No abstract

No abstract

Remote Coastal Communities (RCC) are at the forefront of humanitarian and climatic change. Faced with the stressors of sustaining growing populations in the context of natural resource degradation, RCC must also adapt to globalisation and the subsequent economic linkage and flows of resources and people. In an attempt to support the social-ecological wellbeing of marginalised communities, Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) were introduced in the late 1980s. Today, ICDPs, such as eco-tourism projects, are used to reduce reliance on natural resources, generate economic benefits, and increase local support for conservation. However, the effectiveness of ICDPs in meeting either conservation or development goals has long been debated. Furthermore, limited studies have explored the effectiveness and resilience of ICDPs to global disruptions. Based on the existing literature, it is unclear how major disruptions will impact RCCs in a globalised world and if ICDPs can effectively support the social-ecological wellbeing of host communities during and after global disruptions. This presentation will reveal preliminary findings from research in the Cook Islands and Tonga on the resilience and effectiveness of ICDPs in supporting the social-ecological wellbeing of two coastal communities in the wake of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The urban context is often sidelined in the academic discourse surrounding food security in the Pacific. Yet, for some Pacific nations, cities are the home for most of their citizens. In this thematic literature review, we direct our attention toward the increasingly important topic of food security in Pacific cities. We investigate how the urban informal food sector historically has provided a baseline of food security in Pacific cities. The production, livelihood, and exchange practices that define the urban informal food sector can be traced back to the forms of urbanisation and migration that occurred in the post-independence era in the Pacific. However, we also identify how urban formalisation and globalisation are undermining the key tenets of social relationality that the informal food sector relies upon. As such, the forms of food security provided by the urban informal food sector are being slowly eroded. By identifying these disruptions to the informal urban food sector, we identify pragmatic pathways to develop the basis of a conceptual framework for urban food security in the Pacific. These pathways revolve around invigorating the forms of social relationality within the informal food sector's production, livelihood, and exchange practices.