Climate change presents unprecedented challenges, including extreme heatwaves, flooding, and threats to ecosystem health. These urgent issues demand innovative, multidisciplinary collaboration to develop strategies for both mitigating climate change and adapting to its impacts.
Learn more about the active projects under this theme.
Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies
Water-related migration in the Western Pacific
As the impacts of climate change cause sea levels to rise, a large-scale movement of people and their communities inland away from the coast is expected in the coming decades. This project will work with communities in Fiji and Vanuatu to help inform sustainable decisions about where to relocate coastal villages. It will focus on securing the future water supply of relocating coastal communities and will involve close collaboration with researchers from CSIRO, The Australian National University, The University of the South Pacific and Lincoln University (NZ).
Year: 2024—2027
Funding body: ACIAR
Researchers: Professor Patrick Nunn, Ms Rosie Kumar, Professor Tim Smith, Associate Professor Dana Thomsen and Dr Carmen Elrick-Barr
Contact: Rosie Kumar
Policy impact on community perceptions of resilience, adaptation intentions and wellbeing
This project aims to examine the impact of a novel and emerging policy response to climate change and disasters on community resilience and wellbeing. Through an interpretive paradigm and qualitative research methods, the multidisciplinary team will engage with householders participating in a pilot program aimed at building household level resilience to the impacts of climate change through property investment (such as home retrofit and raising) and committing to a partnership with local government to build their communities resilience. It involves close collaboration with researchers from the Queensland University of Technology, and the City of Moreton Bay and the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ).
Year: 2025—2026
Funding body: UniSC Launch Partnership
Researchers: Dr Carmen Elrick-Barr, Dr Dan Wadsworth, Dr Annah Piggott-McKellar (QUT)
Contact: Dr Carmen Elrick-Barr
Memory, Culture and Society
Traditions of Artificial-Island Construction in the Western Pacific
Hundreds of years before contact with the world beyond the Pacific Ocean, the peoples of western Pacific Island groups constructed artificial islands, many still occupied. This is testimony to the ingenuity and skill of early Pacific peoples but also concerning as the knowledge of island building remains known in only a few contexts, fewer than was the case half a century ago. In collaboration with national museums, this project targets artificial islands that exist today in parts of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM – six sites) and Fiji (six sites), engaging with local residents and knowledge holders in culturally appropriate ways to understand/document and visualise how artificial islands were created: specifically where raw materials came from, how they were transported/arranged, how islands were then stabilised ready for occupation, and how they are (or were formerly) maintained. Sea-level rise (at current rates of 4-12 mm/year in the western Pacific) threatens the stability/existence of artificial islands. Their endangerment – and the imperative of documenting/visualising how they were made – thus comes from both the loss of traditional knowledge AND the current/projected rapid sea-level rise. The importance of preserving knowledge of artificial-island building is also as a possible solution for coping with future sea-level rise along Pacific Island coasts.
Year: 2024—2027
Funding body: Royal Geographical Society (UK)
Researchers: Professor Patrick Nunn, Dr Tricia King and Ms Rosie Kumar
Contact: Professor Patrick Nunn