A Gender Lens to Climate-Related (im)Mobilities in the Pacific: The Role of Women for “Staying with Dignity”.

In climate change discourse, climate mobility is often portrayed as an inevitability, not only for atolls but in other, larger Pacific Nations. Many Pacific communities’ call for “Staying with Dignity” have been ignored, along with their histories of resilience that have been used for generations in the face of environmental risks. The assumption that women are more vulnerable to climate change and portrayed as "climate victims" is often found in literature on climate (im)mobilities and reflected as such in policy. This paper argues that in regions such as the Pacific, women have been since generations, a critical source of resourcefulness in the context of environmental (im)mobilities that is not new in the region. The current global focus on climate mobility and the exploitation of “climate migrant” narratives that narrow adaptation futures in the Pacific does not reflect the reality of Pacific peoples’ experiences and aspirations on the ground. Indeed, without including those immobile populations who wish to stay and the essential role of women in these processes framing resilience mechanisms in place for generations, these narratives stigmatise women as tragic victims of climate change and marginalize their role as resource of resilience in climate (im)mobilities.

Building on the framework for “Staying with Dignity” (Gharbaoui et al. 2024), inspired by and building upon Anote Tong’s idea of "Migration with Dignity", exploring the diversity of mobilities and immobilities that characterise responses to climate change in the Pacific, this paper challenges simplistic assumptions around the role of women in climate (im)mobilities drawing on indigenous feminist and (im)mobilities scholarship. Taking a gender lens on the framework will contribute to the scholarship on climate (im)mobilities in the Pacific and beyond, centralizing issues such as sense of belonging, "Vanua", cultural identity, and sovereignty as crucial to communities’ responses to climate change both in research and policy.