How Analysis of Local Contexts Can Have Global Significance

This chapter considers claims about culture loss at hearings of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands, including the impact of nuclear weapons testing on the people of Rongelap Atoll. The concept of cultural property is used to identify the referents of discourse about culture loss, including local knowledge, subsistence production, and connections to place. For example, the absence of breadfruit and pandanus trees on the atolls where the people from Rongelap were relocated prevented them from teaching subsequent generations how to build their distinctive sailing canoes, contributing to the decline of long-distance voyaging and the loss of knowledge about navigation by the stars and wave patterns. These discussions have been taken up by international debates about noneconomic loss and damage resulting from climate change, a matter of considerable significance for the people living in the Marshall Islands, given their double exposure to both nuclear radiation and rising sea levels.

Economic geography · Geography · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies