Pursuing Self-determined Responses to Climate Change in the Cook Islands: Exploring the Interface between Government Organisational Directive and Local Community Engagement with Climate Change Adaptation

Small island communities are considered to be amongst the most ‘at-risk’ populations in the world to the impacts of climate change. Global, regional and national entities have framed the plight of Pacific communities through climate change discourses. This study contributes to an emerging line of inquiry that investigates how applying the concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ to frame communities might contribute to community empowerment, or marginalisation. Focused on the institutional setting of the ‘Strengthening the Resilience of our Islands and our Communities to Climate Change Programme’ (SRIC Programme), this thesis explores the engagement between government organisations of the Cook Islands and communities of Aitutaki to form adaptation responses to climate change.  Qualitative methodologies coupled with Pasifika methodologies provide a culturally responsive approach to the research. This approach accommodated local narratives and indigenous knowledges throughout the study. The findings from semi-structured interviews suggest that Cook Islands government organisations increasingly frame Aitutaki communities through the concept of ‘resilience’. Interviews with community representatives suggest that Aitutaki communities use indigenous knowledges to make sense of changes in their local environment, without always understanding the science-based notions of climate change. Engagement approaches such as ‘knowledge sharing’, could offer a pathway to increasing community autonomy and confidence in climate change discussions, whilst also contributing to enhancing socio-ecological resilience. To maintain a ‘critical’ political ecology approach, governmentality theory was used to explain how power relations might be embedded in resilience discourse. Insight is offered into how the government-community relationship could enable ‘technologies of government’ as the SRIC Programme progresses. It is suggested that the social conditions of Aitutaki communities could pose sites of resistance to governmentality. Recently implemented, the SRIC Programme demonstrates potential for supporting self-determined responses to climate change and enhancing socio-ecological resilience in Aitutaki.