Who defines atoll ‘uninhabitability’?

Abstract

This paper argues that the concept of ‘uninhabitability’ in the context of sea level rise risk is culturally and socially experienced and open to multiple truth claims, with implications for what we call relational security. In reference to the atolls of Oceania, non-local knowledges of uninhabitability have coalesced into ostensible truths about the inevitable relocation of atoll people. Yet uninhabitability and habitability arguably remain contested signifiers, with open possibilities for conceptualisation and thus for planning for the trajectory from habitable to uninhabitable. Far from being neatly universalizable for environmental security studies or cognate fields such as adaptation science, the qualities that make a particular place acceptable to live in are culturally and historically specific, involving local knowledges, cosmologies and place attachments. Habitability is thus irreducible to material elements of human security such as housing, food and water. The concepts of habitability and uninhabitability need to be recognised in research and policy as relational, situated concepts, and questions must be asked about who can and should define habitability in particular places. We argue that climate-exposed atoll populations have the right to have their experience and knowledge of habitability - and their perceived thresholds of uninhabitability - central to science, law, policy and planning that seeks to address sea level rise risk. We introduce the idea of relational security among climate-exposed populations which may be advanced through the process of articulating and institutionalising both habitability and uninhabitability on their terms.