13 Influence of Spiritual Beliefs on Autonomous Climate-Change …
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and even ancient ‘gods’ who are believed to have created the environment and made
it hospitable.
We are unlikely to have a complete picture of such protocols and practices on Ono
Island, both because there is a considerable diversity of these, varying between households and mataqali, but also because such knowledge is often not considered proper
to share with outsiders; the issues that may arise when such knowledge becomes
public are well documented (Farran 2014).
Flexible Attribution and Community Responses
In addition to a range of contemporary religious and cultural influences on residents’
understanding of climate change, modern Ono is also touched by a growing understanding of western-scientific explanations for climate change. We consider cultural
views (outlined in section “Traditional-Cultural Beliefs”) as basal or immanent,
whereas the religious and scientific explanations of climate changes (sections “Religious Beliefs” and “Secular-Scientific Beliefs” respectively) have the potential to be
competing frames of understanding. One view or the other was generally favoured
by every Ono resident we spoke with in 2019 but it became increasingly clear that
many residents also held both views together, sometimes expressing exclusively one
for particular audiences or in particular social situations. This dualism extends to
responses, most residents apparently favouring principally spiritual responses, others
secular ones, yet others both simultaneously. This is something we label ‘flexible
attribution’, the idea that people can simultaneously hold contradictory explanations
for the same phenomenon.
This is not the first time that the dualistic beliefs underpinning flexible attribution have been identified in a Pacific Islands context. Arising from her fieldwork in
Vanuatu which found a similar dichotomy between religious and scientific explanations of climate change, Fair (2018) saw the potential for placing these side-by-side
in order to explore “the possible convergences and tensions between different knowledges of climate change” (p. 2), an approach she termed tufala save which means
‘double knowledge’ in Bislama. Our research also focuses on dualistic understandings of climate change but goes further to see how these might inform the responses of
people on Ono Island to climate-change impacts, both experienced and anticipated.
How flexible attribution influences adaptive behavioural decisions is interesting.
It is not clear from our study that flexible attribution confuses responses to climatechange impacts on Ono but the issue of response determination is one that is different
in communal societies (like Ono) compared to individualistic societies like most
western democracies. Decisions involving environmental governance are rarely made
by individual family units (tokatoka) or even extended family units (mataqali) unless
the issue is confined to their land. Recognizing that everyone on Ono is largely
sustained by the natural environment and that its health is thus key to community
sustainability, most such decisions are communal. On Ono, as elsewhere in Fiji and
other Pacific Island countries, an environmental issue will be discussed among all
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and even ancient ‘gods’ who are believed to have created the environment and made
it hospitable.
We are unlikely to have a complete picture of such protocols and practices on Ono
Island, both because there is a considerable diversity of these, varying between households and mataqali, but also because such knowledge is often not considered proper
to share with outsiders; the issues that may arise when such knowledge becomes
public are well documented (Farran 2014).
Flexible Attribution and Community Responses
In addition to a range of contemporary religious and cultural influences on residents’
understanding of climate change, modern Ono is also touched by a growing understanding of western-scientific explanations for climate change. We consider cultural
views (outlined in section “Traditional-Cultural Beliefs”) as basal or immanent,
whereas the religious and scientific explanations of climate changes (sections “Religious Beliefs” and “Secular-Scientific Beliefs” respectively) have the potential to be
competing frames of understanding. One view or the other was generally favoured
by every Ono resident we spoke with in 2019 but it became increasingly clear that
many residents also held both views together, sometimes expressing exclusively one
for particular audiences or in particular social situations. This dualism extends to
responses, most residents apparently favouring principally spiritual responses, others
secular ones, yet others both simultaneously. This is something we label ‘flexible
attribution’, the idea that people can simultaneously hold contradictory explanations
for the same phenomenon.
This is not the first time that the dualistic beliefs underpinning flexible attribution have been identified in a Pacific Islands context. Arising from her fieldwork in
Vanuatu which found a similar dichotomy between religious and scientific explanations of climate change, Fair (2018) saw the potential for placing these side-by-side
in order to explore “the possible convergences and tensions between different knowledges of climate change” (p. 2), an approach she termed tufala save which means
‘double knowledge’ in Bislama. Our research also focuses on dualistic understandings of climate change but goes further to see how these might inform the responses of
people on Ono Island to climate-change impacts, both experienced and anticipated.
How flexible attribution influences adaptive behavioural decisions is interesting.
It is not clear from our study that flexible attribution confuses responses to climatechange impacts on Ono but the issue of response determination is one that is different
in communal societies (like Ono) compared to individualistic societies like most
western democracies. Decisions involving environmental governance are rarely made
by individual family units (tokatoka) or even extended family units (mataqali) unless
the issue is confined to their land. Recognizing that everyone on Ono is largely
sustained by the natural environment and that its health is thus key to community
sustainability, most such decisions are communal. On Ono, as elsewhere in Fiji and
other Pacific Island countries, an environmental issue will be discussed among all