Research skills development at The University of the South Pacific

The University of the South Pacific adopted the Research Skills Development (RSD) framework in 2012 in its efforts to lift the research capacity of the region following its Strategic Total Academic Review (STAR) process. The adaptation was aimed at explicitly teaching critical research skills to university graduates and ultimately lifting the research capacity of the Pacific. The implementation process saw curriculum reform, which included the explicit development and assessment of research skills from the first year of study and flowing through to all subsequent years. Now, six years since the initial implementation, this paper looks at what worked, what didn’t, and what must evolve. The paper outlines the project implementation process, challenges, and associated costs

Value of traditional oral narratives in building climate-change resilience: insights from rural communities in Fiji

In the interests of improving engagement with Pacific Island communities to enable development of effective and sustainable adaptation strategies to climate change, we looked at how traditional oral narratives in rural/peripheral Fiji communities might be used to inform such strategies. Interviews were undertaken and observations made in 27 communities; because the custodians of traditional knowledge were targeted, most interviewees were 70-79 years old. The view that oral traditions, particularly those referring to environmental history and the observations/precursors of environmental change, were endangered was widespread and regretted. Interviewees’ personal experiences of extreme events (natural disasters) were commonplace but no narratives of historical (unwitnessed by interviewees) events were found. In contrast, experiences of previous village relocations attributable (mainly) to environmental change were recorded in five communities while awareness of environmentally driven migration was more common. Questions about climate change elicited views dominated by religious/fatalist beliefs but included some more pragmatic ones; the confusion of climate change with climate variability, which is part of traditional knowledge, was widespread. The erosion of traditional environmental knowledge in the survey communities over recent decades has been severe and is likely to continue apace, which will reduce community self-sufficiency and resilience. Ways of conserving such knowledge and incorporating it into adaptation planning for Pacific Island communities in rural/peripheral locations should be explored