Learn about research and developments in the Island Lives, Ocean States project
In this blogpost, Ernst Nordtveit draws upon legal perspectives to discuss projections of sea level rise and reflect upon regional strategies in the Pacific that view maritime boundaries “not as ambulatory but as fixed borders”. Read More …
A perspective from low laying atolls brings climate discourses and practical realities together. Tokelau experiences with political intervensions employed by overseas agents range historically from instruments of demographic control to more recent measures related to transport and access to revenue from the EEZ. Tensions between different ways of being with the ocean are increasingly apparent. Read More …
In July 2022 the OceanStates project had the privilege of bringing 28 students from the University of the South Pacific on board the tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl of Bergen, for a three-week voyage in Fiji waters. In this blogpost, you can read about how students from across the world engaged in exercises of knowledge sharing through the oceanic practice of ‘talanoa’ on this voyage together. Read More …
In this blogpost, Milla Vaha provides an analysis of state sovereignty and maritime borders with a focus on the large ocean states of the Pacific, that are “powerfully exercising their right to self-determination” through a reinterpretation of international law and statehood in the age of climate change and sea-level rise. Read More …
In December 2021, several places in the Western Pacific concurrently faced extreme weather events in the form of king tides. Vandhna Kumar offers here an analysis of the reports that circulated on social media and provides insights of climate variabilities to discuss how the events became linked with narratives of climate change. Read More …
In this post, Håkon Larsen discusses the crucial role of coastal resources in Fiji during the COVID-19 pandemic, by drawing on some of the materials from his master’s thesis “The Organic Island” that explores the creative and resilient dimensions of subsistence economics. Read More …
Anja Marie Solheim compiled the OceanStates project’s online UN Documents and IPCC reports collections (have a look!). In this blogpost she shares her own experiences with navigating UN websites and systems as an intern at the United Nations in New York, and how this – in our opinion – made her such a valuable resource Read More …
Written by Miriam Ladstein, this post draws attention to the work and contributions of Pacific youth in local and global arenas where decisions concerning ocean and climate action are made. This January, I spent a few weeks with members of the OceanStates team in Fiji’s main capital, Suva. Suva is an eclectic city and a Read More …
In this post, Matthew Simpson draws attention to sea-level rise projections for the Norwegian coastline and offers some thoughts on how Norwegian scenarios might contribute to – and benefit from – research in the OceanStates project. What sea level information do we need to plan for the future? That’s a really big question. But it Read More …
Written by Sunil Kumar Pariyar and Noel Keenlyside, this post offers a closer look at central drivers of weather and climate patterns and their ties to extreme weather events in the Pacific Islands region. On April 13, 2015, tropical cyclone PAM hit Vanuatu (a Pacific Island country) with a devastating speed of 250km/hour. This category Read More …