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G. Jackson and A. Piggott-McKellar
and that understanding recipients’ ontological worldviews and accommodating these
into adaptation strategies is an essential starting point for the development of effective
future strategies.
Introduction
The need for effective, proactive and sustainable climate change adaptation is increasingly urgent in Pacific Island Countries (Nunn and Kumar 2019a). Current, ongoing,
and escalating impacts of climate change including sea-level rise, increasing intensity of storm and cyclone activity, prolonged droughts, and rising atmospheric and
ocean-surface temperatures are interacting with increasingly vulnerable socioecological systems (Barnett 2010).
1 In recent years, billions in international funding has
poured into national governments, INGOs, regional organisations, and aid agencies
across the Pacific with the stated goal of reducing vulnerability to climate change
and disasters (Donner et al. 2016). Despite this, limited progress has been observed.
The failure in producing sustained outcomes is generally because projects are often
driven by externally defined goals, they naively consider communities as homogeneous entities, and are too narrowly focused on biophysical climate impacts rather
than the wider human-societal factors that generate and drive vulnerability (McNamara et al. 2020; Nunn and Kumar 2019a, Piggott-McKellar et al. 2020). To move
toward a more comprehensive understanding of reasons for failure, a deeper analysis
of the role of religious and cultural perceptions of hazards and climate change is
helpful.
Research into the role of religion in the Pacific as either conducive to or hindering
climate change adaptation or disaster risk reduction is limited (see e.g., Cox et al.
2018; Cox et al. 2019; Haluza-DeLay 2014; Luetz and Nunn 2020 for exceptions).
When it is discussed, religion has often been simplistically framed as a barrier to
meaningful risk reduction (Luetz and Nunn 2020). While this may be the case in some
circumstances (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019), there is a need to critically engage with
local worldviews and religious institutions or else we will likely continue to see the
failure of external interventions. Acknowledgement of the importance of religion
is becoming more common, for instance, with initiatives that aim to engage with
religious dogma to spread messages of climate resilience and disaster preparedness
in the Pacific (see Banfield 2019).
With this context in mind, the present chapter investigates the changing ontological and epistemological understanding of environmental hazards and climate
change in two Indigenous Pacific cultures. Through this we show the importance
1 Pacific Island Countries have always been highly exposed to natural hazards owing to their unique
geography, extensive coastlines, and self-provisioning livelihoods. Yet increasing vulnerability has
been driven by centuries of colonisation and more recently neoliberalism. Related processes such as
capitalism, missionisation, and the provision of aid have contributed to the replacement of traditional
livelihoods, environmental knowledge, and social protection systems (Barnett 2010; Campbell 2014;
Jackson 2020).
G. Jackson and A. Piggott-McKellar
and that understanding recipients’ ontological worldviews and accommodating these
into adaptation strategies is an essential starting point for the development of effective
future strategies.
Introduction
The need for effective, proactive and sustainable climate change adaptation is increasingly urgent in Pacific Island Countries (Nunn and Kumar 2019a). Current, ongoing,
and escalating impacts of climate change including sea-level rise, increasing intensity of storm and cyclone activity, prolonged droughts, and rising atmospheric and
ocean-surface temperatures are interacting with increasingly vulnerable socioecological systems (Barnett 2010).
1 In recent years, billions in international funding has
poured into national governments, INGOs, regional organisations, and aid agencies
across the Pacific with the stated goal of reducing vulnerability to climate change
and disasters (Donner et al. 2016). Despite this, limited progress has been observed.
The failure in producing sustained outcomes is generally because projects are often
driven by externally defined goals, they naively consider communities as homogeneous entities, and are too narrowly focused on biophysical climate impacts rather
than the wider human-societal factors that generate and drive vulnerability (McNamara et al. 2020; Nunn and Kumar 2019a, Piggott-McKellar et al. 2020). To move
toward a more comprehensive understanding of reasons for failure, a deeper analysis
of the role of religious and cultural perceptions of hazards and climate change is
helpful.
Research into the role of religion in the Pacific as either conducive to or hindering
climate change adaptation or disaster risk reduction is limited (see e.g., Cox et al.
2018; Cox et al. 2019; Haluza-DeLay 2014; Luetz and Nunn 2020 for exceptions).
When it is discussed, religion has often been simplistically framed as a barrier to
meaningful risk reduction (Luetz and Nunn 2020). While this may be the case in some
circumstances (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019), there is a need to critically engage with
local worldviews and religious institutions or else we will likely continue to see the
failure of external interventions. Acknowledgement of the importance of religion
is becoming more common, for instance, with initiatives that aim to engage with
religious dogma to spread messages of climate resilience and disaster preparedness
in the Pacific (see Banfield 2019).
With this context in mind, the present chapter investigates the changing ontological and epistemological understanding of environmental hazards and climate
change in two Indigenous Pacific cultures. Through this we show the importance
1 Pacific Island Countries have always been highly exposed to natural hazards owing to their unique
geography, extensive coastlines, and self-provisioning livelihoods. Yet increasing vulnerability has
been driven by centuries of colonisation and more recently neoliberalism. Related processes such as
capitalism, missionisation, and the provision of aid have contributed to the replacement of traditional
livelihoods, environmental knowledge, and social protection systems (Barnett 2010; Campbell 2014;
Jackson 2020).