Who decides what “success” looks like? Climate change interventions in the Pacific

In July 2025, the Federal Court of Australia ruled the Commonwealth does not have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islander communities from climate change, in a landmark end to a four-year case brought by elders of Saibai and Boigu islands.

Ultimately, the case failed, not due to the lack of evidence of climate change impacts, but because complexities in the legal system restricted avenues for damages claims. The lead plaintiffs, Uncle Pabai Pabai and Uncle Paul Kabai, described the result as “the deepest pain imaginable”.

Climate change litigation is on the rise globally. Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that countries have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions and act with due diligence and cooperation to fulfill this obligation. Countries who did not would risk breaking international law. The ICJ stated a “clean, healthy and stable environment” is a human right.

“The impacts of climate change are being keenly felt in the Torres Strait, and wider Pacific region — for many, the destruction of their lives, culture and community is not something that will happen ‘in a few decades’, it’s happening now,” says Anna Gero, PhD candidate at Griffith University, and Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

Adaptation & defining success

During hearings, residents of Saibai Island, in the Torres Strait, described how the rising sea level has salinized ground once used for crops, while erosion was destroying their cemetery, and king tides regularly flood houses. Many in the community are calling on the government to fund an adaptation study.

This work is Gero’s bread-and-butter. With over seventeen years’ experience working in resilience, climate change adaptation and disaster risk within the Pacific region, Anna has led many collaborative research projects that have explored what adaptation means for Pacific communities impacted by climate change.

Anna Gero is a PhD candidate at Griffith University and a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

Gero is also the recipient of a 2025 Humanities Travelling Fellowship, which will help support her PhD research in Fiji.

“My research aims to understand how culture shapes discourses of success,” she says. “And to what extent Pacific relational cultures and worldviews are considered in adaptation evaluation processes.”

The monitoring and evaluation frameworks for adaptation investments are primarily developed by external funders often located in the Global North – which can present challenges for the communities they’re supposed to support.

“Measures of success are influenced by the institutional cultures and worldviews of outsiders to the Pacific, which do not necessarily align with the visions and priorities of Pacific communities,” says Gero.

“I think the Saibai Island community leaders in this case did the absolute best job they could to navigate a Western legal framework to seek climate justice for their community, but unfortunately that Western legal framework has let them down again,” continued Gero.

Gero’s career in Pacific climate change research began when she took a position with the Australian Volunteers Program, and moved to Samoa, where she worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for a year.

“I was really young — early twenties — and I remember it was a real cultural shock. I was a naïve white girl who thought I was there to ‘fix things’ and that mindset was totally wrong, and very quickly changed.”

“I saw first-hand the devastating impact of climate change, and the changes experienced by these coastal communities, but also the worldview of communities in the Pacific and how the Pasifika culture shapes their way of life and value systems,” she says. “Since then, I’ve been working in partnership with Pacific Islander communities and organisations on research to enable them to be in the driver’s seat in determining their climate future — and what adaptation to climate change looks like for them.”

Working together & thinking differently

As a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Gero has collaborated with a diversity of partners, including the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (through Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), The Pacific Community (SPC) and Pacific-based civil society organisations such as Shifting the Power Coalition. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science (Honours) and a Masters of Development Studies, and is now pursuing a PhD at Griffith University, supervised by Dr Carol Farbotko and Associate Professor Johanna Nalau.

“I can’t undersell the importance of the humanities within transdisciplinary research,” Gero says. “The humanities allows us to connect with each other, explore the importance of history and culture and language — it brings together different worldviews and knowledge systems which is fundamental to my work.”

“We’ve got to start thinking about doing things – including research on messy challenges like climate change – very differently. And I think the humanities provide an entry point to do that. And we’ve got to ask questions around how and why and recognise that solving complex problems often involves examining relationships, integrating diverse knowledge systems, and intentionally addressing power imbalances at all levels.”

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