Beyond the vulnerability/resilience dichotomy: Perceptions of and responses to the climate crisis on Emau, Vanuatu

Abstract

In Vanuatu, a South Pacific island nation, the effects of climate change pose new challenges for low-lying coastal communities. This study explores how one village on Emau, an island offshore of capital island Efate, has developed several overlapping strategies to manage climate change impacts, including drought and sea level rise. Informants reveal their perceptions of changing environmental baselines and how socio-economic processes, including population growth, cultural loss, and limited access to cash incomes, have shaped the community’s response. Informants describe four climate adaptation strategies: 1) expanding access to cash income through seasonal or urban labor migration; 2) leveraging international expertise and funding to meet their goals; 3) developing hybrid forms of traditional practices and contemporary ideology to preserve environmental knowledge; and 4) performing physical and emotional labor to preserve and remain on their land. These strategies span oceans and cross international borders, refuting narratives of islands’ being ‘isolated’ from the rest of the world and passive ‘victims’ of climate change. Contextualizing perceptions of and responses to environmental change provides critical nuance to the resilience/vulnerability framework, which alone obscures ongoing political, social and economic processes on islands.