When climate change takes people’s homes
Lessons of displacement from Fiji and Ocean Island
By Danielle Parry, Communications Officer for United Nations OCHA
As world leaders prepare to gather in Paris at COP 21 to discuss climate policy, some Pacific country leaders are warning that greenhouse gas emission cuts will most likely come too late for the lowest-lying atolls in their region. Governments are already having to figure out the best ways to relocate entire communities. On the front line of the displacement challenge, the Fijian Government plans to relocate dozens of communities at risk of sea-level rises. With a long history of forced displacement, the country has some important lessons to draw from.
Seventy years ago, one thousand Banabans from Ocean Island — now part of Kiribati — were sent by the British to Rabi Island in Fiji’s far north. The relocation procedures got quite a lot of things wrong as well as a few right, but David Christopher, the Banaban community’s representative in the Kiribati parliament, said the overriding lesson was about informed choices: “People must be made aware of where they are going and be told well beforehand.”
Few houses but lots of cows
Naomi Aria Christopher, now an elder, was one of those to be sent to Rabi seventy years ago. The islanders — known as Banabans — were sent to Fiji by the British Government which was keen to expand lucrative phosphate-mining operations on Ocean Island after the end of the Second World War.The Ocean islanders were lured to another distant corner of the British Empire with the promise of new two-storey houses.
“They showed us pictures of houses [and told us] ‘This is your land, this is your house’. But when we came to Rabi, we slept in a tent,” she said.
The islanders’ first night in tents on Rabi showed how ill prepared they were for life in their new home. When cattle came down into the field at night, the Banabans didn’t know what they were. “The people came out of their tents and they saw these cattle and thought they were monsters — they were seeing them for the first time in their lives — and they got the scare of their lives in fact. They felt very homesick and they want to go home to Banaba,” said Mr. Christopher.
Once the islanders were thrust into their new environment, they were expected to adapt. But the process was far from smooth. Having previously held skilled mining jobs at home, many struggled with their loss of position and missed the relative comforts in Banaba. Living in tents during the first annual cyclone season, took its toll and the islanders were never given the two-storey houses they’d been promised. Tensions broke out in the community, and many also died after being exposed to mosquito-borne diseases for the first time. As food rations ran out, Fijians had to be paid to come and teach the Banabans how to grow unfamiliar crops in their new home.[1]
Still homesick
Now in her 80s, Naomi Airau Christopher has made a new life on Rabi, where she raised her eight children. But she has never forgotten her Banaban roots. “Sometimes we tell stories to our grandkids about Ocean Island. We miss Ocean Island because that’s our homeland. Also we miss the fish there,” she added.
Even those who were just children when they arrived have retained some of their Banaban identity and culture, as well as a desire to visit home . “Our roots are there in Kiribati on Ocean Island. Our people are attached to the island and there is an urge, a longing to move back, at least to see for ourselves where our old people lived and survived over the years,” said Mr. Christopher.
Preparing for the future
The Banabans’ journey is one that Pacific Governments fear may be repeated in the years ahead — not because of war or colonisation, but because of climate change. Rising sea levels and more extreme weather events pose an imminent threat to low-lying atoll islands across the Pacific, particularly the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Kiribati, the latter of which has an average elevation of less than two meters (6.5 feet).
“We say with a lot of passion that we don’t want to leave our islands. But the reality is this: unless support is coming, we have no choice, we have to go, wherever, whoever will take us,” Kiribati President Anote Tong told the World Humanitarian Summit Pacific regional consultation in Auckland in June 2015, where the issue was high on the agenda.
Fiji has indicated it is open to accepting people displaced from Kiribati by rising sea levels, and the Kiribati Government has already purchased land on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu as a food security insurance policy.
“I think it’s a matter of putting something [a plan] there so that people can have a sense of comfort… that we, as their leaders, have something in mind for them, so that there is at least a hope into the future,” said President Tong.
The Fiji government is also developing national guidelines to manage climate change-induced displacement, both domestically and internationally. Thus far, it has identified 45 communities at risk of climate change impacts, and it is mapping their vulnerability to prioritize villages for possible relocation. It hopes the majority will be able to move to safer parts of their own land.
This type of early planning is being encouraged by the Nansen Initiative — a joint Norwegian and Swiss government project that is looking at the best ways to manage disaster and climate change-induced displacement. The initiative has identified a legal protection gap for people displaced by disasters and climate change because they currently do not meet the international legal definition of a refugee. The initiative has gathered displacement lessons learned from all over the world — from Somalis in Kenya and Egypt, through to urban displacement in the Philippines and the Banabans in Fiji.
Professor Walter Kaelin, from the Nansen Initiative told OCHA: “Planned relocation should be carried out in a way that directly involves affected communities in decision-making, respects their human rights and builds on the lessons learned from other experiences.”
He continued: “Any planned relocations to a new country must define the community’s legal status in the new state; help communities adapt to local customs and laws; consultation with host communities; and include measures to facilitate with the diaspora community to maintain cultural ties, such as allowing dual citizenship.”
When the Banabans were forcibly relocated to Rabi Island seventy years ago, they were given the right to return to Kiribati — one of the things that the displaced community says officials did get right.
The first of Fiji’s internal relocations to higher ground already took place in Vunidogoloa village in January 2014. The Methodist church played an important role in persuading the community to accept this ‘option of last resort’ in a culture where connection to land is all-important. “It’s intrinsic to the livelihood and living of people. It’s part of their lives, it’s intertwined, it’s interwoven, it’s everything that they are,” said Julia Edwards from the Pacific Conference of Churches.
As the COP 21 Paris meetings start on 30 November, the overriding message from the Banabans on Rabi is simple: consult widely with affected communities, get their consent for relocation and start preparing early.
“They really should be given the choice. They must be prepared physically and mentally to move, to relocate and commit themselves to the movement,” said Mr. Christopher.
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[1] Julia Edwards, ‘Phosphate mining and the relocation of the Banabans to northern Fiji in 1945: Lessons for climate change-forced displacement,’ Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, 133–139, 2014.
