Voyaging in the Pacific: Narratives of Climate Vulnerability

Abstract

This thesis examines how climate vulnerability in Pacific nations is narrated within global climate discourse, interrogating the processes through which these narratives reproduce colonial power and constrain agency. Recognising that vulnerability is not an objective reality but a discursive construct, I analyse the ways in which external actors - including colonial powers, international institutions, and global media - frame Pacific communities as fragile, dependent, or in need of saving. These narratives shape perceptions, influence policy, and delimit the ethical and political possibilities available to Pacific peoples. Employing a narrative-driven discourse analysis, I trace the construction of vulnerability through three acts: its initial framing as inherent fragility, its politicisation as victimhood, and its resolution through prescriptive intervention. Tropes, recurring figurative and symbolic devices, form the building blocks of these narratives, revealing the interplay between knowledge, representation, and power. The study situates these discourses within historical and contemporary colonial and neocolonial structures, highlighting how past and present forms of domination intersect to produce enduring dependencies, epistemic marginalisation, and limited agency. Central to this inquiry is the recognition of storytelling as a mode of power and resistance. Drawing on Pacific epistemologies, oral traditions, and Indigenous narratives, the thesis foregrounds the epistemic authority embedded in lived experience and cultural knowledge. These stories illuminate alternative understandings of climate vulnerability, emphasising resilience, adaptive capacity, and collective agency that challenge externally imposed narratives of passivity and fragility. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the construction of vulnerability in Pacific discourse is both a reflection and an instrument of ongoing colonial power, shaping what is considered knowable, legitimate, and actionable. By critically analysing tropes and narratives while centring Indigenous epistemologies, the research contributes to decolonial approaches in climate scholarship, advocating for more nuanced, contextually grounded, and justice oriented representations of Pacific communitie Show more