Islands of Hope

Indigenous Resource Management in a Changing Pacific

Paul D'Arcy, Daya Dakasi Da-Wei Kuan, Paul D'Arcy, Daya Dakasi Da-Wei Kuan

• Publisher: ANU Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781760465612
• eBook ISBN: 9781760465629
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the Pacific, as elsewhere, indigenous communities live with the consequences of environmental mismanagement and over-exploitation but rarely benefit from the short-term economic profits such actions may generate within the global system.

National and international policy frameworks ultimately rely on local community assent. Without effective local participation and partnership, these extremely imposed frameworks miss out on millennia of local observation and understanding and seldom deliver viable and sustained environmental, cultural and economic benefits at the local level.

This collection argues that environmental sustainability, indigenous political empowerment and economic viability will succeed only by taking account of distinct local contexts and cultures. In this regard, these Pacific indigenous case studies offer 'islands of hope' for all communities marginalised by increasingly intrusive—and increasingly rapid—technological changes and by global dietary, economic, political and military forces with whom they have no direct contact or influence.

Table of contents

• Abbreviations
• List of figures
• List of maps
• List of plates
• List of tables
• Contributors
• Papa Mape: A tribute
• Introduction: Local practice and global interactions in the Pacific—Making the global local
• Section One: Pacific Indigenous sustainable development
• Section Two: Reviving the land and the sea
• Section Three: Local Responses to Climate Change
• Section Four: Pacific Lessons for Humanity
• Conclusion: Redefining progress in the Anthropocene—Pacific trajectories for global alternatives
• Bibliography