Pacific Dynamics: Volume 5 • Issue 1 • Mar 2021

FULL EXCERPT: Not all basic water sources are readily available and accessible to most Pacific Island Countries (PICs). The limited drinking water sources such as rainwater, surface water, groundwater, desalinated water and imported water are extremely vulnerable due to the demand of increasing populations for food production, limited financial and technical capacities to manage water resources and natural and anthropogenic disasters.

Unless effective and sustainable Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) measures are implemented, climate change will exacerbate the existing development issues by increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme events such tropical cyclones, drought, heavy rainfall that leads to flooding and damage to water infrastructures. Such events will further increase the cost of ensuring water security in most PICs.
CCA programmes emerged and have been implemented in PICs by international and regional organisations such as the Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Programme (PICCAP) since 1997. In the context of the Solomon Islands, the CCA programme on water security is channelled through the National Adaptation
Programme of Action (NAPA). Despite such interventions, the relation between the objectives of NAPA and the water sector is not clearly defined. There is no specific aim to operationalise those objectives.

Furthermore, since the Solomon Islands is a Least Developed Country (LDC), it is more difficult to implement CCA policies given the country is struggling to address current development issues. This paper seeks to evaluate CCA programmes on water security in PICs with a focus on the Solomon Islands. Information was gathered through desktop reviews of existing literature.

FULL ABSTRACT: Mainstream international relations (IR) literature has long treated small states as marginal actors who exist on the periphery of global affairs. For many years, scholars have struggled to conclusively define the category of small statehood. Additionally, IR’s privileging of the theoretical paradigms of realism and neorealism when analyzing small state issues, has meant that, until recently, small states have been conceptualized as actors that struggle to make proactive foreign policy choices on their own terms. Despite this, small states, and particularly small island states in the Pacific region, appear to have many opportunities to engage in vibrant foreign policy endeavours in the present day. This article offers a review of small state IR literature, with a particular focus on small state foreign policy issues. It begins by reviewing the various approaches to defining small statehood, before turning to a review of how small state issues have been treated in broader IR. It posits that the small state IR literature can usefully be broken down into three distinct time periods—1959–1979, 1979–1992, and 1992–present—and reviews the literature within that framework, drawing out the theoretical through lines present in each distinct era.

FULL ABSTRACT: Recent decades have witnessed the rise in popularity of New Public Management (NPM) as a paradigm of public service reform. Key objectives on the NPM reform menu include a de-bureaucratizing of government services, the stimulation of local market competition for service provision and the introduction of performance measurement techniques. This agenda has been enthusiastically promoted and adopted into a diverse array of developing-country settings, including Solomon Islands (SI). Yet, the reform outcomes in SI display an uneven character at best. Is such a reform agenda compatible with the reality of achieving effective service delivery in SI? By combining a political history of reform in SI with the perceptions and experiences of respondents from selected public service ministries, state owned enterprises and in-country donor organizations, the following article examines the impact of NPM reforms on SI public service. It considers the ways in which a largely externally instigated reform agenda has been accepted, contested and transformed.

FULL ABSTRACT: This article introduces a collaborative ethnomusicological project based on archived field recordings made over 25 years ago. The project relates to a hidden history of music under colonial conditions in and around
the port town of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. It concentrates on developments that occurred during the decades between the volcanic eruptions in Rabaul in 1937 and again in 1994, when the town was largely destroyed. The article documents how the project came about, the working process involved and provides
samples of text and visual documentation. The authors’ aims include: to create new knowledge regarding forgotten aspects of the recent past; to contribute to a global history of music; and to return archival content to those to whom it most directly relates – the owners of its stories.

FULL ABSTRACT: Throughout their migratory journeys, Samoans have continued to perpetuate their Samoan culture within their host countries such as New Zealand, Australia and America. Research on Samoan people should not only be academically rigorous, but also incorporate methodologies that are culturally appropriate. This paper discusses the appropriate methodology that was used to explore the perceptions of Fa’a Samoa (the Samoan way) held by New Zealand-born Samoans who reside in Brisbane, Australia. A combination of Pacific and Western methodologies was used in producing data that is both academically reliable and culturally valid. This was achieved through talanoa, participant observation and a review of the literature. The paper concludes that the Fa’a Samoa barriers among this cohort are disconnect and burden, while its carriers were Fa’a Samoa as an ancestral gift, Samoan identity, support and respect. Disclaimer: The frequent use of secondary sources is to highlight how long-standing certain issues are and their current relevance. I also use secondary sources to show Western methods that are culturally appropriate, for example, citing other Samoan academics who also use grounded theory in their research.

FULL ABSTRACT: Work that challenges Western hegemonic research traditions, through use of innovative and alternative approaches as part of ‘decolonising methodologies’, is increasingly being validated by research funding bodies, post-graduate research and large-scale projects. This paper explains a feasibility study that combined a Pacific respect-based cultural methodology with a counter-hegemonic development theory to create a post- development methodological framework (PDMF). The framework was then used to guide the culturally ethical use of Western psychometric measures at a naturalistic kava-use setting. Not only does the study demonstrate the viability of the PDMF and the naturalistic kava use setting—or faikava methodology—as a valid tool for collecting data in a study conducted pursuant to a major research award, it also builds on a growing body of work aimed at decolonising Pacific methodologies.

FULL ABSTRACT: The popular Samoan adage ‘o le ala i le pule o le tautua’ (the pathway to leadership is through service) is commonly understood by Samoans around the world as an important life value. Writings about tautua (service) have chronicled traditional understandings of the term (Tavale 2009, Tavale 2013) and more recently with personal experiences of tautua in Samoa (Filisi, 2018) and transnational matai in their communities (Falaniko 2020, Fetui 2020). Being able to trace the links between these understandings of tautua leads to considering
ways in which tautua is enacted and enabled in Samoa and transnational societies. Tavale’s four stages of tautua (Tavale, 2013) and his collection of proverbial expressions that focus on tautua (Tavale, 2009) form a natural foundation for its application in Samoa and internationally. Through the eyes of matai with Samoan language fluency, we use our multiple service roles with the intent of privileging interdisciplinary Pasifika research. We introduce the three intergenerational spheres of service – tautua ia tautua (serve to serve), tautua ia pule (serve to lead) and pule ia tautua (lead to serve) – that show what tautua looks like in a lifecycle. Samoan indigenous knowledge pertaining to service foregrounds the shared experiences of tautua by the authors. The oscillation of the spheres speaks directly to service, positioning our own individual experiences as matai, as Pasifika tertiary students (Pilisi, 2020) and how we negotiate our journey of tautua within our collective contexts through the conceptualisation of the “tautua lifecycle” model – to explore the pathway to leadership through service.