Solutions
Staying in place
Sometimes, people facing the greatest climate impacts don’t want to move at all.
The 20 or so residents of Togoru, a low-lying coastal settlement on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji, are facing coastal erosion, tidal inundation and saltwater intrusion. These significant coastal impacts of climate change are affecting their livelihoods and lives in ways both practical and emotional.
Yet, like all Pacific peoples, the people of Togoru have a fundamental connection to place – it is a core part of who they are and where they come from. ‘One of the most poignant impacts of coastal erosion and flooding is the submergence of the graveyard where residents’ ancestors are buried,’ notes a group of researchers examining ‘place-belongingness’. One of them is Merewalesi Yee, a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland, whose own ancestral home in Garden Island, Fiji, is slated for relocation.
In the 1970s, the village moved about 100 metres; the residents were retreating from seawater flooding. Yet since 2010, Togoru residents have opposed repeated government offers and plans for their village to be relocated.
This choice to stay is not because they have no options. Many work elsewhere temporarily, even repeatedly, and go back home, in what is often called circular migration.
‘Despite high levels of labor mobility, many residents have chosen to return and remain in Togoru,’ the research notes, with one resident explaining: ‘I go here and there, I had so many opportunities to go abroad, go for good, but this place is second to heaven for me.’
For myriad reasons – autobiographical, ancestral and historical, relational, cultural, economic and legal – Togoru residents are opting for in situ adaptation, including climate-proofing houses, climate-resilient farming, coastal protection, and restoring and enhancing coastal eco-systems. Their discussions continue about the pros and cons of building a seawall.
Throughout the Pacific, community, language, culture, kinship, belonging and identity are profound and irreducible elements of place. As Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson notes, in Samoa, ‘fanua is the word for both placenta and land. In our tradition, the placenta, or the umbilical cord, is buried on your land.’ In Fiji, the word vanua ‘refers to the interconnectedness of the natural environment, social bonds, ways of being, spirituality and stewardship of place. Vanua binds local communities to their land,’ researchers note.
‘Voluntary immobility is one way for communities to themselves address the climate injustice that manifests when those least responsible for climate change face some of the
most serious impacts.’
– Dr Carol Farbotko
Choosing to stay
In November 2023, countries in the Pacific Islands Forum endorsed the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, ‘a global first that aims to provide practical guidance to governments planning for and managing climate mobility’, which, according to the Forum communiqué, ‘firmly acknowledges Forum Members’ fundamental priority to ‘‘stay in place” in our ancestral homes, including through land reclamation’.
As Professor Jane McAdam writes, over millennia, ‘Pacific communities have demonstrated immense resilience and innovation in adapting to changing environments, underpinned and shaped by traditional knowledges and collective action, buttressed by more recent technological developments.
‘Too often, western notions of “habitability” and “uninhabitability” drive external assumptions and tropes about the Pacific that are not only sometimes insensitive, but which may also limit thinking about what might be possible. For some people, remaining in place will be a deliberate political choice: an act of resistance and resilience. And people have different ‘‘tipping points’’ for if, where and when they want to move.’
Griffith University cultural geographer Dr Carol Farbotko has written extensively about this choice to stay in place, or ‘voluntary immobility’. In 2018, she wrote this, focusing particularly on Pacific perspectives: ‘Voluntary immobility is one way for communities to themselves address the climate injustice that manifests when those least responsible for climate change face some of the most serious impacts. It is also a means for communities to push back against sensationalist visions of “climate refugees,” and reclaim their voice and agency in a future where climate change is all but inevitable.’
Zeroing in on indigenous Pacific voices, Farbotko notes: ‘A range of indigenous leaders, elders and activists across the Pacific Islands are clearly articulating their carefully considered intention to remain on climate-impacted indigenous territories for cultural, spiritual and political reasons.
‘The most important issue, according to those voluntarily resisting mobility, is not “where will we go?” or “how will we survive?”; it is “how do we maintain our identity and build pathways to a self-determined, resilient future?”. Voluntary immobility is an important coping device, helping to strengthen cultural and spiritual agency among those facing the loss of their homeland.’
Farbotko and University of Melbourne Associate Professor Celia McMichael note: ‘In some cases, Indigenous people express preparedness to die on traditional territory rather than relocate, representing a new type of agency and resistance to dispossession.’
Dignity, and who decides
The politics of place has become prominent in debates and decision-making. Former President of Kiribati Anote Tong championed the idea of ‘migration with dignity’ – the idea that cross-border migration could be a form of adaptation to climate change if people were given the choice to decide if and when they wished to move. But Tong’s successor, President Taneti Maamau, rejected migration as a solution, instead focusing on adaptation at home, including by physically raising the islands.
‘Both Tuvalu and Kiribati prioritize in-situ adaptation rather than any type of retreat,’ writes Farbotko.
Fiji’s pioneering internal relocation guidelines are designed to allow for the possibility that a community may decide not to move, even when the national government has determined that is the best, or only, option. Farbotko outlines the guidelines’ procedure as: ‘respecting voluntary immobility first and foremost; investigating the reasons for voluntary immobility; holding discussions with the community about adaptation options and land tenure; including climate change issues in secondary and primary education curricula; and ensuring psychological and emotional preparedness for climate impacts’.
Fiji’s Standard Operating Procedures for relocations, adopted in 2023, make clear that if people decide not to move, the government has a duty to facilitate ‘infrastructural amenities’ to enable the community to remain there as safely as possible.
The preference to stay in place is not always factored into climate mobility plans, though, nor does it always feature in discussions among civil society groups, international organisations or donors. ‘It is important for governments, development partners and the international community to appreciate that despite the extreme risks posed by climate change in the Pacific, “voluntary immobility” can be a deliberate political choice,’ says McAdam.
This requires financial and technical support, including investing in resilience-building measures, McAdam notes. ‘By systematically integrating disaster risk reduction measures, there is a better chance that if disaster strikes, some people may avoid displacement altogether – or at least be displaced for a much shorter period of time,’ McAdam told the Better Futures Forum in 2022. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has estimated that there could be a 60-fold return for each dollar spent on preparing for disasters, she said, yet even in Australia, only three per cent of disaster funding goes towards preparation, compared to 97 per cent on recovery.
Farbotko and McMichael urge decision-makers to engage in ‘culturally meaningful dialogue with communities about relocation and immobility; respect, protect and fulfil the rights of ‘‘immobile’’ people and those on the move; and confirm that in situ adaptation options have been exhausted’.
Of course, circumstances can change. ‘Indigenous people should not feel that they are forced to make a binding decision about mobility or immobility at any particular point in time, since such pressure is likely to exacerbate anxiety associated with loss of homelands,’ Farbotko notes. ‘As livelihoods deteriorate over time or as a disaster occurs, indigenous people may need to be able to change from being voluntarily immobile to voluntarily mobile and perhaps even back to voluntarily immobile.’
What is clear is that those facing the prospect of losing their homes must be at the centre of decision-making.
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