Luetz, J.M. and Nunn, P.D. (editors). 2021. Beyond Belief: Opportunities for Faith-Engaged Approaches to Climate-Change Adaptation in the Pacific Islands. Cham: Springer Nature.
For a long time, it has been glaringly obvious that if you want to influence the behaviour of people in other parts of the world (especially ones unlike that from which you come), you cannot ignore their worldviews. You cannot expect to achieve your goal if you barge into their places, their communities, and explain your position and privilege the worldview that underpins it – and expect them to instantly agree with you. Of course, if your representations come with funding attached, then people might listen politely – and even go some way towards indulging you – but when the funds run out, there will be little interest in sustaining your attempted intervention.
Outsiders often consider people’s religious beliefs to be a ‘barrier’ to behaviour change, specifically adaptation to climate change, in many parts of the so-called ‘developing world’. But barriers have two sides – and many people in the ‘developing world’ actually consider outsiders’ lack of faith (their secularism) to be a ‘barrier’.
In this book, co-edited with Dr Johannes Luetz (Christian Heritage College, Brisbane), we move beyond this. Having solicited and assembled a range of views and positions (see the List of Chapters), we ask whether faith might in fact represent an ‘opportunity’ for adapting to climate change, perhaps not as great a challenge as you might expect, given that most religious books are full of the importance of conserving nature and being responsible stewards of the Earth.
Beyond Belief was launched on 21st September 2021 by Professor Joanne Scott (USC Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement) at the USC Art Gallery. Photo below.
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Waddell, E. and Nunn, P.D. 1994. (editors). The Margin Fades: Geographical Itineraries in a World of Islands. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, The University of the South Pacific, 297 pp.
The cover photo shows uninhabited ‘Ata Island, the southernmost in the Tonga group. The title of this book comes from the poem Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson –
“all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move”
We intended the title The Margin Fades to be an allusion to the way that geographical research by people at the University of the South Pacific (USP) was pushing out the frontiers of knowledge, explaining Pacific places to the rest of the world. For this book was a collection of articles by a range of academics based at USP, then the foremost (perhaps the only) tertiary educational institution in the independent Pacific Island nations that could compete in reputation with those in its continental neighbours.
I co-authored this book with Eric Waddell, then the Professor of Geography at USP, whose chapter on Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the visionary Kanak independence leader, was one of its highlights. Eric went on to write a book-length biography of Tjibaou, available here.
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Nunn, P.D. 1988. Vatulele: a study in the geomorphological development of a Fiji island. Fiji Mineral Resources Department, Memoir 2. Suva, Government Printer, 99 p.
When I arrived at the University of the South Pacific’s Fiji campus in the 1980s to take up a Lecturer in Geography position, I looked around for interesting geology-related projects to occupy my research time. One island I visited – repeatedly as it happened – was Vatulele, thirty kilometres off the south coast of Fiji’s main island. Today there is a plush resort and an airstrip on Vatulele but all my research visits predated their construction. I travelled by small boat, often the redoubtable Adi Cagi (the Lady of the Winds) – when the sea was calm, it might take less than two hours to reach the island, but one memorable trip took seven!
Vatulele is a limestone island in a group of volcanic islands – its anomalous nature is what attracted my curiosity. There is actually an outcrop of volcanic rock on the island – not much bigger than a small clump of trees in a field – but the limestone is riddled with caves and underground passages, including those where the famed light-avoiding (photophobic) prawns, actually shrimps, named urabuta (cooked prawn) in Fijian or Parhippolyte uveae in Latin, are found.
So intrigued was I by Vatulele geology that I mapped the island and worked out a plausible explanation of its origin. It is all in the book of course … but the short answer is that Vatulele and neighbouring Beqa (Mbengga) Island rise from the same seafloor ridge that has been pushed upwards, sliced longitudinally in the process into a series of horsts and grabens, owing to the convergence of the Indo-Australian crustal plate beneath the Fiji microplate south of the island of Kadavu. In practical terms, this means that both Vatulele and Beqa Island may continue to experience slightly more earthquakes than most parts of Fiji.
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