This seminar explores “resilience without recognition”: how Indo-Fijian communities adapt through local knowledge.
Pacific climate resilience is often understood through Indigenous, place-based knowledge or state-led adaptation. Indo-Fijian experiences sit uneasily within both frameworks. Drawing on 21 focus groups with 143 participants across Fiji, this seminar examines how communities living with insecure land tenure respond to climate change through practical observation, household improvisation, faith and neighbourhood networks, and women’s largely unpaid labour. It develops the idea of resilience without recognition: adaptive capacity that is socially vital yet institutionally overlooked and unsupported. Through the related concepts of vernacular climatology, feminised resilience and adaptive precarity, the seminar asks when community resourcefulness becomes an excuse for state neglect. It argues that recognising the plurality of Pacific resilience requires taking Indo-Fijian knowledge and practices seriously, while refusing to romanticise survival under conditions of enduring insecurity.
About the speakers
Romitesh Kant is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and an Oceanic Conference on International Studies Fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. His research examines political masculinities, democracy, constitutionalism and climate justice in Fiji and the wider Pacific. Drawing on feminist, intersectional and decolonial approaches, his work explores how institutions shape unequal experiences of power, belonging and resilience. Romitesh is also an academic-activist with longstanding involvement in Pacific civil society and serves on the boards of the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum and Oceania Pride.
Roshika Deo is a Fijian feminist working in the Pacific and is a Girmitya descendant. She has a law degree from the University of the South Pacific and an MSc in Political Science from University College London. She has extensive experience in gender, SOGIESC rights, social inclusion, human rights, legal reform, policy and intersectionality. Her work spans gender-based violence prevention, child protection, social justice, feminist movement building, SOGIESC inclusion, and community-led development. Her research and practice are grounded in intersectional feminist approaches, decolonisation and social inclusion.
This seminar presentation is a dual-delivery event.
Light lunch will be provided.
If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.