Loving Technologies? Beyond Climate Finance's Logics of Scalability in Infrastructures in Fiji

Abstract

This paper explores how climate finance approaches and logics, particularly around scale, manifest in local climate technologies in Fiji. Through multi-sited fieldwork, the paper explores experiences around three climate related infrastructures: a biomass plant in Nadroga; a diesel-solar community hybrid system in Island X; and a seawall in Levuka, Ovalua. Each represent a key aspect of Fiji's climate-related infrastructural targets. Through explorations at these sites, the paper argues that climate finance logics prioritise large scale technologies and “scalability” projects, that is, projects which seek to expand without changing their basic elements. In response, the paper aims to create scholarly space for considering alternatives around climate finance's projects. The paper embeds these considerations of climate finance alternatives within its conceptual framework of “loving technologies.” Loving technologies is a product of the interplay of Pacific theory, postcolonial and feminist technoscience with the Fijian experiences of climate finance explored in this paper. The loving technologies approach highlights the validity small-scale infrastructure as having potential to be intimate, relational, making a difference in lives, communities, and futures. Despite their small scale, they can make an impact on bigger scales, and can chart alternative pathways of progress.