The chronopolitics of climate change adaptation: land reclamation in Tuvalu

Abstract

Discourses of urgency have dominated adaptation responses to climate change, necessitating fast and decisive action. These discourses are particularly apparent in low-lying island states due to rising sea levels. Tuvalu, an atoll state in the South Pacific, has engaged in land reclamation projects as a means of adaptation. Focusing on these projects, I explore how chronopolitics can help tease apart the complex spatialities and temporalities which underpin adaptation. Chronopolitics describes the relationship between the politics of individuals and groups and their perspective on time, thus it can help to unpack how time perceptions shape adaptation decision-making processes. Drawing on fieldwork in the South Pacific and COP24 in Poland, I contend that adaptation serves as a performative process that supports alternative climate futures. Within this paper, I use critical geopolitics to show how these futures are suffused with power relations, at domestic, international and financial levels. Moreover, through an examination of the 2019 Pacific Island Forum, I argue that land reclamation serves as a visible, material resource to enrol in performative forms of diplomacy. Subsequently, I show how it is imperative that geographers, and social scientists more broadly, are attentive to the temporality and spatiality of adaptation to understand its political potential.

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