Digitalising cultural heritage in the Pacific Islands: Legal opportunities and challenges

This article was co-authored with Elise Papadopoff.

• Summary
• Opportunities of digitalisation
• Legal and ethical challenges
• Conclusion

Summary

Pacific Island nations face existential threats from climate change, particularly from rising sea levels that risk submerging ancestral lands and displacing entire communities. This crisis not only endangers physical territory, but also threatens tangible and intangible cultural heritage that is deeply intertwined with land and sea. As relocation becomes the unfortunate reality for some, the question of how to preserve and protect cultural heritage is becoming increasingly urgent. Digitalisation has emerged as a potential solution, offering both opportunities and challenges for the safeguarding of Pacific Islander heritage.

However, this raises important questions of how to preserve and protect both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. There needs to be clear responses to the questions of:

• As people lose their lands, what becomes of their historic and sacred sites?
• When whole communities are displaced, how can their culture and identity be conserved?
• How can traditional knowledge and oral traditions be retained?
• How can heritage preservation best support individuals and communities that are facing climate displacement?

If conducted and maintained properly, digital forms of heritage may be uniquely able to assist in mitigating the loss and damage effected by rising sea levels. However, digitalisation practices to protect cultural heritage must be actioned with caution. We explore the legal aspects of these issues in this article.

Opportunities of digitalisation

Preservation amidst environmental threats

For communities facing displacement, digitalisation offers a means to record and safeguard spiritual belongings, music, dance, oral histories, and traditional knowledge that might otherwise be lost. In Kiribati, where rising sea levels threaten both tangible sites and intangible practices, systematic documentation and recording of oral histories are seen by Indigenous populations as vital strategies for their cultural survival.¹

Overcoming geographical barriers and enhancing access

The digital age has seen remarkable growth in enabling the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage beyond physical and geographical barriers, and providing more equitable access to cultural heritage. It also promotes a fresh approach to engaging with cultural heritage.² For example, the Asia-Pacific Council for International Intangible Cultural Heritage is developing digital platforms to present intangible heritage to global audiences,³ whilst the Fiji Museum is undertaking a comprehensive digital documentation of its holdings to make them accessible online.

Ongoing digitalisation projects are framed as a preservation measure to ensure that spiritual belongings, music, dance and oral storytelling can continue even as communities face environmental change.⁴ Digitalisation has the potential to enable some cultural heritage to be retraced, reconstructed and, ultimately, represented in their original contexts.

Intergenerational transmission and community engagement

Digital tools can facilitate the transmission of cultural knowledge to younger generations, who may be more engaged with technology than with traditional forms of learning. Initiatives such as the University of Fiji's iTaukei⁵ studies programme integrate digital archives and AI-powered linguistic tools to promote Fijian heritage, with community leaders guiding the process to ensure authenticity and relevance.⁶ Digital storytelling projects, such as those in Niue, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands, combine traditional narratives with new media to engage children and foster cultural continuity.

International human rights frameworks, whilst not expressly guaranteeing a right to cultural heritage, recognise the rights of Indigenous peoples to enjoy their culture, participate in cultural life, and exercise self-determination. Digitalisation, when approached through a cultural rights lens, can empower communities to control how their heritage is preserved and shared, ensuring that their voices and values remain central to the process. For displaced persons this presents key opportunities for continued access through digital platforms to their cultural heritage that they have otherwise been separated from, as well as new possibilities to enhance the participation and education of their communities, particularly for younger generations.⁷

Legal and ethical challenges

Community control and consent

A key challenge is ensuring that source communities retain control over their heritage in the digital realm. Questions around when and how cultural heritage should be preserved, which heritage, and in what form are currently being discussed by stakeholders. In early 2025, the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights argued that a cultural rights⁸ approach is the preferred method to achieving sustainable and beneficial digitalisation, reporting her finding to the Human Rights Council (Special Rapporteur Report').

The International Council on Monuments and Sites "Future of our Past" Report⁹ makes two particularly helpful recommendations for mitigating loss and damage of cultural heritage, proposing that:

• Collaborative community processes be used to identify heritage conservation priorities and develop strategies for reducing rate of deterioration, recording, minimising loss of important scientific information, preserving examples of past technologies and commemorating places of cultural land and seascapes left behind for future generations.
• Sites most at risk of abandonment be identified, and proactive resettlement strategies incorporating cultural issues begin. Recording of heritage that would most likely be left behind through human displacement must be through consultation with relevant stakeholders.

Recognition of source communities

There is potential risk that well-meaning external actors (governments, NGOs, or academics) may dominate decision-making processes, particularly when digitalisation projects rely on outside funding or expertise. There is a legitimate concern that the voice of Indigenous Peoples and source communities will be diluted by State officials, experts and academics to the extent that control over heritage they own is lost. Digital heritage, if restricted to those with the most economic or technological resources, is at risk of perpetuating neo-colonial practices.¹⁰ To address this, it is essential to incorporate free, prior, and informed consent into all digitalisation efforts - a principal protected by international human rights standards - and to prioritise community-led archives and decision-making.

TCareful regard must be had to the balance between calls for funding, and ensuring that the decision-making progress remains in the hands of source communities. External heritage practitioners should endeavour to allow local communities take the lead and consider their preferences. Advocates have continued to call for developed nations to provide new funding packages and comprehensive plans to assist both relocation efforts, and the recording and recovery of remaining history and heritage.¹¹ This includes the often-overlooked component of education initiatives that highlight both the economic and cultural identity benefits of proper heritage management.

Intellectual property and data sovereignty

Access to digital tools, infrastructure, and technological expertise is uneven across the Pacific Islands, with regions and remote communities at risk of exclusion from digitalisation initiatives. Without targeted support for digital literacy and infrastructure, the benefits of digital heritage preservation may be limited to those with the greatest resources, perpetuating existing inequalities and potentially reinforcing neo-colonial dynamics.

In theory, open access is the best way to ensure source communities can engage and participate in cultural heritage that affects them. However, it is also integral that heritage is digitalised in a manner that protects the moral and material interests of its creators both at the time and as an ongoing reflective exercise.

The ease of digital replication and distribution complicates already complex notions of IP rights and generates ongoing debate and increased risk of legal dispute about fair use, licensing models and proper attribution. It is also important to note that online cultural heritage falls outside of geographic state borders posing challenges for law enforcement and regulators in the event of any infringement of rights.

The key will be to balance the right of source communities to data sovereignty and control without unnecessarily limiting public access. Data ownership, and the subsequent income-generation rights, may be contentious if control resides with institutions assisting with data retention or recording practices, rather than communities.¹² Research to date shows that digital spaces often trend towards prioritising global accessibility over developing nuanced rules to govern knowledge sharing for those cultural heritage assets requiring secrecy.¹³ For instance, a sacred object, song or artwork may be widely disseminated with incorrect, or without, acknowledgement of its significance or context. Consideration in resolving this tension must account for several inconsistent factors, including:

• Even if the original heritage is in the public domain, digital reproductions may be subject to a copyright claim.
• The owners of a copyrighted digital heritage enjoy exclusive rights, inclusive of right to attribution and the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work. This creates a paradox between any freely available original works and restricted digital copies.
• There are cost and time barriers to obtaining copyright for the source community involved.
• Conventional IP frameworks are ill equipped to grapple with the collective ownership, which is a common notion in Pacific regions.

There have been years of scholarship acknowledging this issue, however, there are still no specific and agreed global standards for IP regime that are compatible with international human rights. Proposals to resolve (or at least improve) these inherent tensions involve the inclusion of clear ethical standards for digital platforms, also endorsed by organisations and States. Policy makers and legal experts must explore innovative updates to IP laws that strike a balance between protecting creator's rights and fostering wider access. The copyright framework has scope to be improved by encouraging creativity, facilitating fair renumeration and maximising access. This will require a collaborative effort and innovative legislation.

Sustainability and long-term storage

Even if the challenges of collecting and recording at risk heritage is achieved, there is an additional question raised around the storage of this information. Digital records require reliable, secure, and sustainable storage solutions, including backup systems and geographically dispersed data centres. Many current models are underfunded and reliant on public entities or short-term grants, raising concerns about the long-term retention and accessibility of digital heritage. Environmental concerns about the resource-intensive nature of data storage also need to be addressed.

Conclusion

Digitalisation offers significant opportunities for the preservation and transmission of Pacific Island cultural heritage in the face of climate change and displacement. It can overcome physical barriers, support intergenerational learning, and empower communities to exercise their cultural rights. However, these benefits are contingent on careful, community-led approaches that respect Indigenous ownership, address legal and ethical challenges, and ensure equitable access to technology and resources.

If approached poorly, digitalisation could become a façade with little emphasis on improving the wellbeing of the communities involved or strengthening their identity and participation. Even if a best practice, cultural rights approach is successfully implemented, digitalisation should not be seen as a 'catch all' solution. Most importantly, digitalisation should never substitute or prevail over efforts to conserve actual heritage and should not be used to justify abandonment or destruction of heritage.