UC San Diego

Inafa’ Maolek Restoring Balance through Resilience, Resistance, and Coral Reefs: A Study of Pacific Island Climate Justice and the Right to Nature examines diverse ways coral reefs form the very foundation of Pacific Islands and Pacific Island identities. Bringing together the fields of Ethnic Studies, Indigenous Studies and Critical Refugee Studies with Environmental Justice, Science Studies and Oceanography, my dissertation makes visible Indigenous organizing for coral reef climate justice, advocacy and action on behalf of coral reefs, as an ethical, political, and social justice issue that impacts our planetary functioning. In Chapter one I examine the use of coral reefs as one of the frames and organizing principles in which Pacific islanders engage self-determination, demilitarization, and environmental policy issues. I identify key elements and distinctive characteristics of Pacific Island Coral Reef Climate Justice. In chapters two and three, I use coral as an organizing optic to study how different relationships to coral are significant throughout the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), discursively marked as drowning/disappearing and labeled the first “climate refugees,” with Guam, increasingly targeted for military buildup and protected for its significance to U.S. national security strategy. I analyze what happens when marine life is evaluated “at risk” or not through environmental impact statements (EIS). In chapter four, I examine how the race to harvest mineral deposits on the sea floor, the largest ecosystem on the planet, has raised new and urgent concerns regarding the translation of Indigenous rights to underwater terrains as minerals needed for existing and emerging technology, pharmaceuticals, and raw materials are increasingly sought after in “uncharted” and “unprotected” territories. With these new technological industries, environmental justice efforts must produce and employ scientific data that track environmental hazards, placing a new sort of materiality at the forefront. Pacific leaders argue that this new extractive industry bodes great harm and call for the recalibration of the deep-sea mining regime. Most concerning is the emerging regulatory frameworks do not include the United Nation’s protection of indigenous communities’ rights to free, prior and informed consent and challenges contemporary understandings of sovereignty.