Paper short abstract:

This paper illuminates the agency of various individuals, and government ministries on voicing or silencing information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change in the Kingdom of Tonga. Accordingly, responses to these environmental degradations differ significantly.

Paper long abstract:

The Kingdom of Tonga has recently witnessed an explosion in traffic on its roads, the result of a staggering 42000 motor vehicles being newly registered within the last 15 years. At the same time, the country is fighting the results of climate change, and hereby tries to reduce its own carbon emissions to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution. To understand how these two seemingly contradictory environmentally harmful dynamics work side by side, my paper will ask the question: What agency is expressed by various individuals and government ministries to voice or silence information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change in Tonga? In my research, it became evident that the agency of the relevant entities transcends a mixture of their properties and capabilities. Rather, their agency is an emergent result of complex, interdependent assemblages. Central to these developments are different individuals, and government ministries, among whom varying intersecting political, economic, environmental, and personal interests as well as different approaches to the ongoing democratization exist. Depending on their different interests and approaches, providing information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change is rarely common between government ministries and the public. The public itself relies mostly on an own set of techniques to gather information about what is going on around them. So, the agency of voicing or silencing information becomes a powerful tool in everyday life in the Kingdom of Tonga and dictates responses to environmental degradation.