NUNZIUM

Fiji archipelago counts more than 300 beautiful wild islands with a population of just under 1 million. It is located in the South Pacific, 1800 miles east of Australia and as for the rest of the Pacific, it is highly susceptible to the impact of climate change. Surface temperature and ocean heat are increasing three times faster than the global average rate. Moreover, Fiji is routinely hit by severe cyclones. For years, politicians and scientists have been talking about the project of climate migration which has already begun. To date, 42 Fijian villages have been earmarked for relocation in the next five to ten years owing to the impacts of the climate crisis. Six have already been moved. Moving a village across Fiji’s lush, mountainous terrain is an astonishingly complex task. “We keep on trying to explain this,” declared Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN. It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple.” He rattled off a list of the things that need to be moved along with homes: schools, health centers, roads, electricity, water, infrastructure, and the village church. “And in case even that you were able to achieve, you have to relocate people’s burial grounds. The Standard Operating Procedures document is in the final stages of consultation and will soon go before Fiji’s cabinet for approval. “No other country, to the best of my knowledge, has progressed as far in their thinking about how to make planned relocation decisions at a national level,” says Erica Bower, an expert on planned relocations, who has worked with the UN and the Fijian government. “These are questions that so many governments around the world are going to be asking in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.”