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Talanoa is a central concept commonly shared across Pacific Island cultures. Talanoa basically means a conversation, talking, exchange of ideas or thinking, whether formal or informal.[1] Talanoa is essential, because maintaining relationships is vital for most Pacific cultural activities.[2] One of the strengths of talanoa is that it tears down the barriers between people of different status, allowing them to interact on a level playing field. Through talanoa, people will not only collect relevant knowledge, but also share important information that will address Pacific issues. Yet while talanoa has been recognised as a strength of the Pacific Islands, it can also be a weakness, particularly when it comes to addressing environmental issues. We must move the agenda forward from talanoa to taking concrete actions on the ground.
In the previous post, I discussed the origin of the widespread recognition within the World Council of Churches that Christians had a duty to care for God’s creation, following Lynn White’s 1967 contention that Western Christianity must be held responsible for the current environmental crisis. My post today will first outline the historical background which led to the connection of the WCC to the Pacific region and then the establishment of the PCC. It’s necessary to explore this backstory in order to understand how the issue of care for God’s creation came to the PCC. I will then expand on the work the PCC has done to address climate issues since its establishment. At this point, I would like to be upfront: my research has found that despite its claims to action for over two decades now, the PCC has not implemented sufficient practical initiatives aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Their focus has been mainly conceptual/theoretical, such as announcing declarations about the threatening impact of climate change, rather than carrying out the concrete work which is urgently needed on the ground.
Pacific Islanders were instrumental in the proclamation of the good news across the islands, but their churches were not included when the WCC was established in 1948. In 1961, Anglican and other Protestant churches of the Pacific region decided to form a regional ecumenical body. This was the beginning of the connection and dialogue between the region and the WCC, which led to the establishment of the PCC in 1966. In 1983, the WCC’s Fifth Assembly was held in Vancouver, and Pacific region issues were emphasised on the agenda, particularly the nuclear testing being carried out at the time in the Pacific by European nations, and its effects on the Pacific islands. Seventeen years later the WCC, through the leadership of the PCC, expanded their concern to include the fight against sea level-rise and the threatening impacts of climate change, which is important globally, but the Pacific Island nations are particularly threatened. In the past few decades, there has been mounting evidence of harm caused to Pacific peoples and their environments by nuclear testing and proliferation, from sea level rises and extreme weather events in the region. This is a result of changing global temperatures and weather patterns. In response to these data, the PCC developed a theology of care for the environment by promoting the responsibilities and unity of Christians in safeguarding God’s creation, and combining this with a cry for social justice for the powerless.
Over the past two decades, the PCC and the WCC have made a series of declarations which affirm their commitment to environmental justice. On March 2004, in Kiribati, the WCC officially announced the Otin Tai Declaration, where church leaders and participants in the Pacific Churches’ Consultation on Climate Change affirmed their commitment not only to care for the earth as a response to God’s love for creation, but also the need to respond urgently to the seriousness of the human-induced climate change to the lives, livelihoods, societies, cultures and eco-systems of the Pacific Islands. The Declaration was clear—that the mainline churches no longer treat climate change as an individual denominational issue, but rather an ecumenical issue. Hence, climate change is an issue which ought to be addressed communally, with churches coming together and collaborating in unity. Even though these declarations represented the shifting of perspective from individual to collective in treating climate issues, the PCC did not translate the talking into action.
On April 2009 in Fiji the leaders of the PCC along with WCC staff, collaborated and adopted the Moana Declaration (MD)—“Our Oikos—a new consciousness on climate change and our call to action” (WCC, 2009). This appeared to be a significant initiative of the PCC, especially in summoning church leaders to advance their ecumenism on climate change and to address its adverse effects on the Pacific islands. The Pacific church leaders presented 12 declarations, including: respecting and protecting the rights of climate migrants; developing plans and framework to accommodate the rights of climate migrants; identifying resources for relocation and resettlement; and conducting public consultations with Pacific communities affected by climate change.
In Fiji on April 2017, PCC leaders, with representatives from communities and civil society organisations, put forward the Statement on Seabed Mining, calling upon the Government of Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Island nations to discontinue any activity or development regarding Seabed Mining technology in lands and seas (PCC, 2017). In August of the same year, PCC leaders met in Auckland, New Zealand and adopted the Moana Calls For Action (MCFA). This was a significant move made by PCC leaders after decades of talanoa, cooperation and collaboration among themselves about these issues. It was time to take action rather than keeping these issues at the talanoa and meeting level. In the MCFA, there were 7 main issues of call for action which included: 1) Self-determination, 2) Seabed mining; 3) Pacific diaspora; 4) Leadership in the church; 5) Church-state relations, 6) Influx of new religions movements, and 7) PCC membership fees. At this point, it appeared that the PCC was finally moving onto taking concrete action.
However, PCC leaders, representatives from communities, and civil society organisations are still stuck in the talanoa and meeting level. One key reason for this has been the lack of a method or model to follow in translating the environmental ideas into actions. Hence, another initiative was developed—Reweaving the Ecological Mat (REM). REM was jointly developed by Pacific Theological College (PTC), the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), and Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies (OCACPS) of the University of the South Pacific (USP), beginning in 2017. The purpose of REM was basically twofold. First, to guide the partners and their members’ engagement in addressing today’s ecological crisis. Second, to provide governments in the Pacific with alternatives (which includes using theological, biblical, and indigenous lenses) to development as it had been pursued in the past. REM was also intended to generate ideas and situate development in the Pacific region in a new frame.
In 2020, REM escalated to the next stage of its development and published a book, Reweaving the Ecological Mat Framework: Toward an Ecological Framework for Development.[3] The titular framework actually comprised three frames―theology, economics, and cultures/spirituality. At the centre of these three frames is relationality, and relationality is used as a measurement, by fully recognising and respecting the balance and harmony of all diverse interwoven strands of life. The framework opens with a situational description of the Pacific and how the neoliberal model of economic development does not fit the Pacific context as a whole. The neoliberal model is fuelled by addiction to never-ending growth. When growth is “based on non-renewable resource extraction and exploitation, [it] is not compatible with but destructive to the wellbeing of our one common home, Earth” (UNEP, 2019). The framework emphasises how REM applies an ecological framework towards development in the Pacific.
The authors of REM claim that the neoliberal economic development model mainly benefits the richest minority, and the most powerful individuals/collectives of the world, but not the majority of the world’s population, including those who live in the Pacific. The neoliberal model of economic development promotes the same attitude which White identified and criticised in his analysis of the environmental effects of Western Christianity. It is a model that is based on “sucking up the resources of the earth, cutting down trees, polluting water, pumping industrial waste into the atmosphere, ploughing up wetlands, and mining in ecologically sensitive spaces.”[4] The neoliberal model has affected the Pacific in various ways such as the heavy reliance on imported processed foods, market-pushed consumerism, environmental destruction due to commercial logging operations, and oil spills in Solomon Islands in 2019, to name just a few.[5]
There are a number of ways in which this publication was important. It embraces the diversity of small economies, small communities, and small ways of stewardship/resilience that promote abundance of life. It promotes the restoration of power to the everyday economies in the margins by bringing them from the margins to the centre. It also enlightens those who have been pushed into the margins, like the Pacific Island nations, to re-centre their spirituality and ecologically relational values. Every life on Earth is intimately and dynamically interconnected; Earth is home to God, humanity, and all creatures; and the kingdom of God is for the Earth and people to take seriously, because each bit is part of the whole. However, although REM is based on various research from across the globe and Pacific, it is more focused on theory than on providing practical strategies. Although the book has considered the diverse political realities, it does not provide ways to translate these theoretical frameworks into strategies either for the Pacific or for other political contexts.
It’s essential to highlight and acknowledge the achievements of the PCC in addressing climate change since its establishment in 1966 and how effective they have been to date. The PCC has managed to develop a theology of care for nature and continuous proclamation about the significance of Christian responsibilities in respecting and safeguarding God’s creation. The PCC has also made a series of declarations and statements about their serious commitment to respond urgently to the ecological crisis, that climate change is an ecumenical issue, and has issued a call for action. This sounds hopeful but good words and intention do not mean much when action fails to follow. This is evident when the PCC declared their Moana Call For Action in 2017, but continue to fail to live up to their commitment to action. I cannot deny the merit of the REM Framework: it not only embraces the Pacific theologies, cultures and economies, but highly values local knowledge, wisdom, and concepts in addressing climate change in the Pacific. Ultimately, however, it comprised more of the same: talking and meeting. Since then, the talking and meetings have continued.
Outside these organisations, though, lie some grassroots church initiatives. The final post in this series will discuss work being done on the ground in Tonga, one example which emphasises the significance of the role of the PCC via the Tonga National Council of Churches and Tonga Forum of Church Leaders, and which shows in what areas of action PCC is most needed. That is, providing more financial assistances on co-creating and implementing concrete actions on the local church level. There is a need for a greater focus on mobilising the massive organisational resources that churches own and use them effectively for the reduction of carbon emissions. It is critically important to make use of indigenous capacities to combat climate change.
This is the third in a series of four posts. Click here for the first post: A History of Care for God’s Creation within the Church: It’s Time to Walk the Talk! Click here for the second post: Lynn White Jr. and the Origin of Care for God’s Creation in the World Council of Churches. Click here for the fourth post: Churches and Climate Change in Tonga: A Real Measure of the Effectiveness of Pacific Conference of Churches’ Climate Works
Footnotes
[1] T. M. Vaioleti, ‘Talanoa Research Methodology: A developing position on Pacific Research’, Waikato Journal of Education 12 (2006), 21-43.
[2] Timote Masima Vaioleti, ‘Talanoa, Manulua and Founga Ako: Frameworks for Using Enduring Tongan Educational Ideas for Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand’ (PhD Thesis, University of Waikato, 2011), 115.
[3] Cliff Bird, Arnie Saiki, and Meretui Ratunabuabua, Reweaving the Ecological Mat Framework: Toward an Ecological Framework for Development (Pacific Theological College, 2020) (accessed 21 April 2023).
[4] Steve de Gruchy, “Oikos, God and the Olive Agenda: Theological Reflections on Economics and Environment,” 2007.
[5] Karen E. Charlton et al., ‘Fish, Food Security and Health in Pacific Island Countries and Territories: A Systematic Literature Review’, BMC Public Health 16, 1 (24 March 2016), 285; Jocelyn Linnekin, ‘Consuming Cultures: Tourism and the Commoditization of Cultural Identity in the Island Pacific’, in Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies, ed. Michel Picard and Robert E. Wood, (University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 215–50; ‘Logging Rate Unsustainable in Solomons, Admits Official’, RNZ, 5 June 2019; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, ‘Update on East Rennell Oil Spill, Solomon Islands’, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, (accessed 26 August 2024).
