Nowhere to Hide from Climate Change
ENGLISH
The water is nibbling away the beaches of Fiji. Not even the dead are allowed peace of mind. The graveyard of Togoru – a village on the largest island of Fiji – has been submerged. The waves are sloshing softly against the tilted tombstones covered with barnacles. The names have become illegible, erased by the sea.
ENGLISH
Today, the trees are rotting in the surf. The soil around the roots is being washed away, until they fall over. Tree by tree, the sea moves deeper inland. The fields have become unusable for agriculture due to salination. The remaining village often gets flooded at high tide. “The waves knock on my door,” Dunn says.
The ancestors of James Dunn are buried here, but he can’t visit their graves anymore. His great-greatgrandfather came all the way from Ireland to build this village. That ex- plains his extraordinary name for a Fijian. Five generations later, James is probably the last headman of a village on the frontline against climate change.
Fiji and other South Pacific states are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels. Most islands are low and remote, poor and insignificant. In the West, almost nobody cares. But the water has risen 25 centimeters on average since 1880, enough to wipe Togoru off the map. The village has already disappeared from Google Maps.
“The sea is stealing our land,” says Dunn. “The beaches where I used to play as a child are in the water. We had horse races. That’s impossible now.” Togoru has built five sea walls in the past 25 years. None could cope the force of the advancing waters.
If global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, the sea level will still be another 50 centimeters higher. But even this most optimistic prediction spells doom for thousands of communities in vulnerable coastal areas.
From the beach of Togoru, the Fi- jian capital Suva is visible. “The prime minister came here to visit. He said we have to say farewell to our village. Luckily, he isn’t abandoning us,” Dunn says.
The government of Fiji recently published a list of 60 villages that need relocation. For a country with barely a million inhabitants, that’s a lot.
Anne Dunn, James’s niece, has also lost her roots in Togoru. “Climate change to me means that we couldn’t bury my father and my uncle at our traditional burial grounds,” she says emotionally. The young woman was crowned Miss Fiji and Miss Pacific Islands in 2016. Now she uses her voice in the battle against climate change. “It affects our identity. We are islanders, our unique way of living is being threatened.”
Monthly, more than 80,000 tourists come to the white beaches and colorful coral reefs. But the resorts regularly have to level up their beaches. Sugar is the second pillar of the Fijian economy under threat. A growing number of sugar cane fields are being destroyed by salination. (IPS)