The experience of environmental stress and attitudes towards climate change was explored for 1226 students at the University of the South Pacific, the foremost tertiary institution serving the independent nations of the Pacific. Students sourced information regarding climate change from media including television, radio, and newspapers; the community (typically via their village, church, and extended family); the University and their friends; and in addition to regional agencies such as the Pacific Community. Most students concluded that they could not believe all of the informations provided by these sources. The findings demonstrate that most students-the future elite of the region-rank global environmental change as the highest future risk. Although nearly all respondents believed that climate change was happening, more than half of respondents believed that the risk was exaggerated and only one-third believed that science would find an answer, suggesting a lack of trust in scientific sources of information. Results also showed that these attitudes varied across demographic factors such as age, region, and gender. The understanding of contemporary attitudes towards global environmental change among a cohort that is likely to include future national leaders in the Pacific Islands region presents unique opportunities for long-range planning of intervention and support strategies. Of particular note for effective intervention and support is the breadth and trustworthiness of various information sources including Pacific Island leaders.

An earth-science-based classification of islands within the Pacific Basin resulted from the preparation of a database describing the location, area, and type of 1779 islands, where island type is determined as a function of the prevailing lithology and maximum elevation of each island, with an island defined as a discrete landmass composed of a contiguous land area ≥1 ha (0.01 km2) above mean high-water level. Reefs lacking islands and short-lived (<20 years) transient islands are not included. The principal aim of the classification is to assess the spatial diversity of the geologic and geomorphic attributes of Pacific islands. It is intended to be valid at a regional scale and based on two attributes: five types of lithology (volcanic, limestone, composite, continental, surficial) and a distinction between high and low islands. These attributes yielded eight island types: volcanic high and low islands; limestone high and low islands; composite high and low islands; reef (including all unconsolidated) islands; and continental islands. Most common are reef islands (36 %) and volcanic high islands (31 %), whereas the least common are composite low islands (1 %). Continental islands, 18 of the 1779 islands examined, are not included in maps showing the distribution of island attributes and types. Rationale for the spatial distributions of the various island attributes is drawn from the available literature and canvassed in the text. With exception of the few continental islands, the distribution of island types is broadly interpretable from the proximity of island-forming processes. It is anticipated the classification will become the basis for more focused investigation of spatial variability of the climate and ocean setting as well as the biological attributes of Pacific islands. It may also be used in spatial assessments of second-order phenomena associated with the islands, such as their vulnerability to various disasters, coastal erosion, or ocean pollution as well as human populations, built infrastructure and natural resources.

In a recent article [Journal of Pacific Archaeology, vol 1(2), 2010], Scott Fitzpatrick contends that the AD 1300 event model is unhelpful as a key to understanding environmental and societal change in the Pacific during the past 1500 years. We reject this contention on the grounds that there are ample and persuasive grounds for supposing otherwise. The AD 1300 event model proposes that climate change (especially cooling) and sea-level fall affected most of the Pacific Basin during the transition between the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, and that the impacts of these changes on food resources were so profound that they led to enduring impacts on human societies in this region, particularly Pacific Islands. We aver that the AD 1300 event model remains a powerful tool for understanding last-millennium environmental and societal change in the Pacific Islands and that all the charges Fitzpatrick levels against it can be readily dismissed.

This paper reports preliminary findings of a study in northern Viti Levu Island (Fiji) intended to test the model of the AD 1300 Event. This holds that around AD 1250-1350, during the transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, there was a rapid climate-driven sea-level fall of 70-80 cm which created a food crisis for coastal dwellers throughout the tropical Pacific Islands and led to conflict and the abandonment of open coastal settlements in favour of those in more defensible locations. Two main areas were targeted - the Ba River Valley and adjoining Vatia Peninsula (plus offshore islands) - and inland/offshore sites in defensible locations, particularly in caves, ridge-top rockshelters, and isolated hilltops, were surveyed and test excavations made. Results show that while some of these sites were established during the AD 1300 Event, most were established shortly afterwards, which is exactly what the model predicts. It is concluded that prehistoric populations in Fiji (and similar island groups) were affected by the food crisis during the AD 1300 Event and did respond in ways that profoundly and enduringly altered contemporary trajectories of societal evolution. This study has great implications for the preservation of the record of prehistoric settlement in Fiji (and other tropical Pacific Island groups) because, as a consequence of this climate-forced migration from coasts to inland/upland sites, large amounts of sediment were released from island interiors and carried to their coasts where they buried earlier settlements or redistributed their material signature. Since European arrival in such places around 150 years ago, a second wave of coastal sedimentation, largely driven by plantation agriculture development had similar effects. The current rise of sea level around Pacific Island coasts is the latest in a series of (largely human) threats to the preservation of their cultural heritage.

Despite reaching heights of >6 m and destroying a sizeable coastal settlement at the head of Baie Martelli (Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, South Pacific), the 26 November 1999 tsunamis caused only five fatalities from a threatened population of about 300 persons, most of whom fled inland and upslope before the waves struck. This remarkable survival rate is attributed to both indigenous knowledge, largely in the form of kastom knowledge, and information obtained from a video about tsunamis that was shown in the area three weeks earlier. Interviews with 55 persons who experienced this tsunami suggest that indigenous knowledge about tsunami risk and response in Baie Martelli was well known among key members of the community and was probably largely responsible for the appropriate response. Future strategies for disaster risk reduction should involve maintaining such indigenous knowledge in such communities and supplementing this where needed with scientific knowledge filtered through indigenous culture and language.

This PhD project aims to extend climate change adaptation research by understanding the physical exposure of a place and the perceptions of the people occupying that space. There is scientific consensus that climate change will amplify existing environmental risks and have unequal impacts on human societies worldwide. The people living in small island developing states (SIDS) are at the frontline of the impacts of climate change due to high levels of exposure and low adaptive capacity. Using data from recent fieldwork, this study assesses the exposure and perceptions of people living in Labasa (a coastal-deltaic rural-urban area developed on a flood plain) in northern Fiji in the South Pacific. Even though risks associated with future sea level rise (SLR) are generally recognised for coastal areas, risks specific to certain landforms, such as river deltas, are understudied. This study provides an assessment of future risks from global SLR and storm surges under SLR in the Labasa Delta. The inundation maps produced through the risk assessment show that both the natural (vegetation and hydrological network) and the built (roads, communities, and infrastructure) environments in the river delta are at inundation risk from future SLR. Despite growing behavioural and attitudinal data on climate change in developed countries, little is known about the determinants of climate behaviours in developing countries. The second main aim of the current study is to provide the first set of representative psychological and behavioural data for the Pacific Islands region with tested hypothesised relationships. To this end, a survey of climate change perceptions amongst a national representative Fijian sample (N = 420), derived through random sampling was conducted throughout the study area. The survey collected both demographic (age, gender, education, employment, and land tenure) and psychological (knowledge, information, risk perception, self-efficacy) data, and investigated the relationship between these variables and climate change adaptation behavioural intentions. As hypothesised, multiple regression analyses identified affective associations, psychological proximity, flood experience, risk perceptions, and self-efficacy as determinants of pro-climate behaviours in Fiji. The results also found a greater engagement with climate change amongst racial majorities (iTaukei), males, and educated people. The findings did not support the hypothesis that increasing objective knowledge, belief, and trust in information sources determines climate behaviours. Although relationships existed between objective knowledge, belief, trust, and the behavioural intention variables, these came out as non-significant predictors. Overall, these results contribute to global research on climate change adaptation. By examining two important aspects - the likely inundation in the Labasa delta because of sea level rise and the perceptions of people in the Labasa area of climate change, the project fills a significant recognised research gap on islands. Previous climate change studies on islands have neither focused on local impacts in peripheral locations, nor looked at people's perceptions in such vulnerable places. The results of this research project provide a baseline of perceptions and vulnerabilities for islands that can aid in the design of future adaptation and risk communication strategies for vulnerable communities in Fiji and the wider Asia-Pacific region. It is expected that the results will offer stakeholders evidence-based advice and important insights on how to make climate change adaptation efforts more sustainable and community-inclusive than current practice.

At the Lapita-era (1100-550 B.C.) settlements (Bourewa and Qoqo) along the Rove Peninsula in Fiji, valves of the reef-surface-dwelling giant clam 'Hippopus hippopus' (long extirpated in Fiji) occur in shell midden. Valve size/weight increase with depth, suggesting that human predation contributed to its local disappearance. The timing of this event is constrained by (a) the confinement of 'H. hippopus' remains to the lower part of the midden, (b) their likely association with only the stilt-platform occupation phase at both Bourewa and Qoqo (approximately 1100-900 B.C.), and (c) radiocarbon ages. All these suggest that 'H. hippopus' disappeared from reefs here about 750 B.C. Yet human predation is not considered to be a significant cause of extirpation of 'H. hippopus' in the entire Fiji group. More plausible is that (climate-driven) sea-level fall (55 cm) during Lapita times in Fiji (approximately 1100-550 B.C.) forced changes to coral-reef ecology that saw this sensitive species extirpated throughout the Fiji archipelago. It is also considered possible that the Lapita colonizers introduced bivalve predators or diseases to Fiji that spread independently of humans throughout these islands.

The comment by Hall and Sanders raises some issues we are able to clarify. These authors also criticize our study for its omissions, something we regard as inevitable in a one-off study of this nature. We contend that neither of these concerns invalidate our study's conclusions. Hall and Sanders's first criticism concerns sampling and interpretation and is prefaced by the rhetorical question "of whom can the authors legitimately speak?" At the time of the study, both authors had interacted with both communities in the Rewa Delta for more than 20 years, each author speaking one of their two vernacular languages (Fiji Hindi and Bauan-Fijian) and being intimate with their cultural mores, attributes that allowed us privileged access to these communities for the purpose of the study. Interviewee selection was not "haphazard". In both study sites, we were constrained in this by gender, age, language, relatedness, status, and religious affiliation, all of which affected our ability to freely speak to those we might have targeted had we not been so encumbered yet we are satisfied that the 64 people we interviewed (selected by age, gender and residence time) represented a cross-section of the target population in each community. Full details of interviewees are given in Lata's MSc thesis (Lata 2010), which was referenced several times in our paper (Lata and Nunn 2012). We are indeed somewhat "startled" that Hall and Sanders overlooked this. A requirement that potential interviewees must have been continuously resident in our sample locations for 30 years is not "troubling" to us. We used a 30-year figure because (1) our experience of gathering environmental-change data from Pacific Island communities suggests that this was the optimal period needed to comprehensively exclude persons who might give misleading information2 and (2) flood data in particular suggest that this is the period within which recent climate-change effects are detectable, something on which we sought to allow our informants to comment. As we explain in our paper, "although the specific data analysed in this paper were obtained from individual interviews, these were supplemented by focus-group discussions in appropriate cultural situations for the purposes of understanding both the broader context and canvassing group views" (Lata and Nunn 2012: 174).

As in the past, most Pacific Island people live today along island coasts and subsist largely on foods available both onshore and offshore. On at least two occasions in the 3500 years that Pacific Islands have been settled, sea level changes affected coastal bioproductivity to the extent that island societies were transformed in consequence. Over the past 200 years, sea level has been rising along most Pacific Island coasts causing loss of productive land through direct inundation (flooding), shoreline erosion and groundwater salinization. Responses have been largely uninformed, many unsuccessful. By the year 2100, sea level may be 1.2 m higher than today. Together with other climate-linked changes and unsustainable human pressures on coastal zones, this will pose huge challenges for livelihoods. There is an urgent need for effective and sustainable adaptation of livelihoods to prepare for future sea level rise in the Pacific Islands region. There are also lessons to be learned from past failures, including the need for adaptive solutions that are environmentally and culturally appropriate, and those which appropriate decision makers are empowered to design and implement. Around the middle of the twenty-first century, traditional coastal livelihoods are likely to be difficult to sustain, so people in the region will need alternative food production systems. Within the next 20-30 years, it is likely that many coastal settlements will need to be relocated, partly or wholly. There are advantages in anticipating these needs and planning for them sooner rather than later. In many ways, the historical and modern Pacific will end within the next few decades. There will be fundamental irreversible changes in island geography, settlement patterns, subsistence systems, societies and economic development, forced by sea level rise and other factors.

Extremes of climate occur globally but for the low-latitude Pacific the most common, threatening and destructive extremes come in the form of tropical cyclones and droughts. They occur regularly and both types of event have destructive and debilitating impacts on certain countries and islands within the region. Tropical cyclones and droughts periodically impact islands located in parts of the Pacific that are not usually affected by such events. The most important factor influencing the incidence of these extremes of climatic variability across the Pacific Ocean is the EI Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. Occurring at present every 3-5 years, this large-scale ocean atmosphere interaction involves the fluctuation of pressure systems on either side of the Pacific which alter temperature, rainfall, wind and pressure distribution across the region and in tum influence the distribution of criteria required for the formation of tropical cyclones and occurrence of droughts. In addition to coping with current impacts of tropical cyclones and droughts, decision-makers of Pacific island countries now have to contend with the prospect of such events, including ENSO, becoming more frequent if global climate changes in the future as predicted. In order to understand present climatic characteristics there is a need to gain a greater understanding of climate in the more recent past.