Prefiguring the Future: Climate Change Adaptation and Youth Diplomacy in Tuvalu

During the ESRC Postdoctoral fellowship, I will build upon my doctoral research which explores the geopolitics of climate change in small island states. Low lying atoll states, such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, are on average on a few metres above sea level and at risk of being inundated from rising sea levels. However, although they are often represented as "sinking islands" whose disappearance is inevitable - their future remains uncertain.

Environmental change in these islands raises questions about their future sovereignty, geopolitics, and identity. Climate change is the main concern of the foreign policy of low-lying island states, as they try to negotiate a global reduction in emissions and support for their domestic adaptation. In this fellowship, I will develop and disseminate outputs drawing on six months of fieldwork in the South Pacific and two weeks of fieldwork at the 2018 Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland.

Using a multi-site and mixed methods approach, I collected large amounts of qualitative data from 56 semi-structured interviews, attending and observing climate negotiations at two conferences, and observing research and adaptation projects in Tuvalu. I will use this fellowship to write three journal articles based on this research as well as developing a book proposal and writing two book chapters.

My first article, Sinking Islands? The Vertical Geopolitics of Contested Geomorphologies will explore how sea level rise is understood as a threat to low-lying atolls. I will argue that recent literature on vertical geopolitics and the geographies of the ocean can help shed light on the knowledge controversy over the future of island communities.

I focus on the contestation of science and how islanders are using new technologies, such as drones, to produce their own research. Secondly, in the article Performing Alternative Climate Futures: Bodies and Emotions in Diplomacy, I will question how different geographies of salvation have been constructed within diplomacy. Whilst islands communities are often posited as in need of "saving", I will ask what will construe as the "saving" of atoll islands.

Through a focus on the relationship between emotions, bodies and performance I will argue scholarship needs to pay greater attention to the body as a key site in climate diplomacy in making climate change visible. My third article is entitled Conference Ethnography as a Methodology and will draw on my research experiences at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2018 and the Pacific Islands Forum in 2019.

I will argue that ethnographic techniques can provide unique insights into the geopolitics and diplomacy of climate change. Specifically, conferences provide a site to reflect on debates on diplomacy in political geography around visuality, performance and knowledge production.

I will also submit a book proposal to the RGS-IBG book series on Climate Change and write the first two chapters. The title is Rising Seas and Sinking Islands: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in Tuvalu and Kiribati.

I will spend five weeks in the South Pacific, to disseminate my research findings and conduct limited further research. I will deliver two public lectures in Fiji and Tuvalu, inviting key stakeholder and run three workshops focusing on youth diplomacy in Tuvalu. Working with partners from the University of the South Pacific, I will use these workshops to explore youth perceptions of climate diplomacy and create educational materials to run simulation exercises of climate negotiations.

Based on this process, I will co-author an article with Dr Rosiani Lagi on youth engagement with climate activism and diplomacy.

Through this fellowship, I will grow my research network by presenting at three academic conferences to disseminate my research to new audiences. I will also run six workshops in UK schools based on my research to inspire pupils to pursue higher education and research careers.