Planning for Sustainable Development in Fiji: indigenous knowledge, Western knowledge, or something in between?

Abstract: Climate change poses paramount challenges to our world. While more developed nations in the West are not without harm, among the hardest hit are vulnerable indigenous islanders in the South Pacific. Without sufficient action, Pacific Island nations might become uninhabitable, or practically disappear, in the near future (Belson, 2018). To manage the crisis, leaders across the world have united under supranational agreements in efforts to provide development assistance. In Fiji, this has resulted in an international development campaign anchored in Western ideals, often embracing technocentric and hard engineering solutions. To manage the climate crisis in an indigenous Fijian context, this work argues that sustainable development efforts must embrace indigenous knowledge, and that planning, and planners, can play a crucial part. Through diary entries and fieldnotes, I invite the reader on my journey through Fiji to explore current adaption and mitigation efforts, examine their impact on the indigenous Fijian way of life (bula vakavanua), and propose a way for planning and planners to embrace alternative notions of sustainability in development. As a result, this work promotes development that not only safeguards indigenous land, but the values and traditions under which indigenous land is governed.