OF GEO L G A R N A Climate change on three Polynesian outliers in R P U H O Y J 2 0 H the Solomon Islands: Impacts, vulnerability and 0 S I 9 N A D adaptation Kjeld Rasmussen, Wilhelm May, Thomas Birk, Melchior Mataki, Ole Mertz & Douglas Yee Abstract Past and current impacts of climate change on three small islands, Kjeld Rasmussen (Corresponding author) Ontong Java, Bellona and Tikopia, in the Solomon Islands are Thomas Birk studied on the basis of a survey of production systems, household Ole Mertz questionnaires and key informant and group interviews. Perceptions Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, of the local population are compared to regional observations on Denmark climate variability and change. The adaptive measures taken in the E-mail: [email protected] past are identified. It is concluded that the capacity to cope with and adapt to climate variability and extreme weather events is well devel- Wilhelm May oped, and the social resilience of island communities appears to be Danish Climate Centre, Danish Meteorological Institute, Copen- high. It is further shown that the differences between islands are large hagen, Denmark with regard to the types of climate change observed, the exposure of the islands to the changes and the perceptions of the severity. The Melchior Mataki differences are due to location, bio-physical and terrain conditions Pacific Centre for Environment & Sustainable Development, The and socio-economic factors, including the level of integration into University of the South Pacific, Fiji a greater economic and demographic context, the importance of different productive activities and the social organization. Douglas Yee The Meteorological Service Centre, Ministry of Aviation and Com- Keywords munication, Honiara, Solomon Islands Climate change, vulnerability, adaptation, Solomon Islands, Ontong Java, Bellona, Tikopia. Geografisk Tidsskrift – Danish Journal of Geography 109(1):1-13, 2009 Introduction adeptly coped with and adapted to climate variability and many other stressors during the past centuries (Mortimore With the ever increasing certainty of human-induced cli- & Adams, 2001; Nunn et al., 2007; Mertz et al., 2009a). mate change (Meehl et al., 2007), the urgency for devel- Small islands have received special attention in many oping countries to address the potential direct or indirect documents and negotiations on climate change as they impacts of these changes has become imminent. The vul- are considered particularly vulnerable and the many dis- nerability of many communities in developing countries is persed societies in the Pacific are a specific concern (Per- high and therefore their capacity to adapt to future climate netta, 1992; Shibuya, 1997; Mimura, 1999; Grasso, 2006; change impacts is often assumed to be low (Huq et al., Mimura et al., 2007). This is not because climate change 2004; Halsnæs & Verhagen, 2007; Challinor et al., 2007; has been or is expected to be more pronounced, in ab- Adger et al., 2007; Mertz et al., 2009b). However, to fully solute terms, in the Pacific than elsewhere (Meehl et al., understand the adaptive capacity of poor and vulnerable 2007). Rather, the following factors are generally pointed communities, it is necessary to look back and assess how to (Mimura et al., 2007): people and communities have managed in the past. Climate change and variability is not new, and many societies have Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 109(1) 1 • Low islands, such as atolls, are obviously vulnerable to • Do general elements of livelihood strategies such as sea level rise. mobility and remittance constitute adaption to climate • Changes in the rainfall and frequency and severity of change? drought periods are likely to pose special problems to • To what extent does the traditional Polynesian social small islands, since their access to fresh water resources organization reduce vulnerability to climate change and are often limited by small reservoirs, while exchange promote adaptive capacity to deal with this and other with the mainland is hampered by their isolation. external perturbations? • Future changes in the strength and frequency of cy- • And, how might changes or erosion of this organization clones are believed to pose a threat to livelihoods and influence the adaptive capacity of Polynesian communi- human security. ties? • Future changes in ocean temperatures and acidity will threaten coral reefs on which islands depend, both with As can be seen, the concepts of vulnerability, adaptation regard to the biological richness of the reef and its pro- and adaptive capacity are central to the analysis, and their tective importance for coastal stability. interpretation will be discussed in the subsequent section. While these statements are likely to be correct for certain parts of the Pacific, they do not necessarily hold true every- Conceptual framework where, and not all islands are equally affected by all of these changes, because of differences in location, topography, The overall conceptual framework for studying vulner- production systems, economic base and social organization. ability and adaptation to climate change, particularly in Assessing the adaptive capacity of island communities developing countries, is discussed in detail in Mertz et al. based on their observed and reported adaptive behavior in (2009a; 2009b). Vulnerability may be defined as including the past is not unproblematic: Future climate change, and three main components, ‘hazard’, ‘exposure’ and ‘adaptive in particular the expected sea level rise and the threats to capacity’ (McCarthy et al., 2001). Obviously, adaptive coral reefs, may present qualitatively different challenges capacity and actual adaptation (to past climate change) are than past climate change and variability, and there is no closely related, yet we will keep the two concepts apart in guarantee that successful adaptation in the past implies that the analysis below. ‘Exposure’ will be assessed on the basis the adaptive capacity will suffice in the future. of the results of a broad-based survey of the human and The aim of this paper is to understand past and current manufactured capital. In particular, we will focus on the impacts of and adaptations to climate variability and change economic base of the islands, which is mainly agriculture, on the three Polynesian islands, Bellona, Ontong Java and the use of marine resources and remittances, and the supply Tikopia, in the Solomon Islands in the SW Pacific. Adap- of fresh water and other basic commodities. ‘Exposure’ tation may be expected to take place at all scales from the may then be understood as the impact of climate change on individual to the global, and while our analysis focuses on the subsistence and economic base of the island communi- the local, island scale, we will place it in a national and ties in question. ‘Adaptive capacity’ will be understood as international perspective. the ability of the island communities and individuals to Briefly summarized, the research questions addressed perceive and respond to this ‘exposure’ to climate change are the following: manifested as slow trends or changes in the statistics of • How have people on the islands responded to climate- extreme events. related events and impacts in terms of coping measures Hazards include direct changes in climatic conditions and adaptation strategies? and derived environmental change. The direct changes • Do people on the islands perceive any changes in cli- include both slow trends in average rainfall, temperature, mate and/or severity of related impacts? wind speeds and wave heights and changes in the statistics • What are the important climatic and non-climatic fac- of extreme events, such as probabilities of the occurrence tors that determine the vulnerability of island popula- of extremely high wind speeds. Derived environmental tions to climate variability and/or change? change may include changes in physical and chemical prop- • Has economic integration in a wider world increased erties of sea water, e.g. a decrease in the pH and an increase or reduced vulnerability and adaptive capacity? in the temperature of the upper water layers, posing a threat to the health and even survival of coral reefs. 2 Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 109(1) The exposure of each island and its population to a certain Study area hazard depends both on the bio-physical characteristics of the island and on the economic base of the island popula- The three islands studied, Bellona, Ontong Java and Tiko- tion. Thus, the exposure of an island such as Bellona to pia (Figure 1), were selected with a view to ‘keep constant’ sea level rise is relatively limited because of the island’s certain variables (e.g. ‘size’, measured in terms of popula- topography (high coastal cliffs) while an atoll such as On- tion numbers, and ethnicity) while letting others (e.g. geo- tong Java, which is economically dependent on marine morphology and degree of isolation) vary, thereby easing resources is very much exposed to the particular hazards the identification and testing of some of the causal links associated with ‘acidification’ of sea water that are threat- suggested in the research questions posed above. In the ening coral reefs. selection we have given priority to islands which have been The adaptive capacity of an island community will de- described in detail in earlier studies in order to facilitate pend on local understanding of exposure to climate related identification