Voices of the Pacific Climate Crisis Adaptation and Resilience Pacific Ocean and Climate Crisis Assessment Report Volume 1
Originally published in Voices of the Pacific
Abstract
This monumental undertaking is the result of the hard work of innovative minds and empathetic hearts, driven by their shared desire to help make the Pacific, their oceanic home continent, respond effectively to the devastating effects of the climate crisis. While the science of global warming is well-established, what matters most are its actual impacts on communities and the ways in which people have adapted and built resilience through local innovation and other survival mechanisms. As descendants of great navigators, explorers and oceanic settlers who traversed the world’s largest ocean for millennia, Pacific peoples have long developed cultural ingenuity and sophisticated adaptive capacities. Despite living in some of the planet’s smallest, most environmentally challenging places, they have been responding to climate change in locally relevant innovative ways for centuries.
This raises important questions: What are the cultural, economic, behavioural, political and environmental foundations of these Indigenous innovations? How can they be connected with mainstream science and social science? This is, in essence, what the Pacific Ocean and Climate Crisis Assessment (POCCA) project seeks to explore.
In a way, this is what this project is about. The Pacific Ocean and Climate Crisis Assessment (POCCA) project provides a multidimensional, epistemic, methodological and cultural approach that weaves together diverse knowledge paradigms across the broad interdisciplinary areas of Indigenous knowledge, natural science, social science and humanities. The project brought together, in an enriching way, the largest group of Pacific scholars ever assembled, representing universities and research institutions from the Pacific, New Zealand, Australia and the United States. It provided an intellectually and culturally enriching experience that has significantly transformed the Pacific research eco-system, strengthened regional research networks and deepened inter-institutional partnerships.
The diversity of the scholars was reflected in the impressive range of disciplines represented: meteorology, oceanography, biology, physics, geography, environmental studies, sociology, political science, Indigenous studies and many more. This interdisciplinary diversity mirrors the complex nature of climate change itself, which affects virtually every aspect of our environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political life. The report engages with this multifaceted reality using empirical field data, evidence-based analysis, and critical discourse.
The project’s findings are presented in two volumes: Volume I addresses thematic issues, while Volume II presents individual country reports. Both volumes are closely interconnected and inform one another. Together, these volumes represent the most comprehensive analysis of climate change in the Pacific by Pacific Island scholars. It is hoped that this work will inform perceptions of climate change and influence future policy-making, strategies, thinking and narratives by governments, regional organisations, international agencies, civil society and the general public.
The report encapsulates scientific research, social science analysis and Indigenous knowledge in a holistic way, while amplifying the voices of grassroots communities whose wisdom and experiences are often overlooked in climate policy discourses.
Another important output of the project is the creation of a digital climate change database consisting of about 1,000 publications, an interactive climate policy map of the Pacific and community stories in the form of videos and other visual medium. The POCCA project not only seeks to answer pressing questions about the present but also raises critical questions about the future. A future that some fear may be overwhelmingly disastrous – yet one that could also offer hope if we change our thinking, behaviours and practices to save our planet and humanity.
