Title: The value of historical ecology in planning for sustainable livelihoods : a Kiribati case study

Abstract: The precariousness of human existence on atolls, both past and present, is apparent when one examines the close linkages between communities and their environment. There have been few applications of Historical Ecology, the transdisciplinary study of how human societies and the ‘natural’ environment interact and transform each other through time, on atolls and other coral islands, particularly for the period preceding Western contact. Kiribati provides examples of communities that did not endure, as well as others that were sustainable for some 2,000 years. Knowledge of ecological complexity over centuries and millennia is a critical first step in the process of identifying the causes of environmental change and devising realistic methods for managing scarce atoll resources, as well as assessing the effectiveness of traditional adaption strategies in contemporary settings