Climate Change and the Production of Knowledge

In this review essay, I consider two recent works on climate change in the Pacific, one monograph (Engaging Environments in Tonga) by an anthropologist and keeper of Oceanic collections in Oslo, and one edited volume (Managing Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Region) by a sustainability and climate change management specialist from Hamburg. I situate these two very divergent studies in relation to broader debates and trends in studies and narratives about climate change in the Pacific, focusing in particular on “adaptation” as a priority for research and policy, and on tensions between portrayals of Pacific peoples as respectively creative and resilient, versus as vulnerable and in need of rescue by Western science. In doing so, the divergent epistemologies that are at the core of the relations between indigenous and exogenous knowledge are highlighted, at the same time questioning enduring power dynamics and whether indigeneity and climate change research can actually contribute to knowledge production.