Description
Climate change and its impacts present a very real and immediate threat to Pacific Island communities. Consequently, development aid in the Pacific is increasingly geared towards climate resilience and adaptability initiatives. This year (2024) at COP29 the Moana Pavillion has created space for Pacific voices to be heard. Despite calls for inclusive development approaches, external development initiatives have fallen short of true knowledge sharing and fostering local ownership of development actions. ‘Inclusive’ frameworks have been shaped by residual colonial power-knowledge dynamics prioritising science and ‘modern’ (Western) knowledge over local/indigenous knowledge and epistemologies, leading to one-way knowledge exchange and effectively silencing local knowledge from development and climate solutions.
My research explores how these power-knowledge dynamics have been reproduced through and embedded in development approaches and attempts to challenge dichotomies of ‘Indigenous’ versus ‘modern’ within this context. It unpacks the concept of ‘indigeneity’ in the Pacific and how the term ‘indigenous’ has been used to create a global hierarchy based on a metanarrative of development and progress. Scholarship must rethink how knowledge is defined and valued in academia and development practice and should challenge the IR discipline and its assumptions about legitimate knowledge systems and epistemologies. By acknowledging different types of knowledge and the agency of local voices as owners of and actors in climate solutions, development aid can create more sustainable, inclusive and effective action.
