From colonial science to climate capacity building: Analyzing uneven access to climate knowledge in Vanuatu

This paper explores the uneven access to climate knowledge experienced by scientists and policymakers in Vanuatu. Rather than pointing to a lack of capability or forethought on the part of the Vanuatu government or scientists in Vanuatu, an examination of the colonial basis and economic investments necessary in climate science and monitoring elucidates how developing nations are systemically disadvantaged in climate research. Drawing from political ecology and science and technology studies these inequities are contextualized and spatially located through discourse analysis and qualitative interviews with ni-Vanuatu scientists, policymakers, and scholars. By situating climate science and climate knowledge in a historical perspective this paper provides a critique of the dominant view of climate research as neutral and necessarily global. This paper concludes by asserting climate knowledge inequities will not be resolved merely by more information, but only through addressing the root causes of these inequities over time.