The Pacific Islands are scattered across a vast area of ocean, with some of the clearest waters in the world, and pristine beaches and rainforests.
The peril that Pacific Islands states face has been highlighted recently by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Last month he attended the Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga, and called for the world’s most polluting countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The small [Pacific] islands don’t contribute to climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is multiplied here,” he said.
A two-hour flight heading north-west from Tonga are the islands of Fiji, a former British colony.
Last year Fiji welcomed 929,740 visitors, mostly from Australia, New Zealand, North America and China.
Here, too, there is anxiety about a shifting climate.
Marica Vakacola is from the Mamanuca Environment Society, a community organisation based in Nadi, by Fiji’s main international airport.
The group champions sustainable tourism and environment protection, and is restoring mangroves and planting trees. But Ms Vakacola tells me that this part of Viti Levu, Fiji’s biggest island, is already living with the consequences of warming temperatures.
Bore water is being contaminated by salinity from the encroaching sea and, more and more, rainwater must be harvested during the wet season.
“Water security is a big risk in terms of climate change,” explains Ms Vakacola.
“Most of the freshwater sources that were once good enough to be consumed are now being intruded by salt water. Beach fronts are being eroded by rising sea levels and we have experienced coral bleaching events because of changing temperatures of seawater.”
Marica Vakacola Marica Vakacola, second right, and colleaguesMarica Vakacola
Marica Vakacola, second right, is working to help maintain Fiji’s rainforests
Susanne Becken, a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University in Australia, foresees potential for friction over scarce supplies of water across the Pacific Islands.
“Drinking water is increasingly becoming an issue in some places,” she says.
“There could be conflict with the community because tourists effectively use the water that local people need.”
Prof Becken has recently undertaken research in Fiji and the Cook Islands. It revealed some unexpected attitudes to climate change and the threat it brings to the island nations.
“There’s a bit of denial, where people were a little bit fatalist in the sense that there is not much we can do about it. It was easily dismissed as a global problem that the Pacific Islands can’t do much about. I was a bit surprised, to be honest, that people maybe feel a little bit helpless.
“It is almost like ‘let’s not talk about it’. Maybe they are preoccupied about getting growth of the tourism market back. It is not part of the story. It is a really tricky topic.”
The location of Fiji and Tonga
Hard truths are, though, being confronted in the Cook Islands, a jewel of Polynesia popular with New Zealanders and Australians, where most of the tourism infrastructure stretches in ribbons around the coasts of the main islands.
Brad Kirner is the director of destination development at the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation. He concedes that discussions about global warming in the community can be fraught.
“If we face reality it’s going to need some pretty serious adaptation measures put in play. It’s a challenging conversation.
“There’s also the challenging conservation that, yes, travel is a significant contributor to global warming, and we need to face that fact. How do we come up with solutions?”
“We are a tiny percentage of world population and therefore we have a very small carbon footprint, but we are on the front line of climate change,” he adds.
