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Tuvalu, sovereignty and climate change: considering fenua, the archipelago and emigration

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Version 1 2023-05-26, 08:27
journal contribution
posted on 2025-01-15, 00:51 authored by Elaine StratfordElaine Stratford, C Farbotko, H Lazrus
Tuvalu is a Pacific atoll nation-state that has come to stand for predicaments implicating climate change, forced emigration and resettlement, and loss of territory and sovereignty. Legal and policy remedies seek to address such challenges by radically reframing how sovereignty is conceived. Drawing on literary and legal theory, we seek to extend such work in the terms of cultural geography and anthropology by considering how the archipelago and cultural practices known as fenua could be deployed as symbolic and material resources emphasizing mobility and connection, in contrast to normative ideas of sovereignty, whose orientation to territory imperils atoll states. Our fundamental argument is that legal and policy reforms addressing climate change emigration must be enriched by accounting for the emotional geographies that attend the changing real and conceptual borders of sovereignty and by creating alternative spaces of hope and action.

History

Publication title

Island Studies Journal

Volume

8

Issue

1

Article number

1

Number

1

Pagination

67-83

ISSN

1715-2593

Department/School

Geography, Planning and Spatial Sciences, Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences

Publisher

University of Prince Edward Island

Publication status

  • Published

Rights statement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution: No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Licence

Socio-economic Objectives

280123 Expanding knowledge in human society

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