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We need people to understand the holistic value of that natural blue capital and infrastructure. Whilst our countries (in the Pacific) are on the front line of climate change, they are also holding the front line by protecting large swaths of intact marine ecosystems that play a huge role in planetary stability—from biodiversity to climate change. —Coral Pasisi, SPC’s Director of Climate Change and Sustainability
Coral Pasisi, Director of Climate Change and Sustainability at the Pacific Community (SPC), participates at a COP30 side event held at the Moana Blue Pacific Pavilion. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS
BELÉM, Brazil, Dec 17 2025 (IPS) – On the Pacific Islands, where the ocean horizon is both a lifeline and a warning, communities have long interpreted environmental change through traditional knowledge, lived experiences, stories, and practice. Their observations echo those across the Pacific region, where traditional knowledge remains central to understanding shifting environments and responsible stewardship.
This grounding shaped the early work of Coral Pasisi, Director of Climate Change and Sustainability at the Pacific Community (SPC)—the region’s scientific and technical organization—and it is these experiences, including those from her home country of Niue, that anchor her lived realities and values to her work across the Pacific.
She remembers the early years of her scientific career, going from village to village with a laminated satellite image stitched with the cadastral base of roads and buildings, a few colored pens in hand, asking communities to add what they remembered.
“In times of drought, where were your main water source and caves? What areas remain important to protect as traditional medicines gathering or food security? Where are the traditional sites of ‘tapu’ and graves? And please mark where you remember waves reaching in the big cyclones experienced as far back as you can remember,” says Pasisi, explaining that they used the information to add important information into the Geographic Information System (GIS) to help understand environmental change and inform development resource use management plans.
“So, in one database, you have traditional knowledge, lived experience, and modern science together as a tool for governments and communities to make decisions. It also provided certainty for development and investments the villages were seeking to advance their sustainable development aspirations.”
Women gleaning for octopus as part of an SPC study aimed at building knowledge on ecology, biology and identification of the marine species. Credit: Stuart Campbell/SPC
In a region where most countries and territories are Indigenous-run, the knowledge held by those with generations of traditional wisdom is science—it’s just verified in a different way than modern science. It enhances formal scientific data, giving countries twice as much information to track change and calibrate understanding.
“SPC probably has the world’s most advanced fish monitoring systems in the Pacific region.