‘Nobody can stop the sea’
Graves sink, fisheries shrink as the impact of climate change hits Fiji hard, writes Steven Trask
The sea has already swallowed the village graveyard in Togoru, Fiji, and long-time resident Lavenia McGoon is dreading the day it claims her house.
She piles old rubber car tyres under the coconut trees that line the beachfront, hoping this makeshift seawall will at least buy some time.
The 70-year-old believes climate change, and the creeping ocean, will inevitably force her family to leave.
“Nobody can stop it,” she said, as the tide sweeps in and crabs scuttle over the headstones. “Nobody can stop the sea.”
Togoru is a small settlement on the south coast of Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu.
It is one of dozens of coastal villages in the Pacific archipelago now confronting the reality of climate change.
Ms McGoon, called “Big Nana” by locals, has spent almost 60 years here — living on the shoreline in a basic wooden house without power or running water.
“We used to have a plantation right in front,” Ms McGoon says, pointing towards the sea. “After 20 to 30 years we have lost almost 55 metres of land.”
About 200 people were once buried in the Togoru graveyard, but Ms McGoon says most of the remains have since been moved inland.
For now she refuses to follow, clinging on to her small piece of paradise.
“Relocation to me at this age, it’s a bit too... sickening,” she says.
Fiji has been meticulously preparing for the day it needs to relocate coastal villages because of climate change.
The scale of the challenge is enormous — the government estimates more than 600 communities could be forced to move, including 42 villages under urgent threat.
More than 70% of the country’s 900,000 people live within 5km of the coast.
According to Australia’s Monash University, sea levels have been rising in the western Pacific Ocean two to three times faster than the global average.
Entire low-lying nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu could become uninhabitable within the next 30 years.
Fiji is fortunate that its highland regions make relocation a feasible option.
The settlement of Vunidogoloa, on the northern island of Vanua Levu, moved to higher ground in 2014 — making it one of the first villages in the world to relocate because of rising sea levels.
Other villages, such as Veivatuloa, are exhausting their options for adaptation before abandoning their homes. The village’s stilted houses sit in rows facing the water, while decaying wooden planks bridge the pools of seawater collecting on the ground at low tide.
Veivatuloa has been lobbying the Fijian government to strengthen its
old seawall, which is now regularly breached by waves.
Provincial spokesman Sairusi Qaranivalu says relocation is a painful idea for a village such as Veivatuloa, where customs are linked to the land.
“Once we take them away from the villages, it’s like we are disconnecting them from the traditional duties they have to perform to their chiefs,” he said.
“It’s like deconstructing the traditional living and the way we live together.”
The ocean is inching closer to the village, but elder Leone Nairuwai says he has to travel further out to sea to catch fish.
“When you used to go out to the sea you just go, I think, 20 yards [and] you catch the fish,” he says. “But now you take the outboard, it’s a mile, and then you’ll get a fish. There’s a big difference.”
About half of Fiji’s rural population relies on fishing for survival, says Food and Agriculture Organisation.