Left behind the tide? Climate change, human movements and the making of a South Pacific islandness : French Polynesia, a counterexample?
Résumé
Many academics among which Carol Farbotko, have demonstrated that the Pacific islands had become a focal point with regard to climate change and sea-level rise migration issues. However, I will try to show that, in many respects, French Polynesia appears to be left behind the climate change and migration tide. Reading international reports and media articles written on the subject, it seems immediately obvious that the country's economic and political status as well as its geography don't fit the usual profile. Indeed, French Polynesia is neither an independent state nor considered as a developing one. Furthermore, even though about 20% of the world's atolls are located in one of the five polynesian archipelagos, many of its islands are elevated and mountainous. However, in 2013, the country's newly re-elected president, Gaston Flosse, attempted to place French Polynesia on the international climate change-induced migration map. While visiting the atoll in August, he declared that Napuka, in the Tuamotu archipelago, was an island facing potential out-migration due to sea-level rise. Beyond that, he asserted that the country could take in climate refugees from the Pacific at the Pacific Islands Forum in Majuro the following month. This proactive attitude calls for a deeper analysis of the relational position of French Polynesia in the region with regard to climate change and human movements. To that end, I will look at climate change adaptation as travelling territorial paradigm mobilized at the regional scale in the production of a South Pacific islandness through the multi-local, multi-actor and multi-scalar dynamics. I will explore the current geo and cultural politics as well as the political economy of the construction of what it means to be a Pacific island to try and understand the status of French Polynesia in the region with regard to climate change and human movements.