Culture is power in the Pacific

By Martin Zavan and Shiva Gounden

Culture is at the core of what it means to be human. The climate crisis threatens it. Yet it's also what gives people the strength to fight back. Culture is self determination and resistance. In the Pacific, culture shapes identity, guides navigation, is law, order, governance and forges bonds across generations. While the Pacific is home to a plethora of different cultures, it holds a central position in the lives of communities across the region. Culture can help heal the scars of colonialism, it offers structure, meaning and resilience, and provides a powerful platform for climate leadership.

Tongan and Fijian anthropologist, Epeli Hau'ofa, said “Cultures are not museum pieces, nor are they frozen in time. They are living, growing, and changing all the time.”

Julian Aguon captured this beautifully in a recent Rolling Stone piece about the women of Yakel, a kastom village in Vanuatu. The villagers describe a wordless sorrow when they’re unable to perform Nahunu, a sacred practice of preparing food and drink for the spiritual centre of their village. Climate-fuelled storms and landslides have made traditional gardens inaccessible leading to food insecurity. The ritual is missed. A sacred bond between land, environment, culture and spirit is fraying. What’s lost is more than food, it’s a cultural thread and a sense of belonging. It’s a reminder that climate change strikes much deeper than just the physical, it can uproot spiritual connection.

Too often, Pacific climate stories are framed around what’s being lost: land and graves being swallowed by rising seas, lives disrupted, cultures under threat. These stories are real, and so is the grief felt. But this victim framing can unintentionally diminish Pasifika peoples’ agency, and reduce Pasifika communities to a passive identity – the inevitable victims of someone else’s decisions. It invites pity more than solidarity and centres suffering over strength. The Pacific as a victim is a framing that many have rightly criticised, and yet it continues to echo through the halls of international climate summits and the strategies of well-meaning allies. And while it might raise awareness, it doesn’t always move the needle or shift power.

More than resilience

The Pacific is not just on the frontlines of the climate crisis. It is also on the frontlines of climate leadership. And culture – rich, living, fiercely protected culture – is part of what makes that leadership possible. If you listen carefully, this truth has always been there. It’s in the chants that open climate negotiations. It’s in the woven mats gifted to leaders in ceremonies of welcome. It’s in the seis, shells, stories, songs, and silences that hold space for everything science can’t measure.

Culture is power. Not the kind that shouts or dominates, but the kind that endures, connects, and persuades.

That power can be shared and understood by others. It can help explain why the loss of land to rising seas isn’t just about territory, but about memory, meaning and continuity. It can show how the disappearance of traditional crops or weaving materials isn’t just economic, but spiritual. These are truths that cut across many cultures. They speak to anyone who values home, heritage and community.

It can be tempting to translate culture into campaign content, especially as the Pacific prepares to co-host COP31 in 2026. But this needs to be without extraction, appropriation and commodification. Pacific culture must not become just colour and movement for the world’s media or a backdrop for international diplomacy, a visual shorthand for loss. Nor should it be reduced to something in need of rescue, rather as the center of resistance, and a solution to the climate crisis

Led by the Pacific, for the world

A better approach begins with trust, cultural sensitivity and genuine partnership. Not parachuted-in messaging or ventriloquised voices. But communications led by Pasifika people, on their own terms, grounded in the values that matter most: family, land, ocean, ancestors, future generations.

There is strength in the Pacific way of life itself. Pacific communities have lived in a deep relationship with land and ocean for millennia. They almost inherently know what sustainability and stewardship looks like. They have managed natural resources, resolved conflict, protected ecosystems and shared ecological knowledge long before the world decided to take notice. The world needs Pacific traditional science and wisdom now more than ever.

Culture is not a campaign tactic. It’s not symbolic and foundational. Pacific culture can’t be used as a human analogue to charismatic megafauna: a sympathetic symbol designed to tug at the heartstrings of distant audiences. When used carelessly, cultural imagery can unintentionally reinforce the very ideas it’s meant to dismantle. Culture can be central to reshaping the global climate narrative if led from the Pacific with the support of genuine allies.

The road to COP31

There’s an opportunity here. As Australia prepares to co-host COP31 with the Pacific, the next 18 months are critical. There must be a determined effort to centre the power of indigenous and Pacific culture in communications before the COP agenda is set. Work needs to begin now to frame the summit around the priorities and strengths of First Nations and Pacific states and territories. That means rejecting deficit frames and engaging with Indigenous worldviews and culture as a force for leadership.

This isn’t being sentimental. It’s a considered, strategic suggestion. And it means asking: What stories do we want the world to hear in 2026? Who is telling them? Whose values do they reflect?

Climate negotiations often come down to numbers: emissions trajectories, financial flows, temperature thresholds. But at the heart of all this is people. And for Indigenous Peoples, culture is the way they make sense of their world. Survival without culture is survival diminished. We can’t ignore that in the Pacific, including Australia, or anywhere else.

Cultural loss is not just something to be mourned. Culture is the heartbeat that drums the power of Indigenous Peoples across the Pacific. Culture can move people in ways facts and Western science alone cannot. For the Pacific, culture is not a soft power. It’s a serious one that has led their climate leadership across decades. COP31 can be the stage where that power is finally recognised, if we choose to lead with it.