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Can Perceptions of Environmental and Climate Change in Island Communities Assist in Adaptation Planning Locally?

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Abstract

Local perceptions of environmental and climate change, as well as associated adaptations made by local populations, are fundamental for designing comprehensive and inclusive mitigation and adaptation plans both locally and nationally. In this paper, we analyze people’s perceptions of environmental and climate-related transformations in communities across the Western Solomon Islands through ethnographic and geospatial methods. Specifically, we documented people’s observed changes over the past decades across various environmental domains, and for each change, we asked respondents to identify the causes, timing, and people’s adaptive responses. We also incorporated this information into a geographical information system database to produce broad-scale base maps of local perceptions of environmental change. Results suggest that people detected changes that tended to be acute (e.g., water clarity, logging intensity, and agricultural diseases). We inferred from these results that most local observations of and adaptations to change were related to parts of environment/ecosystem that are most directly or indirectly related to harvesting strategies. On the other hand, people were less aware of slower insidious/chronic changes identified by scientific studies. For the Solomon Islands and similar contexts in the insular tropics, a broader anticipatory adaptation planning strategy to climate change should include a mix of local scientific studies and local observations of ongoing ecological changes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend their sincere acknowledgments to all those who engaged in the research activities as part of the project: The Pacific Adaptation Assistance Program in Solomon Islands—Building social and ecological resilience to climate change in Roviana, Solomon Islands, funded by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency by the Australian government. The production of the current manuscript was also supported by the CGIAR Research Programs on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); and Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS). Thanks to the men and women from the communities in the Western Solomon Islands.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science (DIFS), Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa

    Shankar Aswani

  2. Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Ismael Vaccaro

  3. Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9EZ, UK

    Kirsten Abernethy

  4. School of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia

    Simon Albert

  5. Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), Área de Prehistoria Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Javier Fernández-López de Pablo

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  1. Shankar Aswani
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  2. Ismael Vaccaro
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  3. Kirsten Abernethy
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  4. Simon Albert
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Correspondence to Shankar Aswani.

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Aswani, S., Vaccaro, I., Abernethy, K. et al. Can Perceptions of Environmental and Climate Change in Island Communities Assist in Adaptation Planning Locally?. Environmental Management 56, 1487–1501 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0572-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0572-3

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