Growing hope: Island agriculture and refusing catastrophe in climate change adaptation in Fiji

Abstract

In both media and policy, climate change is broadly framed as the promise of catastrophe for small island states such as Fiji. This framing is often used to attract adaptation investment in islands, the targets and directives of which are frequently market-based and oriented toward economic-growth development models. In Fiji, this takes the form of land tenure policy and efforts to attract investment to support agricultural modernization. Such a pattern is the source of scholarly and activist critique that climate change adaptation is nothing more than a repackaging of neoliberal development. This paper seeks to situate such critique alongside parallel attention to climate change adaptation practices emerging from alternative, hopeful frames and aimed at less national development driven efforts. In doing so, it centers adaptation as a space of unsettled struggle and asks, in what ways do climate change adaptation practices in Fiji align and conflict with dominant framing of island vulnerability and climate catastrophe, and how might they suggest alternative adaptive interventions that renegotiate these frames? Specifically, this paper focuses on efforts to promote ‘traditional’ agriculture throughout Fiji as an endogenous and hopeful form of adaptation, and one consistently opposed to efforts at agricultural modernization as an adaptation strategy.

The 'Tilt' and the 'Pacific Uplift' in 'Global Britain's' ties with the Pacific Islands

“…The "Blue Pacific" has focused on the role of islanders as stewards of the Pacific (Wallis and Batley 2020). This "Blue Pacific" offers an alternative representation to more common depictions of the PIS as remote and naturally at risk (Griswold 2021). Such representations were utilised to justify colonial rule, with tropical islands seen as exotic, primitive spaces in need of civilisation through colonial rule (Griswold 2021).…”

“…This "Blue Pacific" offers an alternative representation to more common depictions of the PIS as remote and naturally at risk (Griswold 2021). Such representations were utilised to justify colonial rule, with tropical islands seen as exotic, primitive spaces in need of civilisation through colonial rule (Griswold 2021). Through focusing on climate-ocean governance, and with initiatives like the Commonwealth's Blue Charter, the UK has an opportunity to engage with Pacific Islanders on their own terms and support geopolitical imaginaries, like the "Blue Pacific", which place the environment at the centre of the Pacific-British relations.…”