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The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life—pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.

The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life-pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.

In 1908, Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers conducted fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Island Melanesia that served as the turning point in the development of modern anthropology. The work of these two anthropological pioneers on the small island of Simbo brought about the development of participant observation as a methodological hallmark of social anthropology. This would have implications for Rivers' later work in psychiatry and psychology, and Hocart's work as a comparativist, for which both would largely be remembered despite the novelty of that independent fieldwork on remote Pacific islands in the early years of the 20th Century. Contributors to this volume-who have all carried out fieldwork in those Melanesian locations where Hocart and Rivers worked-give a critical examination of the research that took place in 1908, situating those efforts in the broadest possible contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.

Nahona`ara—means 'facing the `ara', the place where the southeast winds meet the land just west of Point Cruz. Nahona`arabecame Honiara, the capital city of Solomon Islands with a population of 160,000, the only significant urban centre in a nation of 721,000 people. Honiara: Village-City of Solomon Islands views Honiara in several ways: first as Tandai traditional land; then as coconut plantations between the 1880s and 1930s; within the British protectorate (1893–1978) and its Guadalcanal District; in the 1942–45 war years, which created the first urban settlement; in the directly post-war period until 1952 as the new capital of the protectorate, replacing Tulagi; and then as the headquarters of the Western Pacific High Commission (WPHC) between 1953 and 1974. Finally, in 1978, Honiara became the capital of the independent nation of Solomon Islands and the headquarters of Guadalcanal Province. The book argues that over decades there have been four and sometimes five changing and intersecting Honiara ‘worlds’ operating at one time, each of different social, economic and political significance. The importance of each group—British, Solomon Islanders, other Pacific Islanders, Asians, and more recently the 2003–17 presence of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI)—has changed over time.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which began on July 24, 2003, has been a remarkable success, in part because of the consistency of its message, the strength of its leadership, and its uncommon support for, rather than overt control of, the Solomon Islands government and policing capability. This study reviews RAMSI operations through the lens of a broader application to current and future counterinsurgency efforts.

In coming decades, sea level rise associated with climate change will make some communities uninhabitable. Managed retreat, or planned relocation, is a proactive response prior to catastrophic necessity. Managed retreat has disruptive health, sociocultural, and economic impacts on communities that relocate. Health impacts include mental health, social capital, food security, water supply, sanitation, infectious diseases, injury, and health care access. We searched peer-reviewed and gray literature for reports on small island or coastal communities at various stages of relocation primarily due to sea level rise. We reviewed these reports to identify public health impacts and barriers to relocation. We identified eight relevant small communities in the USA (Alaska, Louisiana, and Washington), Panama, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Affected populations range from 60 to 2700 persons and are predominantly indigenous people who rely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Few reports directly addressed public health issues. While some relocations were successful, barriers to relocation in other communities include place attachment, potential loss of livelihoods, and lack of funding, suitable land, community consensus, and governance procedures. Further research is needed on the health impacts of managed retreat and how to facilitate population resilience. Studies could include surveillance of health indicators before and after communities relocate due to sea level rise, drought, or other environmental hazards. Lessons learned may inform relocation of both small and large communities affected by climate change.

Whilst future air temperature thresholds have become the centrepiece of international climate negotiations, even the most ambitious target of 1.5 °C will result in significant sea-level rise and associated impacts on human populations globally. Of additional concern in Arctic regions is declining sea ice and warming permafrost which can increasingly expose coastal areas to erosion particularly through exposure to wave action due to storm activity. Regional variability over the past two decades provides insight into the coastal and human responses to anticipated future rates of sea-level rise under 1.5 °C scenarios. Exceeding 1.5 °C will generate sea-level rise scenarios beyond that currently experienced and substantially increase the proportion of the global population impacted. Despite these dire challenges, there has been limited analysis of how, where and why communities will relocate inland in response. Here, we present case studies of local responses to coastal erosion driven by sea-level rise and warming in remote indigenous communities of the Solomon Islands and Alaska, USA, respectively. In both the Solomon Islands and the USA, there is no national government agency that has the organisational and technical capacity and resources to facilitate a community-wide relocation. In the Solomon Islands, communities have been able to draw on flexible land tenure regimes to rapidly adapt to coastal erosion through relocations. These relocations have led to ad hoc fragmentation of communities into smaller hamlets. Government-supported relocation initiatives in both countries have been less successful in the short term due to limitations of land tenure, lacking relocation governance framework, financial support and complex planning processes. These experiences from the Solomon Islands and USA demonstrate the urgent need to create a relocation governance framework that protects people’s human rights.

Pacific Island countries are experiencing a high burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases; and consumption of fat, sugar and salt are important modifiable risk factors contributing to this. The present study systematically reviewed and summarized available literature on dietary intakes of fat, sugar and salt in the Pacific Islands. Electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect and GlobalHealth) were searched from 2005 to January 2018. Grey literature was also searched and key stakeholders were consulted for additional information. Study eligibility was assessed by two authors and quality was evaluated using a modified tool for assessing dietary intake studies. Thirty-one studies were included, twenty-two contained information on fat, seventeen on sugar and fourteen on salt. Dietary assessment methods varied widely and six different outcome measures for fat, sugar and salt intake - absolute intake, household expenditure, percentage contribution to energy intake, sources, availability and dietary behaviours - were used. Absolute intake of fat ranged from 25·4 g/d in Solomon Islands to 98·9 g/d in Guam, while salt intake ranged from 5·6 g/d in Kiribati to 10·3 g/d in Fiji. Only Guam reported on absolute sugar intake (47·3 g/d). Peer-reviewed research studies used higher-quality dietary assessment methods, while reports from national surveys had better participation rates but mostly utilized indirect methods to quantify intake. Despite the established and growing crisis of diet-related diseases in the Pacific, there is inadequate evidence about what Pacific Islanders are eating. Pacific Island countries need nutrition monitoring systems to fully understand the changing diets of Pacific Islanders and inform effective policy interventions.

Community-based adaptation (CBA) is becoming an increasingly popular approach to climate change adaptation in the Pacific islands region. Building adaptive capacity should be an important component of projects supporting CBA. The literature establishes that adaptive capacity is highly context and culture specific. However, to date, there has been little research into the factors and processes that enable adaptive capacity in Pacific island communities. This paper discusses the Pacific Adaptive Capacity Analysis Framework, a theoretical framework developed to guide assessment of adaptive capacity for the purposes of supporting CBA projects. The framework identifies seven broad factors and several sub-factors of Pacific-specific adaptive capacity: (1) human capital; (2) social capital; (3) belief systems, worldviews, and values; (4) resources and their distribution; (5) options for adaptation, livelihood, and food supply; (6) information and awareness; and (7) history of dealing with climate stress. The paper presents a case study of adaptive capacity from a community in the Solomon Islands and concludes that unlike many adaptive capacity determinants identified in the broader international literature, function-based (factors shaping ability to access and use resources) and cognitive (for example, values and belief systems) determinants are of particular relevance in the Pacific community social and cultural context. The key to building upon cognitive and function-based aspects of adaptive capacity is increasing the ability of people to liaise with external support organisations to plan and acquire resources for adaptation on their own terms.

To meet local and global aspirations toward sustainable resource management, we must first understand what success looks like. At global levels, well-being can be narrowly defined, which may clash with local values and cause adverse impacts. Melanesia is home to a complex mosaic of resource management systems, and finding locally appropriate indicators of success poses particular challenges. We propose that biocultural approaches can assist in developing grounded and appropriate well-being indicators. Biocultural approaches frame issues from the perspectives of place-based communities and work with resource users to develop desired outcomes. In doing so, biocultural approaches recognize links between people and the environment and seek to understand feedbacks between social and ecological components. Biocultural approaches may help to improve the fit between local aspirations and national or international actions and can also cocreate knowledge that draws on local knowledge and practice as well as western science. Here, we report on one such approach in Western Province, Solomon Islands, where rural communities are weighing a variety of trade-offs around the use of natural resources. The work encompasses four locations and seeks to define local needs and priorities, develop appropriate local indicators of success, assess indicator baselines, and catalyze appropriate action. Implementation challenges have included scaffolding between local and national levels and the diversity of the four locations. These have, however, been offset by the engaged nature of indicator creation, which assists communities in planning toward action around local definitions of wellbeing.