European Society for Oceanists 2015 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

European engagements, Pacific peoples and the environment: past, present and future challenges

Coordinator(s)

Elodie Fache, Simonne Pauwels, Joeli Veitayaki

Session presentation

Colonial processes did impact the “natural” environment of the Pacific islands in multiple ways. European settlers also attempted to impose their own worldviews, beliefs and languages, as well as new forms of political and social organization, economies and ways of life, to Pacific peoples. Such processes, in which Pacific peoples were not passive, have implied changes in local relationships with the land and the sea.

More recently, European (including Euro-Australian and Euro-American) engagements in the Pacific have introduced new concepts and ideals, such as sustainability, in response to local concerns for future livelihoods in the context of global climate change. European aid and collaboration frameworks are at the core of the current reshaping of Pacific peoples’ discourses and actions with regard to the environment. Pacific states need such investment and assistance to face increasing environmental issues, which threaten their very territorial existence. Yet, these exogenous engagements also involve requirements and norms that do not necessarily fit well with local practices, ideas and aspirations.

What lessons can be learnt from the past? What is the current state of Europe-Pacific relationships with regard to environmental issues? What are the similarities and differences throughout the Pacific region, and how can they be analyzed? What processes are currently implemented to adapt to postcolonial and emergent environmental threats, and what are the purposes and roles of each stakeholder? What human/non-human relationships, and social relationships, are the latter imagining and building for next generations? What are the governance arrangements and issues revealed in this context? To what extent can Pacific peoples define their own priorities and modes of action?

The panel aims to strengthen the dialogue between European and Pacific scholars around such and related questions. It should produce a cross-disciplinary and comparative overview of environmental challenges in the Pacific; challenges that are also political, economic and social. Proposed papers could for instance address:
• the historical and political construction of environmental issues in the Pacific;
• the articulation between international/European frameworks, national public policies, regional bodies, and local practices (including in the context of protected areas and UNESCO’s World Heritage processes);
• case studies of local initiatives in the domains of natural resource management, biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change;
• the maintenance and development of economic activities and skills for sustainability purposes, for instance in the domains of fisheries, horticulture, forestry, ecotourism, sports, arts and crafts, or carbon abatement;
• new routes and media for exchange of ecological species and ideas;
• and the links between environmental challenges and land tenure issues.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

Va’a and marae – land and ocean. A case study of Tahitian indigenous cultural-environmental activism.

Malgorzata Owczarska (University of Warsaw)

Between the year 2009 and 2012 a fleet of voyaging canoes, powered by solar engines and sails, crossed the Pacific with the cultural and environmental message. One of the canoes was the Tahitian Voyaging Society’s Fa’afaite. At the same time, in the Valley of Papeno’o, at Tahiti, another association – Haururu continues to guard ancient marae (Polynesian temple) structures and the valley’s natural heritage. Both associations cooperate to respond to the most urgent local problems: the postcolonial identity crisis and the environmental destabilization that, I argue, are in fact the same phenomenon. The islanders search solutions to the environment degradation drawing from ancestral knowledge and values, combined with modern technology and science. They are creating local networks and cooperate with other Pacific islanders, or European NGO’s. I would like to reflect on how the Tahitian activists redefine contemporary ecological and emancipatory movement by reviving the ancestral ontologies, and how they translate them into practice. The main symbols for this renewal are the va’a (voyaging canoe) and the marae, union of which serves reestablishing the intimate bounds between man, land and sea. These connections are cross-cutting binary understanding of categories such as enrooted and mobile, human and non-human, dead and living, sacred and profane or nature and culture. The islanders perspective of what ecology might be and notions of relation between people, ocean and land, are probably the most valuable message the Polynesians might share word-wide in face of the global environmental crisis. Indeed, they are trying to do so.

Thinking about the sea in a changing world: Views from Samoa and the Marshall Islands

Jennifer Newell (American Museum of Natural History)

Kristina Stege

Thinking about the sea in a changing world: Views from Samoa and the Marshall Islands

…some men say that one day
that lagoon will devour you…
mommy promises you…
…no blindfolded bureaucracies gonna push
this mother ocean over
the edge
no one’s drowning, baby
no one’s moving

[Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, extract from ‘Dear Matafele Peinam’, 
Poem delivered at the UN Climate Change Summit, New York, Sept 2014]

How are people in the atolls of the Marshall Islands and high islands of Samoa conceptualizing their seas in a changing ecological and political environment? Is the sense of close connection changing as experiences and the rhetoric of rising, consuming seas takes hold? This paper investigates old and new framings of the sea; how particular groups of ‘people of the sea’ (D’Arcy) have been thinking about their lagoons, reefs, coastal waters and deep oceans. The implications of new framings are considered along with the implications of the ways the sea is being imagined into the future.

European narratives of the ocean as Other, as a treacherous, hungry realm, have long been heard in the Pacific Islands. This narrative has continued in the global framing of Anthropogenic climate change in the Pacific. In many Island communities, the relationship has been different; a place to be treated with care, the sea is sustaining, connective and defining of self.

This study focuses on two places: the low-lying coral atolls of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the volcanic Samoan archipelago. In RMI there is an ongoing tradition of highly layered interrelationships between self and sea. While the open ocean is regarded with ample respect for its dangers, it is seen as a bridge and source of sustenance. The ocean is ever present, and a Marshallese sense of self is always touched by it in some way. On the high islands of the Samoan archipelago, the sea and its creatures have historically been seen as generative of, and integrated with, the land and its inhabitants; senses of connection that have salience within the overarching Christian cosmology. While everyday uses of sea continue, the 2009 tsunami and the strong, vocal presence of climate change agencies have created a focus on defence from a rising threat. Exploring how Marshallese and Samoans are thinking about the sea allows insights into the psychological and cultural impacts of living in an increasingly watery world.

Sea-level Rise as Drama: Transforming the Threat from Climate Change in Kiribati (1)

Elfriede Hermann (University of Goettingen)

Global warming, as projected by the climate sciences, will likely bring profound environmental changes to the Pacific islands, one familiar scenario being that of sealevel rise. Atoll states like Kiribati are deemed to be especially vulnerable, in light of this scenario (and others as well). Ever since the citizens of Kiribati were first confronted with powerful discourses on the consequences of climate change, they have responded with a series of coping measures. One involves the performing arts. In this presentation, we have chosen to examine a drama on sealevel rise performed by a college-level school class (a videoclip of the performance will be included as well). This piece begins by portraying the existential threat to Kiribati posed by rising waters. It then suggests a possible way out, a way that, if taken, would head off this looming worst-case-scenario: the global community must heed Kiribati’s urgent call for them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The message is that while climate change and its consequences undoubtedly pose a challenge to those living in an atoll state, they are equally challenging to the industrial states themselves. Based on this case study, we argue that performing arts enable Kiribati‘s citizens to transform the threat from climate change into something manageable, enacting a vision of future survival for land and nation alike.

Sea-level Rise as Drama: Transforming the Threat from Climate Change in Kiribati (2)

Wolfgang Kempf (University of Goettingen)

Listen to the People – An Analysis of Deep Seabed Mining issues in the Pacific and Impacts on Pacific Island Communities

Suzanna Tiapula (Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma)

Takiora Ingram (Non-Government Organization)

Control over ocean resources, including deep seabed minerals and resource development, are key development issues for Pacific Island peoples.

Deep seabed mining practices have the potential to replicate for Pacific Island people the worst of the industrial revolution experienced by many colonized peoples. The possibility of environmental harm and the illusive fiscal benefits are a source of rising concern in Pacific Island communities. Pacific Island people have expressed in public fora the fear that deep seabed mining could wipe out habitats, and that foreign mining companies from Europe, Canada and North America will exploit these resources with little benefit to island peoples and communities. Parallels are seen in the over-harvesting by European nations of fish stocks in the Atlantic, with the Pacific now at risk as well. Some Pacific governments lack transparency or accountability to their communities, leading to the need for alternative solutions to ensure community involvement in decision making.

With a brief overview of deep seabed mining in the Pacific and the legal regimes designed to regulate these oceanic resources, this paper will explore the capacity of Pacific Island nations to manage or participate effectively in the process of resource extraction and development in ways that benefit people and communities now, and for future generations. More than 25 deep sea mining exploration permits have been granted, covering 1.2 million square kilometres of seabed. This paper will introduce the inherent conflicts associated with the process designed to regulate seabed mining and anticipated impacts of exploitation of deep seabed minerals in the Pacific Islands region; the lack of community consultation and participation in decision-making; and the need for more community dialogue to explore sustainable models for exploration and exploitation of ocean resources. How can we anticipate the environmental consequences of deep sea mining on Pacific Island communities, and how can we intervene proactively?

Sustaining marine resources in a culturally embedded way. A case study from Gau Island, Fiji

Michael Fink (University of Goettingen)

In Fiji, coastal villagers as well as development agency actors both see the urgency to promote the marine environment. “Fijian locally managed marine areas” (FLMMA) are seen by scientists and developers as best practice to sustain marine resources. The concept intends that a diverse marine area is closed for human use. Marine species can recover there and spread to neighbouring areas open for use.

Fijians worship their ancestors (vu) as they belief in them being responsible for the quality of land and sea, custom and culture. Diversity and fertility of land and sea are outcomes of people’s relationships to their ancestors. Based on such traditional knowledge and belief the village-communities of Gau Island, Fiji, installed FLMMAs being implemented as tabu. A tabu is a place or object bestowed to the vu. This way, the protected area is an expression to worship the vu and the tabu becomes holy. Applied participant research methods revealed that after a couple of months local people observed an increase in quantity and diversity of marine species within and beyond the boundaries of the tabu. It is perceived as the reciprocal return gift of the vu.

This paper argues that the success of the FLMMA lies in its cultural embeddedness. Being fishermen and fisherwomen there is a strong temptation to poach in the closed area. Knowledge on sustainability alone would not be enough to withstand urges. Strong social communities are needed to avoid overuse of commons. Besides being socially embedded, it is the spiritual motivation of keeping the tabu that makes people restrict themselves – by now for 15 years.

Increased knowledge on such phenomenon contributes to the understanding that developers need to be acquainted with cultural settings in order to achieve common goals.

Community-based action in Fiji's Gau Island: A model for the Pacific?

Elise Remling (Södertörn University)

Pacific Islands are transformed by climate change. Simultaneously, they face challenges from growing populations and unsustainable land use. Internationally community-based adaptation has developed as a useful approach for reducing vulnerability and building adaptive capacity to climate change. However, documented experience for the Pacific remains scarce.
This paper aims to address this shortcoming. It examines the case of Gau Island, where a community-driven process is helping remote populations respond to environmental challenges and unsustainable development practices. Based on extensive fieldwork the paper provides an overview and qualitative analysis of the local initiative after its more than ten years of activity.
The initial effort to respond to coastal fisheries degradation has expanded into an integrated ‘ridge to reef’ approach, and participation grew from a single district to involve the entire island. As it has grown, the initiative has resulted in a diversity of strategies, ranging from pollution control measures, to improved governance and participation in decision-making, to livelihood and income diversification. The result is not only integrated resource management but resembles community-based adaptation elsewhere and enhances local resilience to longer-term threats such as those associated with climate change. The paper sheds light on the wider question of how Pacific peoples can define their own priorities and modes of action, while making use of international aid. Our analysis suggests that to be effective, interventions to trigger similar initiatives in the Pacific should consider economic, social and environmental aspects of development, be embedded in cultural norms and practices and address to local development aspirations.

Appropriating Climate Change: avenues for closer collaboration between Pacific Islands and Europe

Joeli Veitayaki (University of the South Pacific)

Pacific Islanders are doing their utmost to adapt to climate change and the associated higher temperatures that are causing coral bleaching and ocean acidification; rising sea levels that are consuming the coastal areas; more frequent and severe storms that cause floods, salt water intrusion and drought that now stunt their development effort and the loss of human lives and property from which the people are taking more and more time to recover. Climate change impacts are posing the biggest threats to the way Pacific Islanders live. In their small island developing states or large ocean island states that are already handicapped by their rapidly increasing populations that require infrastructure; limited space to accommodate their development aspirations and poor resources, weak financial positions and unskilled human capacity, the effort of Pacific Islanders in appropriating climate change offers interesting lessons.

Local communities in the Pacific Islands have customary practices and arrangements to look after the resources under their care. They have revived and strengthened these traditions and formulated co-management arrangements that provide for them as well as their grandchildren. These arrangements are appropriate with the mixture of their traditional practices and some introduced contemporary methods because some of the people still live in kin-based groups in rapidly evolving rural areas while the others live in predominantly capital and economic oriented urban centres.

This presentation will focus on some of the lessons from Gau Island, Fiji, where a co management process is assisting the local villagers adapt to climate change as well as articulate sustainable rural development.

Implementing “environmental” policies and practices in Oceania: Beyond the local/global divide

Elodie Fache (IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)

The colonization of Australia by European settlers was led by ignoring its first inhabitants’ relationships with the land. This lack of recognition – and associated land confiscations – had profound effects on Indigenous Australians’ ways of life. Since the 1970s, the idea that Indigenous Australians have always been land (and sea) managers has been increasingly accepted within and outside the academic realm. Since the mid-1990s, so-called “community-based natural resource management” initiatives have been developed in the northern tropical savannas and progressively in other regions. These initiatives are mainly funded by the Australian state that considers they are a viable option of “Indigenous economic development”.
This paper will argue that, under the guise of promoting the use of Indigenous “traditional” knowledge and practices with regard to the land and the sea, such initiatives create new cross-cultural roles and modes of governance that raise issues of authority distribution and legitimacy. Responsibilities for “caring for country” do no longer reflect reciprocal relationships between specific persons, sites and mythical figures. They now involve diverse scales of decision-making and action (local, regional, national, international), and therefore actors, values and agendas that pertain to diverse geographical, political and social institutions while continuously referring to each other.
I will also present a new, Fijian-based, research project. It aims to study how, in Fiji, such “vertical” systems articulate with “local” social and political structures, while tackling “global” environmental issues (such as sustainability and climate change). This project also endeavours to contribute to the discussion about cross-disciplinary analyses of social and ecological processes through comparison.

Translating the green turtle. Environment, knowledge and norms in South New Caledonia

Catherine Sabinot (IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)

Sarah Bernard (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturel (MNHN))

In the southern part of New Caledonia one observes profound changes in environmental policies and development issues, due to the conflicting rise of mining industry (Vale project of nickel extraction and processing) and environmental apparatuses (UNESCO world heritage and RAMSAR, marine protected areas). New discourses, values and knowledge emerge in an original context of ‘negotiated decolonization’. Local responses resort to indigenous and imported normative and cognitive resources. This results in diverging processes of ‘invisibilisation’ of local knowledge, practices and values and of the emergence of new hybrid versions of them. In this respect, emblematic animal species such whales, sharks or marine turtles constitutes ‘frontier object’ where these processes are particularly conspicuous. The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) has been a part of Kanak livelihood for centuries. As a symbolic as well as a food resource, it is inserted in specific (normative and cognitive) chains of translations (‘one cannot talk about turtle without talking about yams and one cannot talk about yams without talking about whale’) that are currently challenged and transformed by environmentalist apparatuses. Decisions made about turtle protection and management imply mobilizing various registers of knowledge and norms (administrative, customary, scientific, legal) and the embedding of this actor in new chains of translation or actor networks. This description and analysis will help show in what sense the turtle is an indicator of social change in the Yaté area and of the complexity of relationships between the actors and institutions constituting the environmental arena.

Means and obstacles to enhancing value in the combination of western and non-western knowledge: a cross-disciplinary project on marine resources

Simonne Pauwels (Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, EHESS)

My talk will discuss the setting of a cross-disciplinary project that will be carried out at the end of 2015 and in 2016 and that will gather anthropologists, marine biologists and specialists of environmental management and development. In the first place, the aim of the project is to collect local knowledge and extend western knowledge on Palolo, the so-called “sea-worms” (Eunice viridis), in different locations in New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. The project also aims to elaborate new ways of engaging a dialog between Western sciences and local theories and values that produces an effective method of transmission of the results of this dialog and an appropriate way of advising the local population on the management of the reefs.
In this paper I will show how Palolo is the epitome of fertility from the sea, and also how it is a representative of similar ideas conveyed each time there is abundance of a fish species in the reef. Different explanations are provided to explain these profusions of fish. In Fiji, they seem to be related to marriages in former days between chiefdoms, while in New Caledonia and Vanuatu they are linked to the world of the deaths. For marine biologists the spawning of Palolo depends on a set of conditions linked to water temperature, moonlight, spawning of other species, and other elements still to be discovered or confirmed. Enhancing the management of these profusions, when people catch the fish before it spawns, and raise local awareness about overfishing on a daily basis is another goal the project hopes to achieve. Experience has shown that it is unsatisfactory and ineffective to simply communicate a synthesis of the findings and of the accumulated knowledge, and that an appropriate translation of ideas and values into the respective reference-system (scientific, religious, mythic and social) known by the local population is necessary. Such a translation into comprehensive reasoning will be the epistemological challenge that the marine biologists, anthropologists and resource managers participating in the project will face during workshops and through their writing.