Much aid being provided to the Pacific Islands go to governments for policy development. This assumes that, as in most developed countries, policy is the optimal route to appropriate environmental stewardship. In Pacific Island countries, there is little evidence that national policies have significant effect on environmental decision-making in rural areas. In such places, environmental decisions are usually controlled by community leaders, and are made based on instinct, imitation or informal advice, commonly without reference to national policy. This project aims to explore the degree to which this assumption is valid. The expected outcome of the project is an improved understanding of how policy affects environmental decision-making in the rural Pacific Islands. These outcomes hope to stimulate a larger, more long-term project focused on understanding the efficacy of environmental decision-making in the Asia-Pacific region. The project also intends to identify pathways on how funding agencies and governments can direct their resources towards sector-specific capacity building with a chance of greater success.