Combatting Climate Change in the Pacific

The Role of Regional Organizations

Marc Williams, Duncan McDuie-Ra

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319696478
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Umweltwissenschaft

This book analyses the regional complexes of climate security in the Pacific. Pacific Island States and Territories (PICTs) have long been cast as the frontline of climate change and placed within the grand architecture of global climate governance. The region provides compelling new insights into the ways climate change is constructed, governed, and shaped by (and in turn shapes), regional and global climate politics.

By focusing on climate security as it is constructed in the Pacific and how this concept mobilises resources and shapes the implementation of climate finance, the book provides an up-to-date account of the way regional organizations in the Pacific have contributed to the search for solutions to the problem of climate insecurity.

In the context of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in 2015, the focus of this book on regional governance offers a concise and innovative account of climate politics in the prevailing global context and one with implications for the study of climate security in other regions, particularly in the developing world.

© The Author(s) 2018

Marc Williams and Duncan McDuie-RaCombatting Climate Change in the Pacifichttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69647-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Politics of Climate Change in the Pacific

Marc Williams¹ and Duncan McDuie-Ra¹

(1)

School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Abstract

The introductory chapter makes the case that within the grand architecture of global climate governance, analysing regional complexes in the Pacific provides new insights into the ways climate change is constructed, governed, and shaped by—and in turn shapes—regional and global climate politics. Three claims are made. First, the Pacific is not just ‘any region’, rather the Pacific has been constructed as the frontline of climate change. Second, climate change reinforces the notion of regional solidarity in the Pacific institutionalized in regional organizations; however, these organizations have become heavily dependent on external donors in combatting climate change. Third, Pacific states have advocated for important changes to the global architecture of climate finance, yet contestation over key elements of climate finance leaves the region poorly served.

Keywords

Climate changePacific regionalismClimate governanceAid dependency

End Abstract

From the perspective of Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) much of the intense speculation and debate over climate change action, policy, and governance seems irrelevant and immature given the oft-repeated warnings of the severe consequences of climate change for low-lying islands and atoll countries. The Pacific is not just ‘any region’ when it comes to climate change but rather, as Farbotko (2010) argues, the Pacific is an ‘experimental space’ of climate change ‘canaries’. Representatives from PICTs speak about the coming catastrophe and the impacts already being felt at virtually every governmental and non-governmental meeting on climate change. Small states from the region have been able to intervene in international negotiations, to exert emotional pressure, to keep the symbolism of societies under threat of extinction at the forefront of global consciousness on climate change. Advocates and activists from all over the world frequently invoke the region when making a case for climate action. Images of Pacific Islanders knee deep in water adorn websites, posters, and campaign materials from university campuses to large international non-governmental organization headquarters. Experts and consultants have descended on the region to address adaptation, mitigation, and policy adjustments in PICTs. The position of the Pacific at the frontline of climate change has spurred voluminous research; however, studies of the politics of climate change within the region is limited, particularly with regard to regional processes and the ways climate science, climate security, and climate action are internalized, debated, and acted upon in the region itself.

While it is widely agreed that climate change requires action at multiple levels of governance, studies of climate change in the Pacific have been narrowly focused with limited attention to transnational and regional processes. There has also been limited attention to how the shared fate of climate change has created new solidarities, a new sense of the region, new vulnerabilities and dependencies, and new forms of agency. Yet at the same time climate change has come to dominate the region’s politics, aid and finance, and development agenda. Exploring the regional politics of climate change in the Pacific draws our attention not only to political dynamics in the region, but within the grand architecture of global climate governance the region provides, compelling new insights into the ways climate change is constructed, governed, and shaped by—and in turn shapes—regional and global climate politics. Our focus has two strands. The first is to explore the ways climate change is constructed in the Pacific, first as an environmental problem and second as a security threat (Chaps. 3 and 4). While we are interested in localized versions of this construction within PICTs—detailed in Chap. 3, it is the regional level that holds most resonance for our understanding as this aligns with the ways climate governance is organized and financed. The second strand is to sketch the structure of regional governance, regional finance, and the dynamics shaping these through the last decade of climate politics. By focussing on these two strands, namely the ways climate change and ‘climate security ’ are constructed in the Pacific and the ways the concept mobilizes resources and shapes the implementation of climate finance, this book provides an account of the way regional organizations in the Pacific have contributed to the search for solutions to the problem of climate change. Our analysis brings to the fore competing conceptions of climate security, the articulation of policy narratives, and the constraints imposed by continued dependence on external powers. Through an exploration of regional governance as a strategy by which small vulnerable states respond to urgent crises, the book explores both the potential and the limitations of collective action on environmental issues.

Throughout the book we make three main arguments. First, the Pacific is constructed as the frontline of climate change. These narratives are internalized and have come to dominate policy making at the regional level, in specific PICTs, and in the ways powerful regional actors, both multilateral and bilateral, approach climate change. We identify two duelling discourses: insecurity and vulnerability. These coexist and PICTs draw from both when necessary in their attempts to shape the ways climate change is addressed in the region and when engaging different audiences.

Second, climate change reinforces the notion of regional solidarity in the Pacific institutionalized in three key regional organizations. Given the limited capacity of PICTs in terms of knowledge gaps, institutional deficiencies, and limited financial resources, a regional response appears a logical way of addressing the impacts of climate change. These organizations mobilize resources for climate change action through distinct policy narratives about the place of the Pacific in the global climate crisis. However, beneath the surface regional climate governance is heavily dependent on donors for finance and expertise. PICTs are thus extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extremely vulnerable to growing dependencies on donors to address these impacts.

Third, PICTs have not simply been passive recipients of climate finance but have exercised their agency to demand changes to the existing multilateral climate finance architecture. Despite this, the failure to reach agreement over the objectives of climate finance, the required volume of finance, and the governance of climate finance negatively impacts the ability of small island states in the Pacific to secure adequate finance in order to combat climate change at various scales in the region and domestically.

Pacific Island States and Territories

Our research focused on the Pacific, which can be a geographically vague term. The challenge with the term is determining which states and territories are included and which are excluded. There is little consensus as can be seen in membership of regional organizations in the Pacific. For instance, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF ), the flagship intergovernmental organization in the region, restricts membership to independent states, and has 18 members (including Australia and New Zealand), though it also includes several ‘associate members’. The ¹Pacific Community (SPC )—the oldest regional organization initially started by colonial powers prior to independence movements in the region—has 26 members and includes many non-independent territories, such as French Polynesia , Tokelau , and Guam . It also includes founding regional and extra-regional powers such as the United States and France (the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are no longer members). Thus, while the SPC is more inclusive to non-independent territories it is also inclusive of colonial and neo-colonial powers. Colonial relationships have a major role in inclusion and exclusion; even still there are some seemingly curious cases of inclusion and exclusion, especially when it comes to internal borders. Papua New Guinea is a member of most Pacific regional organizations, while Indonesia—despite sharing a land border with the same landmass—is not. Timor-Leste , despite sharing many of the same vulnerabilities and having a close—though not always easy—relationship with Australia, has instead been pushing for membership of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), though it is a member of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS ). AOSIS is a global grouping of small island states, and has 14 members from the Pacific; all independent states except the Cook Islands and Niue . Australia , New Zealand , the United States, and France are not members.

Inclusion and exclusion based on sovereign status make it challenging to find a catch-all term that we can use throughout the book for independent and non-independent states. A related problem is that the idea of ‘the Pacific’ or ‘the South Pacific’ is a creation of what van Schendel refers to as ‘the scramble for area’ in post-Second World War knowledge production in universities and among governments and multilateral institutions (2002: 647–8). This knowledge production naturalizes the idea that Southeast Asia ends at Indonesia’s border with Papua New Guinea or that Palau is part of the Pacific while the Philippines is not. A pertinent question for us during our research was whether there is anything connecting territories as disparate as the Marshall Islands and New Caledonia . Or Papua New Guinea and Tonga . Is a common grouping forced? Is it just habitual given the existence of institutions that group these states and territories together? Or of the existence of area-specific knowledge that designates this as a region? While we are conscious of this problem, we found that climate change, climate security, and the ways these have been addressed has built, or strengthened, a sense of commonality shared by these states and territories. We are comfortable that a notion of ‘the Pacific’ as a region exists and is accepted by polities and communities subject to the term, to the idea.

Furthermore, given that several powerful ‘developed’ states are included in regional groups, especially Australia and New Zealand, what are we referring to when we talk about the Pacific? We have used PICTs, an acronym common in the region itself (indeed this is when we first encountered it), throughout the book. This solves one problem by accommodating independent states and overseas territories under varied governing arrangements. But it does not solve the second problem of whether we include Australia and New Zealand (or even France and the United States), though we include their overseas territories. This gets complicated when we talk about the PICTs as a collective. For instance, we may refer to the donor dependency in PICTs, yet the donor in this case may be Australia, which is a member of the three key institutions in the region, institutions that funnel donor funds to other members. To simplify, for the most part we use PICTs to refer to independent states and territories in the Pacific excluding Australia, New Zealand, France, and the United States, except when we mention these states specifically or refer to positions by organizations of which they are members. That leaves us with the following PICTs: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia , Fiji , French Polynesia , Guam , Kiribati , Marshall Islands, Nauru , New Caledonia , Niue, Northern Mariana Islands , Palau , Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands , Samoa , Solomon Islands , Tokelau , Tonga, Tuvalu , Vanuatu , and Wallis and Futuna . We also believe that this is in concert with views in the Pacific we encountered during fieldwork, which tended to exclude Australia, New Zealand, France, and the United States from collective identities, even if they were included in institutions. We recognize this group, this region, is constructed—a region created from various colonial, neo-colonial, and decolonization processes—but despite fissures between members and subgroupings, this grouping of polities and communities shares a sense of solidarity, of shared fate, of a way of living in a very loose sense, that makes it a region. We argue throughout the book that the challenge of climate change bolsters a sense of regionalism among PICTs, and relationships of solidarity outside the region through AOSIS. To put it another way, climate change, climate insecurity, and the action taken to combat the impacts is shaping the region in profound ways, despite the historical fragility of its construction. Indeed, the shared ecology of PICTs experiencing climate change appears to be ushering in new notions of borders in the Pacific.

Approach and Methods

Combatting Climate Change brings together two scholars from different disciplines: International Relations (Williams) and Development Studies (McDuie-Ra). Utilizing our different backgrounds, we have adopted a three-part approach to the study.

First, we seek a comprehensive understanding of the role of regional organizations in developing climate governance in the Pacific. To gain the necessary in-depth knowledge we undertook fieldwork in the Pacific on numerous trips between 2009 and 2012 to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu in addition to work in Australia where we are both based. During these trips we undertook face-to-face interviews with key individuals in regional organizations including the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Program (SPREP ), the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC ), and with individuals working on climate change in international and regional organizations operating in the Pacific including the PIF, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP ), and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP ). We visited some of these organizations more than once to speak to staff in different portfolios and departments. We conducted interviews with civil society organizations advocating for climate change action and other environmental issues in the region. We also met with researchers and consultants based in the region, in particular at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. We conducted the majority of this work together, with the exception of trips to Papua New Guinea (Williams) and the Solomon Islands (McDuie-Ra).

Interviewees generally navigated a balance between official transcripts and some candid insights. As all interviewees agreed to interviews on conditions of anonymity we have quoted few interviewees at length. Furthermore, the aim of our interviews was not to ‘catch out’ representatives of these organizations saying things that were otherwise unavailable publicly, but rather to understand the mechanics of regional organization and locate additional material to add further depth. In addition to interviews, fieldwork granted access to documentation and grey literature unavailable outside the region. This material was crucial to the arguments developed in this book and we were fortunate to have a number of research assistants working through this vast corpus of material through 2013–15.

Second, we adopt a critical methodology underpinned by a constructivist approach. In exploring the nexus between knowledge and power the book foregrounds the reasons behind the emergence of climate change as the dominant issue in current understandings of environmental insecurity in the Pacific. To understand how climate change in the Pacific is constructed, how these constructions are internalized and translated, how they are challenged and critiqued, and how they shape and are shaped by policy implemented by national governments and regional organizations, we engaged in a critical analysis of various policy narratives developed by scholars, scientists, consultants, governments, and bureaucrats. The data corpus of this analysis is based on a review of the extant literature, documents from governments—with a particular focus on national climate actions plans—regional organizations, and our interviews. A critical reading of these texts reveals the different ways in which climate change in the Pacific has been conceptualized and the ways different narratives have influenced policy ideas and implementation. In this context, we define a policy narrative as a narrative or story about a specific policy problem designed to influence decision-making,...