Urbanisation across Pacific small island developing States (SIDS) is accelerating, though unevenly, with around 45 per cent of the population living in urban areas in 2020, a figure projected to rise to nearly 60 per cent by 2050. While levels of urbanisation vary widely between countries, cities and towns across the Pacific are growing faster than planning systems, infrastructure and governance arrangements can keep pace.
Climate change, environmental degradation and rapid urbanisation aren’t separate challenges here; they collide. Cities face cyclones, floods and earthquakes alongside slow, grinding stresses like sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, land subsidence and environmental decline. These risks cascade across urban systems: housing failures trigger health crises; infrastructure breakdowns disrupt livelihoods; informal growth deepens vulnerability.
That’s why building urban resilience in Pacific SIDS isn’t optional — it’s existential.
At its core, urban resilience is about the capacity of cities and communities to survive, adapt and thrive no matter what shocks or stresses they face. It’s not about a single project or sector. It’s about how land, housing, infrastructure, governance, culture and finance work together, before disasters or shocks strike, not just after.
So how do we actually get there?
If there’s one thing Pacific cities do not need more of, it’s another glossy plan that never leaves the shelf. Urban resilience in the Pacific is a systems and governance challenge, not merely a technical or environmental one.
That truth landed sharply at the 7th Pacific Urban Forum (PUF7) in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. But what transformed it from a familiar diagnosis into something more hopeful was the human layer, a shared recognition that resilience isn’t built by frameworks and data alone, but through relationships, trust and the ability to work across boundaries.
Technically, we know what needs fixing. The problem isn’t a lack of awareness or evidence. It’s a failure to translate knowledge into coordinated, sustained action. Urban growth in Pacific SIDS is often informal and geographically constrained, pushing settlements into floodplains, steep slopes and vulnerable coastlines. Governance structures remain fragmented, with weak alignment between national and local mandates. Data exists, but it’s often locked in institutional silos. Slow-onset risks are rarely reflected in zoning codes, infrastructure investment, or budget decisions.
But knowing this isn’t the same as changing it.
The message from PUF7 was clear: governance, not hazards, is the real bottleneck. Institutional silos, short political cycles and top‑down policy design repeatedly undermine resilience efforts. Plans are written, consultations are held, but implementation falters. The result is a familiar loop: plan, delay, react; then repeat. Too often, resilience is framed as “either/or”: government or community; policy or customary law; development or heritage. Pacific realities demand “both/and”.
So why is breaking that loop so hard?
For Millicent Barty, a Solomon Islands youth leader and founder of Kastom Keepers, an NGO dedicated to raising resilience rooted in kastom*, the answer lies in weaving. Integrating kastom and traditional knowledge into urban planning, not as a cultural add‑on, but as something foundational, isn’t just about cultural recognition. It’s a resilience strategy. Urban systems that ignore customary land, social networks and stewardship aren’t just culturally blind; they’re structurally weak.
That idea resonates strongly across the Pacific. Solomon Islands leaders spoke about the need for place‑based, community‑led planning in Honiara, grounded in customary land tenure and lived realities. Fiji highlighted whole‑of‑government coordination to align housing, land, climate and social protection, backed by real budgets and institutional reform. Kiribati emphasised the need to strengthen local councils so that national climate priorities translate into action on the ground. Vanuatu underscored how post‑disaster rebuilding created momentum to hard‑wire resilience into housing policy and building codes.
What these experiences show is that urban resilience in the Pacific isn’t just about what we build, it’s about how we govern, decide, and work together.
From a systems perspective, resilience can’t be delivered sector by sector. Housing, water, transport, land, health, climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction are tightly interwoven. Decentralised infrastructure, for example, isn’t only a technical fix; it depends on local capacity, trust and governance arrangements that allow communities and councils to manage systems when shocks hit.
This is why collaborative initiatives such as the Pacific Urban Partnership and regional platforms like PUF7 matter, not as event showcases, but as relational infrastructure. They create space for countries to compare experiences, learn from one another and realise they’re wrestling with the same constraints.
Urban resilience in Pacific SIDS won’t be achieved without strengthening the connective tissue: between lines of government; between sectors; between data and decision‑making; between traditional knowledge and formal policy; and between people who share the same cities but rarely the same room.
But if resilience is about withstanding compounding risks, then the greatest asset may be the willingness to listen to each other, to share stories, to weave perspectives together, and to govern from a place of shared good rather than division.
In the end, resilience is all about learning how to weave stronger cities together.
*Kastom—a pidgin adaptation of the word “custom”—is used throughout Melanesia to refer to traditional ways of life, encompassing indigenous religion, economic practices, art, spirituality, and social norms. It provides a core sense of identity and functions as a guiding framework for social relations (such as the wantok system), land tenure, and environmental stewardship.
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