Response to "The trouble with deficits: a commentary" by Elizabeth F. Hall and Todd Sanders
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).
Climate Change and Pacific Island Countries
Since being first settled by humans more than 3000 years ago, the Pacific Islands region has experienced innumerable changes in climate that have affected livelihoods, something that underlines the sensitivity of such comparatively small and resource-constrained landmasses to extraneous change but also helps explain why their inhabitants developed resilience strategies that remain important today. During the past 100 years, the region has been affected by increased temperatures and sea-level rise, together with other climate-linked changes including variability in ENSO periodicity and tropical-cyclone frequency. Owing to the increasing pace of globalisation in the region during the same period, together with growing populations and demands on island resources, it is difficult to isolate changes ascribable to climate change; some of the clearest of these are the increases in coral bleaching, incidences of coastal flooding and shoreline erosion. Despite knowledge about the causes and effects of climate-related environmental (and related) changes in the region, supported by considerable financial aid and other external assistance, the awareness of most Pacific people about climate change and the extent of community buy-in to appropriate adaptation agendas have been negligible. Many governments have been unable to effectively disseminate awareness about climate-change stressors and adaptive solutions; most community-level decision-makers are unable to make informed decisions about long-term adaptation to observed changes. Warming and sea-level rise are both expected to accelerate within the next 100 years or so, causing profound changes to environments, societies and development aspirations within the region. Re-location of people from vulnerable to less-vulnerable locations within the region is unavoidable and should be planned for sooner rather than later. International partners of Pacific Island nations should become more aware of the pathways for embedding effective adaptation in the region. Regional agencies and governments should challenge and re-define their roles in promoting and disseminating climate-change adaptation strategies within the region. Awareness-raising should focus on persons of influence in Pacific Island communities to allow them to make informed and sustainable decisions about the environments they occupy.
Misperceptions of climate-change risk as barriers to climate-change adaptation: a case study from the Rewa Delta, Fiji
While increasing research is focusing on the effective adaptation to climate change in richer (developed) countries, comparatively little has focused specifically on this subject in poorer (developing) countries such as most in the Pacific Islands region. A significant barrier to the development of effective and sustainable adaptive strategies for climate change in such places is the gap between risk and perceived risk. This study looks at a vulnerable location in Fiji - the densely populated Rewa River Delta where environmental changes resulting from shoreline retreat and floods are expected to increase over the next few decades and entail profound societal disruption. The numbers of people living in the Rewa Delta who know of climate change and could correctly identify its contributory causes are few although many rank its current manifestations (floods, riverbank erosion, groundwater salinization) as among their most serious environmental challenges. While lack of awareness is a barrier to adaptation, there are also cultural impediments to this such as short-term planning perspectives, spiritual beliefs, traditional governance structures. One way forward is to empower community leaders in places like the Rewa Delta to make appropriate decisions and for regional governments to continue working together to find solutions that acknowledge the variation in sub-regional trans-national vulnerability to climate change.
Nature and Chronology of Prehistoric Settlement on the Vatia Peninsula, Northern Viti Levu Island, Fiji
Two upland sites from the Vatia Peninsula, northern Viti Levu Island, Fiji, were excavated as part of a larger project investigating the settlement history of this area. These sites represent the first intensive survey and excavation program in this part of Fiji. The sites are a cave (Matanigaga), which acted as a short-term shelter, and a ring-wall mound (Drautana), one of a number of similar sites interpreted as likely precursors to complex ridge-top fortifications. Both sites suggest that occupation in this area began in the last millennium and involved exploitation of near shore marine resources. The number of fortified hilltops on the Vatia Peninsula suggests that conflict may have been endemic in this area of Fiji during the latter part of the last millennium. Site descriptions and the analysis of ceramic, lithic, and mollusk remains are presented here.
Letters: Sea-Level Rise by 2100
In his news and analysis piece reporting on the newly released fifth assessment report (AR5) by Working Group I (WGI) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ("A Stronger IPCC Report," 4 October, p. 23), R. A. Kerr highlights three fundamental conclusions about climate change that were assessed with equal or greater confi dence than in previous IPCC reports. He also points to three "contentious points" on which he states that the AR5 "took a moderate line." Kerr includes sea-level projections among these points, and reports "a rise of 40 to 60 centimeters by late in the century and a worst case of 1 meter by 2100, [which is] higher than in 2007 but far below the meter or two of sea-level rise that some expect." As the authors of the IPCC WGI AR5 chapter on "Sea-Level Change," we wish to clarify that for the highest emission scenario considered (RCP8.5), the AR5 reported a "likely" range of 0.45 to 0.82 m for sea-level projections for the late 21st century (average over 2081 to 2100) and of 0.52 to 0.98 m by 2100. The difference in sea level between these two periods is large because in 2081 to 2100, the "likely" rate of rise is 8 to 16 mm per year, which is up to about 10 times the average rate of rise during the 20th century.
Furious Winds and Parched Islands: Tropical Cyclones (1558-1970) and Droughts (1722-1987) in the Pacific
This book has been gestating for nearly twenty years and its publication now is due to the manifest upsurge in interest in improving our understanding of past climate changes in order to better understand those which challenge us during the remainder of the twenty-first century and beyond. This book does not provide a comprehensive account of the climate of the Pacific, how it evolved, how it currently functions, and how it may develop in the foreseeable future. Far better accounts of such topics are the relevant parts of the books by Rapaport (1999), Nunn (1999, 2007), and Barnett and Campbell (2010), as well as the book chapter by Lough et al. (2011). The real value of this book is in providing the most complete account yet of the history of tropical cyclones (hurricanes) and droughts in the Pacific as ascertained from written records since these began. This history is expected to be a valuable resource for those interested in both individual events in particular places as well as the changes in climate that the records represent.
Beyond the core: community governance for climate-change adaptation in peripheral parts of Pacific Island Countries
Pacific Island Countries are highly exposed to climate change. Most impact studies have focused on the most densely populated core areas where top-down governance is most effective. In contrast, this research looks at peripheral (rural/outer-island) communities where long-established systems of environmental governance exist that contrast markedly with those which governments and their donor partners in this region favour. Peripheral communities in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, and Vanuatu were studied. Traditional systems of environmental governance are described, and three common barriers to effective and sustainable climate-change adaptation identified. The first is lack of awareness among key community decision makers about climate change and associated environmental sustainability that could be lessened by targeted awareness raising. The second is the inappropriateness of traditional decision-making structures for dealing with both the complexity and pace of climate-driven environmental changes. The third is the short-term views of resource management and sustainability held by many community decision makers. Despite 30 years of assistance, there has been negligible effective and sustainable adaptation for climate change in peripheral parts of Pacific Island Countries, something that is explicable by both the ineffectiveness of top-down approaches in such places as well as a lack of attention to the nature and the context of adaptation communications. It is timely for interventions to be made at community level where the greatest disconnect lies between the science and stakeholder awareness of climate change.