Fiji's plans to uproot cyclone-vulnerable communities threaten indigenous identity, say locals

SUVA, FIJI: On the ever-shrinking beach that curls around the ancestral village of Vunisavisavi lies a dramatic symbol of both hope and turmoil.

An enormous banyan tree has been toppled in recent years. Powerful winds and waves wrenched its roots out of sandy foundations, leaving its broad trunk lying prone.

Children climb and play on the tree. It has become a vantage point for young ones to scan the open water on the horizon. 

It also neatly forms a physical barrier between the ocean — a growing source of danger — and the village, an increasingly insecure refuge.

Locals here say it was planted more than half a century ago. Yet, even in its fallen state, roots exposed to the salt and spray, the tree lives.

As climate change threatens to uproot communities here, the banyan is a metaphor for their fight to remain in place.

Vunisavisavi is a village on edge. It was one of many in Fiji earmarked to be possibly relocated to a new place within the country due to the worsening threats posed by the fast-warming planet, including devastating regular tropical cyclones.

In 2017, the government identified 830 potentially vulnerable communities and a further 48 communities that might urgently need planned relocation.

It has led the Fijian government to develop what might be the world’s most extensive, dedicated set of national guidelines to usher in an era where internal displacement is an unavoidable reality. 

It is a policy — called the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for Planned Relocation — that the world will be watching, as nations everywhere increasingly face the same challenges.

Nearly nine million people in 88 countries and territories were living in displacement due to disasters at the end of 2023, according