Enhancing Climate Resilience in the Pacific

Abstract

National meteorological services (NMSs) are mandated to provide relevant and timely meteorological information to communities, including forecasts and warnings of conditions that are likely to endanger life, property, or the environment. However, in rural or remote areas, particularly in developing countries, traditional weather forecasting may be preferred over contemporary methods. Across the Pacific, NMSs are working with traditional knowledge (TK) experts to build community resilience to extreme events. Using five Pacific countries as examples, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu, we demonstrate how a participatory approach can be used to preserve and promote the continued use of TK of weather and climate and illustrate the entire process for collecting and incorporating this knowledge into NMSs products and services. Critical components we identified included: understanding legal and governance requirements; developing sustainable partnerships; guidelines and processes for collection and documentation of TK; secure and respectful storage of TK; developing monitoring networks; and improving weather and climate communication using TK. The Pacific TK projects were indigenous run, built on in-country partnerships between the NMSs and other organizations and government departments, and considered global, regional, and national legal and policy constraints around the collection of TK and protection of intellectual property. Community members participated in setting the project goals and in determining how the TK was collected, stored, and used. This approach allowed the NMSs to create products and communications that were tailored to meet community needs, while also benefiting wider audiences through their use in the media and the education sector.

Seasonal Calendars Enhance Climate Communication in the Pacific

“…In some cases, the way the research is conducted, including the types of questions asked, may restrict communities from providing the full cultural context of their seasonal calendar. In other cases, some TK may be withheld because of its sensitive nature, as it may only be able to be shared with certain people, for example, according to gender or tribal status (Chambers et al 2017;Malsale et al 2018). The collection and verification of seasonal knowledge works best if indigenous people are given a central role in the process (Nickels et al 2007;Malsale et al 2018).…”

“…National Meteorological Services (NMSs) in the Pacific wish to better understand and serve their communities and this includes finding alternative, and improved, methods of discussing climate variability and change and enhancing communication of climate products, including forecasts and warnings. This need was identified in Chambers et al (2019) and in the Pacific Roadmap for Strengthened Climate Services 2017-26 (Pacific Science Solutions 2017), and aligns with the Global Framework for Climate Services goal to improve the resilience of vulnerable regional communities (e.g., small island developing states) to climate hazards, by developing stronger partnerships between communities and NMSs to provide targeted and userfriendly climate services that better meet community needs (World Meteorological Organization 2011;Hewitt et al 2012). This paper discusses how seasonal calendars can assist with climate communication and development of new climate services and how the information used to construct the calendars was collected and used in three Pacific countries: Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu (Fig.…”