Klaemet jenj worlds. Approaching climate change and knowledge creation in Vanuatu

Abstract

This article deals with ni-Vanuatu’s representations of climate change (klaemet jenj). After a discussion of theoretical concepts related to ‘knowledge’ and encounters of ideas, villagers’ perspectives about klaemet jenj in Siviri, North-Efate, are presented. These perspectives differ considerably from the information disseminated by media and by the staff of both governmental and non-governmental organizations. This contribution argues that these differences are so fundamental that it is not sufficient to conceive local assumptions about klaemet jenj as a form of hybridized knowledge. Instead, klaemet jenj should be conceived as (part of) a reality or world that people generate by interacting with their material, non-material and social environments, in various local and social contexts.