Land tenure and urban climate resilience in the South Pacific

ABSTRACT

Urbanisation trends and global environmental change are two of the most critical modern-day stressors threatening the resilience of cities around the world. This paper focuses on Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands, which is experiencing rapid urbanisation and a resultant spread of informal settlements. Similar to other primary cities in the South Pacific, the rate of urbanisation is severely testing the local government’s ability to respond to growing levels of informality; and increasing the climate vulnerability of residents. Based on recent urban climate resilience and land tenure research conducted for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) respectively, the paper analyses land issues in two informal settlements in Honiara to highlight the inter-linkages between security of land tenure and climate vulnerability, and how insecure land tenure adversely impacts local adaptive capacity and adaptation planning. This analysis is embedded in the context of the South Pacific region, where duality tensions exist between Western-influenced land tenure arrangements within cities - a legacy of colonial times - and customary arrangements that operate in the surrounding peri-urban and provincial areas. Given the identification of strong links between security of land tenure and climate vulnerability, and the complexity of property rights in the region, the paper argues that principles of good land governance are an essential component of climate resilience thinking and actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• Small island developing states
• vulnerability
• urban resilience
• land tenure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Darryn McEvoy is a Research Professor in urban resilience and climate change adaptation in the School of Engineering, RMIT University. He has extensive experience of research in the Asia Pacific region and currently leads the scientific component of the Climate Resilient Honiara project, funded by the UNFCCC Adaptation Fund and administered by UN-Habitat.

David Mitchell is an Associate Professor with the School of Science, RMIT University. He holds a PhD from RMIT University, and his research focus is on the impact of climate change and natural disasters on land tenure, and how responsible land governance can help. He explores how securing and safeguarding land tenure rights, and effective land use planning, can enhance climate resilient pathways.

Alexei Trundle is a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne, based in the Australian-German Climate and Energy College. He is the Future Cities research coordinator at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, and acts as a scientific advisor to the UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative (CCCI) in the Pacific.

ORCID

Darryn McEvoy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4144-4137

David Mitchell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8782-6440

Notes

1 ‘wantok’ is a reciprocative social security system built around extended familial and language networks, stemming from island and tribal diasporas that are present across Honiara.