From apathy to agency: exploring religious responses to climate change in the Pacific Island region

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Port Vila, Vanuatu and with the Pacific Climate Warriors, this chapter challenges dominant narratives concerning the Pacific Island region that marginalise religious understandings of climate change and that perpetuate visions of inevitable island inundation and helpless Islanders. Instead it argues that religious responses can form part of a more empowering, alternative framing of climate change and the Pacific Islands. It explores the roles of prayer, sin, and suffering, recognising that agency appears in unexpected places. Through emphasising the sin of carbon emissions, Islanders take on the burden of climate change causation. This approach both situates climate change discourses within the wider context of perceived moral decline, and, through emphasising local responsibility, facilitates Islander agency. By contrast narratives of divine accompaniment reject these accounts of local responsibility and retributive suffering, and instead emphasise the moral responsibility of industrial nations, whilst reframing climate activism as a form of spiritual devotion. These heterogeneous religious interpretations highlight the diverse possibilities for spiritually informed agency in the face of climate change impacts and the richness of locally meaningful and morally compelling counter-narratives of climate change.