Understanding Environmental Decision- Making in the Rural Pacific Islands

- Making a Di fference – SSSccciiieeennntttiiifffiiiccc CCCaaapppaaaccciiitttyyy BBBuuuiiillldddiiinnnggg &&& EEEnnnhhhaaannnccceeemmmeeennnttt fffooorrr SSSuuussst ttaaaiiinnnaaabbbllleee DDDeeevvveeelllooopppmmmeeennnttt iiinnn DDDeeevvveeelllooopppiiinnnggg CCCooouuunnntttrrriiieeesss UUnnddeerrssttaannddiinngg EEnnvviirroonnmmeennttaall DDeecciissiioonn-- MMaakkiinngg iinn tthhee RRuurraall PPaacciiffiicc IIssllaannddss Final Report for APN CAPaBLE Project: CBA2007-03NSY This research was coordinated by Professor Patrick Nunn from the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji. 2 Project Title UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION- MAKING IN THE RURAL PACIFIC ISLANDS CBA2007-03NSY Final Report submitted to APN ©Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research www.apn-gcr.org CBA2007-03NSY-Nunn-Final Report 3 Overview of project work and outcomes Non-technical summary 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 top- down, 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. Objectives The present project aimed to: • To understand how environmental decision-making in coastal settlements in peripheral parts of archipelagic Pacific Island countries is undertaken. • To understand what influences environmental decision-making in such places. • To understand how communities affected by global change perceive and understand associated problems and evaluate possible solutions. • To use this information to inform discussions about role of policy in environmental decision-making in the Pacific Islands, and better focus future capacity-building efforts. Amount received and number years supported The Grant awarded to this project was: US$ 43,000 for Year1-2, 2007-2008 (18-month project): Participating countries Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu Work undertaken Within the four countries selected, representative settlements were chosen on the basis on their exposure to climate-linked environmental change, their rural (non-urban) location, and the likelihood that they would experience increased pressure in the next few decades from climate change. University students from each of the countries and districts were engaged to carry out the data collection. Each sought informants who were able to tell them about the nature of the environmental decisions the community had to deal with, the CBA2007-03NSY-Nunn-Final Report 4 nature of the information sources to which they referred, the ranking of these in order of importance, and their understanding of global change. Data gathered from all these communities in each country were processed and analysed. Results It is clear that environmental is made within the context of long-standing societal/cultural frameworks that are not well suited to appropriate adaptation within the modern era, when there are many competing demands on a particular community and where the pace of change is more rapid than anything within the past millennium or so. Most decisions are made by traditional chiefs/leaders, often in concert with other hereditary title-holders, often with inputs from other “persons of influence” like church leaders and schoolteachers. More importantly, such decisions are made and enforced in traditional ways, which typically involve little consultation with most stakeholders (including other community leaders). The main influences on environmental decision-making in rural parts of the Pacific Islands region are emulation, experience, and inferred best-practice. Emulation means that often one community will simply copy the solution adopted by another community in response to what is perceived to be the same challenge. It is in this way that maladaptation has spread through many parts of the Pacific, particularly what has been referred to as the seawall mindset. Experience means that a community will often do what they did before in response to a particular challenge, even though (i) the former challenge may have been different to the present one, and (ii) the efficacy of the response to the earlier challenge has not been fully evaluated. Inferred best-practice is the only response that includes externally-derived information to any significant extent. It involves community leaders and their advisers relating their knowledge about inferred best-practice in response to a particular challenge elsewhere. Often that knowledge is highly prized and is influential in the particular decision that the community takes, but often it is in error and therefore unhelpful in informing the decision. The results of this project show that national policy development in the present context of Pacific Island countries is an ineffective way of raising climate-change awareness and bringing about the necessary lifestyle changes that are needed if the impacts of future climate change are not to be highly disruptive to the majority of people living in the Pacific Islands. Relevance to the APN CAPaBLE Programme and its Objectives If capacity development for climate change in Pacific Island countries is to be effective, then the people who influence and make most decisions regarding environmental futures are those who should be targeted. This project focused on understanding how decisions in the rural parts of Pacific Island countries are made, and concludes that the most influential persons (whose capacity needs to be developed) are community-level persons of influence. This project also involved a number of Pacific Island nationals whose involvement in this project will hopefully lead to a sustained interest in climate-change issues in the future. Unfortunately no Master’s student was found to undertake a higher degree on this project. This project also focused explicitly on awareness and understanding of policy regarding global change in Pacific Island countries. What was revealed was an alarming ignorance of national policy and scientific agendas intended to minimize the undesired impacts of climate change on this region. In short, most decisions concerning the environment are taken at local (community) level without any reference to national policy or science CBA2007-03NSY-Nunn-Final Report 5 agendas. This underlines the impotence of current efforts at disseminating policy and science information, but also bodes ill for optimizing responses to climate-change issues in this vulnerable region. Self evaluation This was a successful project. A huge amount of information was gathered from a range of representative communities in four Pacific Island countries. The project was let down by the two Research Assistants engaged (Duncan Williams and Lele Nawalowalo), both of whom were terminated at different times for persistent non-performance. Potential for further work It is important to continue to understand the pathways of environmental decision-making in regions like the rural parts of the Pacific Islands. The main reason is that much of the aid for climate change that reaches the developing world is earmarked for policy development, on the assumption that national policy is the best way to effect change across such a country. The research from this project suggests otherwise. One future project might look at ways in which community-level environmental decision- making in the Pacific Islands could be improved, made more consistent (from one place to another), and sustained into the future. Improvements could come from making national policy and science agendas more accessible and more intelligible to community-level decision-makers. Publications Two manuscripts have been completed since the inception of this project that include some preliminary results of the project. Nunn, P.D. forthcoming. Managing the present and the future of smaller islands. In: Douglas, I., Huggett, R. and Perkins, C. (Eds.). Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: From Local to Global. [manuscript: 29 pages]. Nunn, P.D. submitted. Responding to the challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands: management and technological imperatives. Climate Research. [manuscript 45 pages, 2 tables, 5 figures]. Three conference presentations, all Keynote Addresses, have been given since the inception of this project. Each presentation included some

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