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#AceNewsRoom With ‘Kindness & Wisdom’ Aug.10, 2022 @acenewsservices

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#AceNewsDesk – Boats moor next to living rooms on Fiji’s Serua Island, where high tide breaches the seawall and floods the village: Wooden planks link homes with gardens inundated by seawater………………Village elders always believed they would die here, where their chiefs are buried.

But as the community runs out of ways to adapt, the 80 villagers must decide whether to abandon their ancestral home.

‘We need to make a decision’

Semisi Madanawa’s three children play in seawater-submerged playgrounds.

The 38-year-old says the village may have to move to Fiji’s main island for the next generation to have a future. 

But he says the village’s elders are reluctant to move.

“It takes time for an idea to settle in the hearts of us human beings so we can accept the changes that are coming,” he says.

“Climate change is happening and we need to make a decision.”

Serua Island is one of many coastal villages seeking help to adapt or move, according to Fiji’s government.

But these projects are expensive, and many times adaptions — like building sea walls, planting mangroves and improving drainage — are no longer enough to save villages from rising sea levels.

Existential threat

Leaders of 15 low-lying Pacific Island nations declared climate change their “single greatest existential threat” at a mid-July summit in Fiji’s capital, Suva. 

They want developed nations like Australia, who contribute the most to global warming, to pay so islanders can protect their people from rising sea levels.

The push has become a key battle at United Nations climate conferences.

“A lot of communities are in genuine crisis, they’ve been trying to survive,” Shivanal Kumar, a Fiji government climate change adaptation specialist, explains.

“The impacts of climate change have been felt for many years and there came a time where they gave up and said it’s now time to move.”

He says relocation aims to preserve human rights by protecting people from rising seas, bigger storm surges and more extreme cyclones.

But the funds pledged by developed nations at UN climate conferences do not cover relocation — only adaptation. 

At last year’s COP26 global climate conference, leaders agreed only to keep talking about compensating vulnerable people affected by climate change, including migration.

Up to their knees in water

In 2014 Fiji became the first Pacific Island nation to relocate a community, Vunidogoloa, because of rising sea levels.

Six villages have now moved, or plan to.

A further 795 are expected to follow, says climate youth activist Salote Nasalo, who adds that young people in the Pacific will continue to protest against polluters who fail to act.

The people of Vunidogoloa were the first to move.

Villagers were living up to their knees in water, and it had become impossible for the 150 residents to grow food, says former village headman Sailosi Ramatu.

In the new village 1.5 kilometres inland on Vanua Levu Island, children can now sit outside their homes with their dry feet firmly on the ground.

Mr Ramatu, 63, says it took time to persuade the elders to move, but the village came together and listened to experts.

“We can also make a decision in the world if the leaders come together,” he said.

“They should help us, they should pay for our loss and damage.”

Reuters

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