Urban adaptation pathways at the edge of the anthropocene: lessons from the Blue Pacific Continent

ABSTRACT

Pacific Island cities exhibit high levels of informality. In these spaces, traditional cultural practices and production converge with the periphery of global financial markets and systems of trade and production. These hybrid, nonconforming urban systems fall between regional policy agendas, requiring practitioners to embed urban considerations within broader regional platforms such as climate change. This paper demonstrates how these “covert” processes are used to advance urban justice at a settlement scale, both within and in resistance to city-level resilience frameworks and governance. In addition to a wider review of secondary data and Pacific urban literature the authors – non-Indigenous Pacific urban experts – draw upon empirical evidence from climate resilient development initiatives across the region. This includes case studies from the two Vanuatu municipalities of Luganville and Port Vila, and Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands. Approaches for negotiating divergences between these functional systems of traditional and state justice within the urban domain are proposed, particularly in relation to disaster response and climate resilient development. Adaptation pathways are also presented, that draw upon decolonized visions of Pacific cities. These build upon observations of endogenous resilience in Pacific informal settlements; imaginaries centered upon quasi-customary urban governance, social structures, and ecosystem services.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban planning
• climate adaptation
• informal settlements
• Pacific Islands
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the various community members, colleagues and representatives of organizations and government entities who have contributed to the various research projects that are reflected upon here, as well as the anonymous reviewers who contributed their own expertise and constructive feedback to the development of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As of February 2021 Palau has withdrawn its membership of the Pacific Islands Forum, with the Micronesian governments of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia committing to review their membership by the end of 2021.