“Our family in town sends us messages about climate change impacts. They watched the film (“There Once was an Island”) and now they think that it is all true.” (Takuu fisherman, aged 45)
Small island developing states in the Pacific have been at the forefront to the detrimental effects of anthropogenic climate change over the past several decades. These impacts include sea level rise, increased flooding and droughts, erosion of shorelines, salinization of water tables, and more extreme weather events such as increased storm intensity and frequency of king tides (Kelman and West, 2009; Mimura et al., 2007). Environmental changes are a feature central to everyday life on low-lying island habitats; people are highly cognizant of this and make adaptations in response to them. However, unprecedented environmental changes largely attributed to climate change are also being felt across some parts of the South Pacific region, making it more difficult to adapt, especially in low-income contex...