Richard Killmer: A trip to Fiji, where climate change is very real
The consensus in Fiji is that the life changes the people are forced to endure are the result of the climate crisis. “We know it affects our lives,” said Mosese, the receptionist at the hotel where I was staying in Suva, the capitol and largest city in Fiji.
The nation of Fiji has 332 islands and consequently, a huge coastline which is very vulnerable to climate change especially sea level rise and storm surges.
Mosese’s family, like many of the iTaukei (Indigenous people) are from a village in rural Fiji where they own the land. When I was in Fiji a couple of weeks ago visiting my granddaughter, he told me that many people in his village cannot stay in their village. The sea is swallowing their land.
Sea rise is forcing two kinds of migration: individual and community. In individual migration, individual members are leaving and going to a city or town. During a community migration, the entire community moves inland to escape the sea’s ravages.
For many, life in the city can be attractive. A person no longer has to garner or harvest their own food. You can go to a store and purchase it. But you need a job and a place to live — both of which can be difficult to find. That was the situation that Seremaia from Mosese’s village, found himself. The land of his community was being washed away because of sea level rise. Consequently, he had no choice but to leave his village home for a flat in Suva.
In Fiji there is anger and fear. The future for communities and their individual members seems quite unclear. Many young people are moving to the city, leaving older people on their own. With fewer young people, there are fewer caretakers of the older people. In a subsistence culture, everyone is needed to care for everyone.
There also is anger because the people of Fiji know that they had very little to do with causing the climate crisis. Fiji produces a miniscule amount of greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere and make the gaseous blanket around the earth even thicker stopping the sun’s rays that bounce off the earth. China and the United States emit the most greenhouse gases. Yet, residents of Fiji keenly feel the impacts of climate change.
One solution for resisting sea level rise is quite popular around the world — building sea walls that shield shorelines from the effects of erosion. This effective erosion control helps reduce the impacts of erosion that take place over time, but also the erosion that happens abruptly during a more severe weather event. This solution, however, comes at a cost — one that the Fijian government can ill afford. So, the iTaukei villages have tried to raise money with limited success.
Fiji and other developing countries have asked the rich nations for money for such projects. They have received a limited amount of support for efforts to combat the climate crisis. I am reminded
of the parable of the Good Samaritan where two religious leaders from Israel passed a victim of a crime on the road. But the third, a foreigner stopped to help him. Fiji needs Good Samaritans.
The Indigenous people of Fiji make their request for help because they are losing their homeland as well as their culture, both of which have been with them for thousands of years.
Their daily lives are changing. More than 60 villages in Fiji have had to be relocated to ensure a supply of fresh drinkable water and to provide protection from erosion and sea level rise. Too much of the land that the iTaukei villages own is now claimed by the sea and is swallowed up.
The Pacific Conference of Churches in 2016 issued the Tokatoka declaration on climate change which said in part:
“We are deeply concerned by climate change impacts threatening our very survival in the Pacific, such as sea level rise and extreme weather events putting at risk lives, culture, livelihoods, identity and our communal way of life.
We are particularly concerned by the risk of climate-induced migration and losing our territories, already witnessing people forced to leave their lands as a result of climate change-related sea level rise which infringes on their rights as indigenous landowners and their customary fishing rights and boundaries.”
Mosese added that people from the villages that still exist do go back home occasionally to help. “If you lose the village, you have lost who you are. You have lost your identity.”
— Rev. Richard Killmer is a retired Presbyterian minister living in East Grand Rapids.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Richard Killmer: A trip to Fiji, where climate change is very real
