The importance of attention to customary tenure solutions: slow onset risks and the limits of Vanuatu’s climate change and resettlement policy

Towards Transformative Climate Relocation Initiatives

“…Complicated and Customary Land Tenure Questions of land, ownership, traditional practices and claims, and customary land rules arise in all types of resettlement schemes (Edwards 2013; McDonnell 2021; Taylor 2015). How land tenure is lived and experienced by residents is complex, even in property regimes that prioritize private property.…”

“…Land tenure situations including circular migration patterns and ongoing claims to traditional lands have been overlooked in planning efforts. McDonnell (2021) found that Vanuatu, a nation comprised of around 80 islands, recognizes people's right to return in its national policy on climate displacement, but does not recognize circular migration between ancestral lands and current living sites, or customary tenure arrangements. Ownership and tenure constraints impeded the government-led relocation of Taro, the provincial capital of Choiseul Province in the Solomon Islands.…”

Climate mobilities, rights and justice: Complexities and particularities

“…This is in part because the complexities of agency, culture, power, temporality and governance that shape how people live in, and possibly leave, a climate-impacted place are many. Meanwhile, the concepts of mobility, habitability, identity, values and place are variously and not always uniformly perceived and contested by residents, institutions and others (Sheller, 2018;Alam and Miller, 2019;Kita, 2019;Whyte et al, 2019;Blondin, 2021;McDonnell, 2021;Jessee, 2022;Neu and Fünfgeld, 2022;Nyantakyi-Frimpong and Dinko, 2022). Such complexities can compound as habitability declines over time in a changing climate, even as the ways in which habitability is measured and by who matters and is not uncontested (Duvat et al, 2021;Horton et al, 2021).…”

“…Despite the cross-sectoral and human rights approach, however, it remains questionable whether the policy, which assumes that the power to relocate communities is held by the state, can deliver durable solutions for climate-exposed communities in Vanuatu, since the vast majority of land is customarily owned. This fact is poorly accounted for in the policy and consequently it faces major operational challenges (McDonnell, 2021). Questions thus arise about the very close links between customary governance and justice.…”

Statehood, Human Rights and Sea-Level Rise

“…For Pacific peoples, land and identity are enmeshed: dislocation from land impacts identity, belonging and well-being;54 disrupts cultural and social networks; and can disconnect communities from critical resources. 55 For these reasons, it may represent the most significant form of loss and damage for Pacific peoples -an aspect that the next phase of the Study Group's work could usefully explore.…”