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While care must be taken not to make direct links between climate change and conflict in Solomon Islands, this paper identifies three potential climate change-related conflict issues:
 
  • Climate change is impacting upon the environment in which people’s identity, place-based histories and sense of well-being are centred. Environmental impacts of climate change may exacerbate existing conflict drivers and impact upon the capacity of communities to manage localised forms of conflict. 
  • External forms of project intervention at community level are a common cause of conflict.  The paper points to the need for conflict sensitive climate-change adaptation strategies which understand localised power-relations and capacities and avoid creating dependency on outside ‘experts’.
  • There is the potential for conflict arising from climate change-induced displacement and relocation of people from their island homes. 
The overarching recommendation of this paper is that any meaningful engagement with the challenges of climate change and conflict in Solomon Islands must be firmly grounded within localised Solomon Islands worldviews.