About an hour from Fiji’s capital is the village of Togoru. Here, even the dead aren’t safe from the impacts of climate change.
A few barnacle-covered tombstones are all that’s left of this village's ancestral graveyard.
Lavenia McGoon has lived in Togoru all her life. She got married and brought up her children in the small village.
She said she’s heartbroken to see the place where her relatives had been laid to rest now underwater.
“It's sad to see that in the water our great grandfather, he's buried there. When nature takes its course, what can we do, what can we say?," she said.
Tombstones that marked the graves of Lavenia McGoon's ancestors have been inundated by rising sea levels. Source: SBS News / Shuba Krishnan
An official document listing outcomes from the forum states it was agreed leaders would “declare the Pacific is facing a Climate Emergency that threatens the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of its people and ecosystems, backed by the latest science and the daily lived realities in Pacific communities.”
Pacific focus
Leaders also endorsed Vanuatu’s call for the International Court of Justice to clarify the legal consequences of climate change.
According to the , climate change could force around 216 million people across six world regions to relocate by 2050.
Ailie Gallant, senior lecturer at Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, said smaller Pacific island nations are more exposed to the impacts of climate change than most other parts of the world.
“They're low-lying nations, so are more vulnerable to sea level rise," Dr Gallant said
"Their position in the tropics means they are in the path of increasingly severe tropical cyclones and they've got smaller population and kind of less capacity to deal with the impacts of climate change in the first place."
Fiji
Climate Council senior researcher and Griffith University fellow Wesley Morgan, who travelled to Fiji for the PIF, said the country would see increased displacement of people from their homes due to rising sea levels in the coming years.
“With the vast majority of Fiji's population living very close to the coast, sea level rise and coastal inundation is an issue for those coastal communities,” Dr Morgan
“We’re seeing already internal displacement of some villages, the planned relocation of villages and I think we will see more of it in future.
“Pacific communities have very close connections to land, if they are forced to relocate, then you can have social friction, social tension."
Lavenia McGoon has seen the sea claim the land around her home in Togoru. Source: SBS News / Shuba Krishnan
“I'm too old for that, to start all over again," she said.
She’s used sandbags and tyres to try to hold off the waves from eroding beachfront and from encroaching closer to her home.
“I pray, I ask my heavenly father to protect my beachfront, at least I'll try and do my part," she said.
Next door, Mereia Brown and her husband John make a living from fishing and making brooms from coconuts.
Togoru resident Mereia Brown. Source: SBS News / Shuba Krishnan
“We use coconut leaves to make them, but most of the coconut trees are gone," Ms Brown said.
She said there are also fewer fish in the water.
“I used to go out fishing for only 15 – 20 minutes and you get a lot. Now, nothing," she said.
Sea walls are being built throughout the town, as villagers desperately fight back rising sea levels and intense storm surges.
Saimoni Ratukadreu is a seawall project manager. He used to work for the government but has since retired and dedicated his time to fighting off the impacts of climate change in his home village.
Seawall project manager Saimoni Ratukadreu. Source: SBS News / Shuba Krishnan
“We know that a lot of studies have been done and things have been said it's actions that are needed.”
Kiribati
Kiribati was one of the first countries to start noticing the effects of global warming on its everyday life due to rises in the sea level.
According to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global mean sea level rose by around 20 centimetres between 1901 and 2018 and almost half of that rise has occurred since 1993.
“Kiribati is one of a number of Pacific countries that is no more than five metres above sea level at any point, right. They’re atoll islands that tend to be one to two metres above the sea level, the same as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu,” Dr Morgan said.
“They are facing an existential threat, as the sea level rises, even before you have complete inundation of territory, the drinking water becomes increasingly saline and taken together, the impacts of climate change make these islands less and less habitable.”
Dr Wesley Morgan in Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum. Source: Supplied
Solomon Islands
In Solomon Islands, where many people live a subsistence lifestyle and tuna accounts for about 18 per cent of the country’s GDP, slight increases in the temperature of the surrounding ocean can have a big effect.
“We're seeing coral bleaching in the Pacific and many Pacific communities rely on reefs, for the nutrients for their protein, from fishing and so this is having devastating consequences, " Dr Morgan said.
“Climate change is also projected to alter the distribution of deeper sea fish such as tuna which could have a really big impact for Pacific countries that rely on tuna fishing for their revenue.”
Fish are an important part of the diet and economy in Solomon Islands. Source: Getty / DAVE HUNT
Tonga
Tonga, like its Pacific neighbours, had had to deal with severe cyclones such as Tropical Cyclone Harold, which hit the country hard in 2020.
“Climate change means we have a warmer ocean, and we have an atmosphere that holds more moisture, and that gives more fuel to cyclones,” Dr Morgan said.
“So when they do happen, they're more likely to the category five cyclones or they're more likely to be severe cyclones and over the last decade, we've seen the strongest cyclones on record for the Pacific making landfall."
Australia
“We've always had floods, and we've always had fires, but climate change has changed those events, “ he said.
Recent flooding events could also be tied to climate change, he said.
“We know that the soil and the atmosphere are holding more moisture and so and we are seeing an increase in heavy short, rainfall events that lead to flooding,” he said.
“It's no coincidence that Australia had its hottest and driest year on record in 2019. And then it had the most catastrophic fires in the black summer fires of 2020.”
Dr Morgan said climate change was causing floods and bushfires in Australia to be more severe.
Planning for the future
Two years ago Perth's Curtin University started offering what Sustainability Professor and lead author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for Transport, Peter Newman, understands to be the first Master in Climate and Environment Emergency two years ago.
“We are creating the next round of people who can get out there and help governments, industries and particularly communities, to know what to do about this climate emergency,” he said.
Professor Newman said the Pacific leaders’ acknowledgement of the climate emergency situation comes as a strong statement.
Professor Peter Newman. Source: Supplied
Professor Newman said he believes the situation has been an ‘emergency’ for about 15 years, and while Pacific Island leaders had been at the forefront of calling for action on climate change, they had previously been ‘diplomatic’ on the matter with their larger counterparts.
According to the Climate Council’s report of climate change in the Pacific released ahead of the PIF, Australia contributed 20 times the amount of the total emissions of all of the smaller Pacific Islands’ countries combined and New Zealand two-and-a-half times.
