Throughout the South Pacific, notions of ‘culture’ and ‘development’ are very much alive—in political debate, the media, sermons, and endless discussions amongst villagers and the urban élites, even in policy reports. Often the terms are counterposed, and development along with ‘economic rationality’, ‘good governance’ and ‘progress’ is set against culture or ‘custom’, ‘tradition’ and ‘identity’. The decay of custom and impoverishment of culture are often seen as wrought by development, while failures of development are haunted by the notion that they are due, somehow, to the darker, irrational influences of culture. The problem is to resolve the contradictions between them so as to achieve the greater good—access to material goods, welfare and amenities, ‘modern life’—without the sacrifice of the ‘traditional’ values and institutions that provide material security and sustain diverse social identities. Resolution is sought in this book by a number of leading writers from the South Pacific including Langi Kavaliku, Epeli Hau’ofa, Marshall Sahlins, Malama Meleisea, Joeli Veitayaki, and Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka. The volume is brought together for UNESCO by Antony Hooper, Professor Emeritus at the University of Auckland. UNESCO experts include Richard Engelhardt, Langi Kavaliku, Russell Marshall, Malama Meleisea, Edna Tait and Mali Voi.

Throughout the South Pacific, notions of 'culture' and 'development' are very much alive--in political debate, the media, sermons, and endless discussions amongst villagers and the urban élites, even in policy reports. Often the terms are counterposed, and development along with 'economic rationality', 'good governance' and 'progress' is set against culture or 'custom', 'tradition' and 'identity'. The decay of custom and impoverishment of culture are often seen as wrought by development, while failures of development are haunted by the notion that they are due, somehow, to the darker, irrational influences of culture. The problem is to resolve the contradictions between them so as to achieve the greater good--access to material goods, welfare and amenities, 'modern life'--without the sacrifice of the 'traditional' values and institutions that provide material security and sustain diverse social identities. Resolution is sought in this book by a number of leading writers from the South Pacific including Langi Kavaliku, Epeli Hau'ofa, Marshall Sahlins, Malama Meleisea, Joeli Veitayaki, and Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka. The volume is brought together for UNESCO by Antony Hooper, Professor Emeritus at the University of Auckland. UNESCO experts include Richard Engelhardt, Langi Kavaliku, Russell Marshall, Malama Meleisea, Edna Tait and Mali Voi.

A uniquely collaborative analysis of human adaptation to the Polynesian islands, told through oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records Humans began to settle the area we know as Polynesia between 3,000 and 800 years ago, bringing with them material culture, including plants and animals, and ideas about societal organization, and then adapting to the specific biophysical features of the islands they discovered. The authors of this book analyze the formation of their human-environment systems using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments. The islands’ clearly defined (and relatively isolated) environments, comparatively recent discovery by humans, and innovative and dynamic societies allow for insights not available when studying other cultures. Kamana Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek have collaborated with a dozen other scholars, many of them Polynesian, to show how these cultures adapted to novel environments in the past and how we can draw insights for global sustainability today.

This book shows how the environments and cultures of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia need to be taken careful account of in fashioning sustainable development projects and strategies. Case studies point up good and bad development practices.

This timely and ambitious volume - a product of close research collaboration with the United Nations Multi-Country Office for Micronesia - is conceived as a holistic “journey” across various domains of progress in a region that, despite fundamental common traits, remains vast and diverse. Pacific island countries and territories (PICTs) have (too) often been identified with elements of vulnerability, whether these be social, economic, or environmental in nature. While these factors cannot be overlooked, this volume aims to showcase not only the long-standing and emerging challenges but, perhaps more importantly, the opportunities, the resilience, the resourcefulness, and the ambition that local socioeconomic development patterns in the Pacific already encompass. Beyond PICTs themselves, we hope that the analyses collected in this book will contribute to highlighting the global significance of the human–nature nexus in the current Anthropocene. Often captured in the concept of “small islands, big oceans”, the importance of the region and its islands and peoples transcends the geographical remoteness and small size of many PICTs.