Understanding environmental decision-making in the rural Pacific Islands

Abstract

The main influences on environmental decision-making in rural parts of the Pacific Islands region are emulation, experience, and inferred best-practice. Emulation means that often one community will simply copy the solution adopted by another community in response to what is perceived to be the same challenge. It is in this way that maladaptation has spread through many parts of the Pacific, particularly what has been referred to as the seawall mindset. Experience means that a community will often do what they did before in response to a particular challenge, even though (i) the former challenge may have been different to the present one, and (ii) the efficacy of the response to the earlier challenge has not been fully evaluated. Inferred best-practice is the only response that includes externally-derived information to any significant extent. It involves community leaders and their advisers relating their knowledge about inferred best-practice in response to a particular challenge elsewhere. Often that knowledge is highly prized and is influential in the particular decision that the community takes, but often it is in error and therefore unhelpful in informing the decision