‘facilitators’
of the desired adaptation aspirations for communities, rather than ‘doing’ adaptation
‘to communities’” (McNamara et al. 2020, p. 638).
4 This extends beyond traditional ways of coping with environmental adversity into things like the
use of traditional pharmacopoeias for primary health care and the attainment of food and nutritional
security through a return to more traditional diets.