Climate Migration - The Practicalities

Eventually, the effects of climate change will necessitate required migration from low lying islands and atolls in the Pacific. The first choice for migrants will likely be the urban centres in their own countries. The second choice will be a neighbouring country in the region. The third choice will be somewhere outside of the region. It sounds straightforward, but there are practicalities.

It's About Managing Risk: The overlap between CCA and DRR in the Pacific

There are a lot of acronyms out there. Sometimes they can be a bit confusing - in the world of development two particular acronyms abound: CCA and DRR. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Globally, they overlap in areas and there is not enough cooperation between practitioners in the two fields to make them interventions more efficient and effective. In the Pacific, however, they are practically the same thing. Particularly because climate change is by definition a slow onset disaster.

Understanding Climate Migration: Policy and Law

An overview of the legal aspects and gaps on climate migration.

Vulnerability is Not a Bad Thing

‘A number of communities said in focus group discussions they had observed significant changes in the weather patterns over time. However, 90 percent perceived these changes to be “due to grace of God” and had no clue how much human activity had contributed to the problem.’

Does this sound familiar to you? The people around you know that the climate is changing but they don’t understand that they have to take action themselves to prepare for its effects? This is more common than you think.

What Makes the Pacific Resilient?

What makes the Pacific so resilient? Often times, too much of the discourse on resilience focuses on the policy and strategy level - at the global and national levels. This is important because it raises awareness of the issues at hand. But policy and strategy don’t actually make people resilient.

There were two fantastic articles on resilience which change the nature of the discussion out recently. The first looked at how resilience is actually just about ‘small victories’ in adapting to new situations on the ground - at the local level. Which is really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific (Part 5) - Health Care

Friends, the statistics are not good. In fact, they are very troubling. The state of health in the Pacific is poor. There are a myriad of reasons, but the primary two are lack of investment in health care services by government, and personal choices.

Before we talk about health care in terms of aid, let’s first address the issue of personal choice. For most countries, there is sufficient locally grown and produced healthy food to provide for adequate balanced diets. At times, cyclones and flooding and drought interrupt the food production process, and climate change is interfering with those processes, particularly in atoll countries, but for the most part, we’re still in a situation where we can grow our own food - enough to feed our families and sell the remainder at the market in order to have cash income to buy other necessities.

What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific Need (Part 4) – Infrastructure

It’s hard to get ahead in life if you can’t access information and you can’t physically get where you want to go.

Which is why infrastructure, whether it’s communications infrastructure for internet access, or transport infrastructure that is reliable and well maintained, like ports, airport and roads, is so critical. This is particularly so in a region that has so many geographic challenges to overcome. The problem is that the return on investment is not instant like we see in geographically centred countries like in Europe or parts of Asia. Infrastructure investments are super expensive in the Pacific, and require significantly more maintenance due to climatic conditions.