Pacific climate change adaptation: The use of participatory media to promote indigenous knowledge

Abstract

Pacific Island communities are increasingly experiencing the impacts of climate change. Inaccessibility to relevant information about contemporary climate change adaptation strategies at the community level presents challenges. At the same time, indigenous strategies to adapt to climate changes have been overlooked in both local and global climate change debates. This article discusses a project undertaken with a community on Andra Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies were explored through photo essays developed by community members, engaging in approaches of visual participatory action research and indigenous research approaches. The collaboration with the Andra Island community created a space for reflective dialogue about challenges posed by climate change as well as how photo essays can be used to promote Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as a viable capital for community-based adaptation (CBA). Within this context, this article demonstrates how climate change is both a natural and cultural process of change which poses socio-economic challenges. These challenges can compel people to engage in unsustainable practices that might exacerbate natural climate change impacts. The article highlights that building community capacity in participatory media can be an important tool to forge collective synergy, dialogue and ownership in local climate change initiatives. In particular, the authors demonstrate how participatory media can be harnessed to integrate indigenous knowledge in community-based climate change adaptation.

The Resilience of Indigenous Peoples to Environmental Change

“…The erosion of IK reflects diverse and interconnected factors, including rapid environmental change, which can make some components of IK, including observational indicators and traditional forecasting, less reliable (however, see Learning). 46,115,116 More widely documented is the role of socio-cultural factors that are affecting how knowledge is acquired, maintained, transmitted, and utilized. Modernization processes, including increasing exposure to formal schooling, changing livelihoods, and market integration, for instance, have discouraged experiential learning, weakened traditional institutions, and reduced intergenerational communication.…”

“…This can involve integrating and adapting new practices and discarding old ones if they are no longer effective or adopting new technologies. The dynamic and pragmatic nature of IK challenges notions that IK is losing its relevance, and studies from the Arctic, 117,118 the Pacific Islands, 46,115 Australia, 88,119 sub-Saharan Africa, 106 and tropical forests 62,120 have documented how Indigenous peoples are continuously reclaiming, re-energizing, and rebuilding their knowledge systems in light of environmental change and other outside pressures. This can involve the development of new knowledge heuristics (e.g., new seasonal calendars), new livelihood strategies (e.g., altered cropping practices), the evolution of protocols of knowledge transmission, and the strengthening of traditional rituals and practices and can support rapid adaptation during times of change (Table 2).…”

Narratives and Counternarratives on Data Sharing in Africa

“…Storytelling is one important method for indigenous research, and a tool to legally claim the right to local voices through which narratives are validated [39,47,56,73]. Making local communities the focal perspective of shared knowledge through storytelling counters histories of colonialism, knowledge produced for colonial regimes, and the power dynamics silencing indigenous expertise [10,17,77,110].…”

Assessing the feasibility of adaptation options: methodological advancements and directions for climate adaptation research and practice

“…IK systems underpin the adaptive capacity of indigenous communities in many regions, through the diversity and flexibility of indigenous agroecological systems, collective social memory, repository of accumulated experience, and from social networks essential for disaster response and recovery (Pearce et al 2015;Hiwasaki et al 2015;Mapfumo et al 2016;Sherman et al 2016;Ingty 2017), providing mitigation co-benefits (Altieri and Nicholls 2017;Russell-Smith et al 2017) and assisting in transitions to broader sustainable development (Magni 2017;Thornton and Comberti 2017). Reflecting this, adaptations based on IK scored high on sociocultural, environmental, and geophysical feasibility dimensions, including integration of IK into resource management systems and school curricula, digital storytelling and film-making, cultural events, web-based knowledge banks, radio dramas, and weather forecasting (Cunsolo Willox et al 2013;Chambers et al 2017;Inamara and Thomas 2017). Institutional feasibility, however, can have a potential blocking role, reflecting limited recognition of indigenous land rights in many regions, disempowerment, and top-down decisionmaking contexts in which indigenous epistemologies and worldviews are not respected (Ford 2012;Hooli 2016;Mistry and Berardi 2016).…”