Sustainable exploitation of resources or looming breakdown? Climate, survival and production in the Southwest Pacific

Sustainable exploitation of resources or looming breakdown? Climate, survival and production in the Southwest Pacific

Associate professor Kjeld Rasmussen, Institute of Geography , University of Copenhagen

Sustainable production of foodstuffs, globally and locally, is of key importance for the World to function well, both ecologically and economically. Globalisation has an ever-increasing impact, and interconnections among countries and regions increase while, at the same time, local events and collapsed ecosystems and production systems will generate global repercussions of a much greater magnitude. Small island communities in the Pacific may be typical examples of well-defined systems in which population growth, global market forces and climatic change will impose pressure on fragile production systems. Will the growing population cause the systems to break down? Will alternative opportunities for earning a living elsewhere lead to an exodus from the islands and abandonment of production? Will any future rise of the sea level and climatic changes, such as droughts and stronger tropical cyclones, threaten agriculture and survival in the islands?

Based on new models for analysing climatic change in the area, estimates of other significant external factors and classical geographical and anthropological studies from the 1950s and 1960s, this project will endeavour to discover whether the island communities are breaking down as predicted or if they actually manage fairly well against all odds. Scientists from various disciplines will be cooperating in order to establish whether it is climatic changes, depletion/erosion of the soil, migration, alternative job opportunities, global market forces, or perhaps a combination of these factors, that is most important to survival and production in the islands. Modern technology, model simulations and other new knowledge will be used in the project, which will thus receive the best point of departure for understanding civilisations that reside within confined areas with limited resources, and with this perhaps help generate broader understanding of the Earth as a whole, as Earth is also a limited system.