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Shahadat Ali learned to fish when he was just beginning. He was taught to return the smaller fish to the ocean. However, the quality, size, and quantity of fish have declined so much that he has to keep every fish that swims in his net.
“Times are hard — it’s a struggle,” said Ali, who lives on the outskirts of Nasinu, the most populous town on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji.
Ali’s 72-year-old uncle, Iqbal Shah, has been fishing since he was a teenager and has seen the ocean he loves change drastically over his lifetime.
“In one week we used to catch 300 to 400 kilograms, sometimes 500 kilograms, but now if you fish one week, you can’t hardly get about 100 kilograms (220 pounds),” Shah said. “It is very hard.”
Shaw and Ali
These are just two of approximately 1,000,000 people in Fiji who struggle to make a living, keep traditions alive, and fight injustices in an ever-warming environment.
After years of flooding, coastal erosion, Vunidogoloa village was completely relocated by 2014. It was The firstClimate change forces Pacific community to relocate. Fiji’s three other villages have also followed the example of Fiji. More than 80In the coming years, coastal communities will move to higher ground.
The average high temperature on the islands is 58°F It has risen by almost 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Tainted water aquifers and farmland are threatening to contaminate drinking water. Saltwater intrusionOcean acidification is destroying coral reefs that support fisheries.
Viti Levu, Fiji’s most populous island with a population of about 600,000 people, is spending about $52 million annually to combat rising tides. Stronger El Niño patterns trigger more frequent and intense tropical cyclones, which bring death, destruction Disease.
“Climate change is actually an existential crisis for a lot of small islands because it’s leading to, in some places, a complete loss of land and a cultural loss as well,” said Amanda Bertana, an environmental sociologist with extensive experience in Fiji.
Bertana said it’s important to understand that the Fijian word for land, vanua, encompasses one’s relationship to the land and pays homage to the fact that ancestors are buried in the land.
“It’s about this relationship you have with the past and to lose that … it’s traumatizing,” she said.
Climate change injustice adds to the trauma. Fiji is one the least significant contributors to global carbon emissions, yet it is a very important country. According to the United NationsIt is also vulnerable to some of the most serious consequences.
Laisiasa Waqamoce’s farm was completely flooded in January when a Category 1 cyclone hit the islands.
About half of Fiji’s population practices some sort of small-scale agriculture, from pure subsistence farming to backyard gardening.
Waqamoce’s wife, Waqamoce, grows cassava, taro and eggplant on a 3-acre farm located in Vuniniudrovu in central Fiji. They make about $90 per week selling their vegetables along the streets of nearby towns.
However, they are able to lose as much as $20 per Week to flooding.
“We cannot be transporting crops by raft every time,” he said.
(Photo credit: Kelera Ditaiki, Augustine Minimbi, Akansha Narayan, Roselyn Bali)
Augustine Minimbi
Listen“Sometimes, it makes me not want to continue with schooling again, because it’s really messed up my progress.” -Elia Komaitoga
For Elia Komaitoga (22) who is trying to balance farming and higher learning, any setback can be frustrating.
Komaitoga is working toward a degree at the University of the South Pacific, where he’s majoring in economics and human resource management. He lives an hour away from his family and helps them grow cassava and taro.
The January cyclone that swept through the country flooded roads and downed power lines. One person was killed and more than 4,000 had to evacuate their homes. Komaitoga was really harmed by the stress and extra work on her farm.
“When you are in school and you’re really focused, you’re progressing well with readings and assignments and quizzes and activities and all of a sudden, some really big cyclone comes and then you’re stuck at home for a few days and it really, really stunts your progress,” he said.
Komaitoga was reminded of 2016 by the 2022 cyclone When Cyclone Winston struck land. It was the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit the southern hemisphere in recorded history, and at least 44 people were killed.
The Fijian word for cyclone, na cagilaba, means “the wind that kills.” For Sunia Digova Lesivou, this isn’t theoretical.
Josefa Babitu
“Most of the nights when I slept… I used to dream about what happened. It’s something I still feel sometimes, even after 48 years.
— Sunia Digova Lesivou
A Life-Long Trauma
Sunia Digova lesivou, then 11 years old, survived a cyclone which claimed the life of his 3-year-old brother. He is reminded by the recent cyclone that struck Fiji in January that climate change will bring more severe storms.
Lesivou, then 11 years old, was struck by a cyclone in Fiji in 1973. He was on a boat along with his mother and three-year-old brother, and they were traveling to Suva to get Lesivou to school.
He recalls the sky turning dark and an eerie silence overtaking everything. The rain and wind began. Lesivou was knocked out by the wind and their wooden boat fell apart during the storm.
He was pinned beneath the boat and had difficulty swimming to the surface when he reached it. Before seeing his mother, he swam alone for hours using a kerosene drum and then a bag of coconuts as a flotation device.
“After about three hours, I met my mother who was swimming and carrying my dead brother,” he said. “She was trying her best to carry him, to bury him on land rather than leaving the body to be buried in the sea.”
Every time there’s a cyclone, Lesivou relives these memories. The former teacher is saddened to think of the next generation that will experience similar traumas as climate changes bring more intense storms on the islands.
Maraia Manafau’s family has a close relationship with the fisheries of Fiji. The 24-year-old is descended from a lineage known as “people of the water,” originating from the outer islands. Her parents both sold fish, her uncle was a deep-sea diver and she’s been selling fish in Suva, Fiji for over a decade.
Manafau worries that her son will continue the family tradition. Her family has seen firsthand the effects of climate change on the local fish population.
“Fish nowadays are getting smaller,” she said. “So whatever he wants in life, we’ll just have to prepare for that.”
Viliame Tunidau also considers the future of Fiji for the next generation.
The 23-year-old grew-up playing rugby with his brothers and cooling down in the Sigatoka river.
He’s still playing rugby, in fact he’s a professional and plays for the Coastline Roos, but that same river is unrecognizable.
“Due to flooding and raining … now it’s deep and it’s muddy,” he said. “There has been a big change in our environment.”
Climate change is also taking a toll on Tunidau’s health as he struggles to train in the ever-rising temperatures.
“I always get dehydrated,” he said. “I almost vomited during training.”
When it rains, the storms can be much more intense, and Tunidau’s team has had many games and practices cancelled due to flooding and storms. It’s frustrating because Tunidau has worked hard to make a professional team and he doesn’t know how many more seasons he can play.
But above all, he’s worried about the next generation.
“I feel sad and disappointed seeing kids nowadays, they don’t get to experience the things we had when we were kids like spending the days outdoors, going swimming, enjoying the day out in the sun, playing touch rugby,” he said. “Now they have to stay indoors because of the climate change.”
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Edward Rakaseta
“I don’t want this to be the situation for my children.”
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Maraia Manafau
“So whatever (my boy) wants in life, we’ll just need to prepare for it.”
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Viliame Tunidau
“We should take care of our Mother Earth.”
Edward Rakaseta can understand. His happiest childhood memories are at his mother’s family home in Rakiraki, a coastal district on the island of Viti Levu. He remembers playing with his cousins on the beach and eating lolo rolls on the porch.
“It’s the type of house where as soon as you set foot through the main door, everyone knows you’re home,” the 25-year-old science student at the University of the South Pacific said.
However, the landscape is already changing as the sea levels rise and the coast erodes.
“There were movements in the area that changed and morphed a lot of the marina into something that was different from what we remember as being home,” he said. “At one point, we saw that the rock formation had actually crumbled down and fallen into the sea.”
It’s worrying because generations of his mother’s family are buried on the property. If they’re forced to move, he’ll lose that physical connection to his family.
“It’s especially sad because I wouldn’t be able to show my kids where their grandma came from,” he said. “That type of tie is something important to me and to a lot of people in the country.”
Despite the pain and anxiety, people in Fiji aren’t giving up hope.
“There is only one thing climate change has taught me – we should not give up, we just have to move forward,” said Laisiasa Waqamoce, the vegetable farmer in Vuniniudrovu.
Elia Komaitoga was the student whose education was halted by the recent cyclone. He said that his family has grown closer because they have worked together to rebuild their farms after strong storms, and talked about the effects of climate change on their lives.
“The effects, in my opinion, will make my family and myself stronger, to be smarter, to adapt, adapt faster and much better to the current changing weather conditions,” he said.
The project was supervised by NextGenRadioSponsored by the University of the South PacificThe East-West CenterThe Institute for War & Peace ReportingThe Honolulu Civil Beat provided in-kind support. Honolulu Star-Advertiser KUAMGuam.
Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
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