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Climate Climate

housing and other social needs. It draws on the idea that have to decide what is good for them. That’s an approach that
human well-being and socio-economic resilience will benefit has failed considerably.”
from a healthy environment, with a supply of fresh water and Nunn said the paper in Nature Climate Change documents
other natural resources. the amount of knowledge and understanding in Pacific island
Over the last five years, SPREP has been trialling this ap- communities that should be brought to bear on these prob-
proach through the Pacific Ecosystems-based Adaptation to lems.
Climate Change (PEBACC) project. Working with communities “I’d argue that Pacific island communities have a lot of nat-
in Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, PEBACC has promoted ural resilience and local knowledge,” he said. “But they are
ecosystem-based adaptation as a central response to climate reluctant to express their knowledge or privilege it, especially
change. This approach acknowledges that damage to both in a foreign language, so the default position for many donors
ecosystems and community resilience can come from combi- is that the community is helpless. This study and other studies
nation of climate change as well as non-climate sources such have shown that this is simply not the case. There is a need to
as pollution, inappropriate coastal development or over- acknowledge community understanding and knowledge, and
fishing. to let them drive their own responses. As donors, we can offer
For Nunn, Pacific communities have been adapting to the financial resources or information as required, but basically
natural environment over the centuries. They can build on change is going to be bottom-up rather than top-down.”
this tradition as environmental change moves faster because
of sea level rise and other adverse effects of climate change. Sustainability a challenge
“Ecosystem-based Adaptation is looking to nature, it’s look- The research study used five measures for the evaluation of
ing to the things that exist in the environment that you can each project: appropriateness, effectiveness, equity, impact
use to adapt,” he told Islands Business. “It could be as simple and sustainability. It argues, however, that “sustainability can
as re-planting mangroves or not cutting down mangroves in be the most difficult to achieve because it needs to stand the
the first place. It could be not cutting down the fringe of test of time – there can be short-term benefit but poor long-
coastal vegetation from the front of your coastal community. term impact.”
“It’s been these mangroves that have protected coastal “In our study, we found that most governments and donors
communities from large waves, storms and other extremes of believed that their projects were sustainable,” he said. “But
weather. When mangroves are cut down, this is in effect an in most cases, we found that wasn’t so. In rural Pacific island
increased exposure of coastal settlements to these kinds of contexts, sustainable adaptation depends on community buy-
climate driven extremes, which is exacerbated other issues in and community support. You’ve got to respect the commu-
like sea level rise.” nity’s understanding of the natural environment, even though
it may not be perfect and it may need to be enhanced.
Top-down or bottom-up? “Throughout all the projects we studied, when a donor
For the Queensland research team, there was one crucial comes in and says ‘here is $50,000 to do a project’, the com-
finding – the need for donors to support bottom-up rather munity is very happy! But when the money dries up after the
than top-down initiatives: “Our analysis suggests the need three-year donor cycle, the project collapses because the
for a praxis shift whereby adaptation is locally led, communi- community associates adaptation with cash.”
ties drive their own agendas, and donors and implementers Many Pacific governments have sought financial resources
become facilitators that resource the diverse capacities of through multilateral mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund
communities and help achieve local objectives equitably.” or Global Environment Facility. But Nunn argues the substan-
Patrick Nunn acknowledges the value of extensive work on tial funding that has flowed into the Pacific Islands region for
climate adaptation across the region over many years, but climate change adaptation has made little progress towards
worries that many donors still use project templates that are intended objectives, and that funding may dry up in the
not appropriate for small island developing states. future.
“The problem with a top-down model, when it is applied “We’ve got to move beyond cash,” he said. “In ten years’
uncritically in the Pacific by donors, is that you can pass time, when the cost of domestic climate adaptation in Austra-
legislation, but most Pacific island governments don’t have lia skyrockets, Australia is going to have much less money to
the necessary capacity to enforce that legislation,” he said. give for adaptation in Pacific island countries. The sooner Pa-
“Donors pour money into the development of top-down adap- cific island countries learn to do their own adaptation which is
tation strategies, but largely it’s ineffective. It hasn’t created effective and sustainable, the better. There is no alternative
any sustained adaptation to climate change. than to empower communities to develop their own adapta-
“At community level, there is often a great understanding tion strategies.”
of the natural environmental processes that are causing prob-
lems – like sea level rise or storm surges. But governments The study can be found at: McNamara, K.E., Nunn, P, Clis-
aren’t really interested in listening to that because govern- sold, R., Westoby, R. et al: “An assessment of community-
ments, like their donor partners, privilege Western/global based adaptation initiatives in the Pacific Islands”, Nature
knowledge. You often find an attitude amongst donors that Climate Change, 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-
people on the ground can’t understand these processes, so we 020-0813-1

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