UN Resident Coordinator statement to Fiji National Consultation on Climate Mobility

Fiji must continue to lead in the battle to address climate change challenges - with real action that has the protection and empowerment of all people at its core UN Resident Coordinator Sanaka Samarasinha today urged the Fiji national consultation on climate mobility.

The UN is calling for actions that promote multi-stakeholder partnerships, responses grounded in local realities, strengthened local capacities that focuses attention on emerging risks, while advancing social cohesion and respect for human rights and dignity.

Full Statement Below:

Pacific Climate Change Migration and Human Security

Fiji National Consultations on Climate Mobility

Statement by UN Resident Coordinator

Sanaka Samarasinha

Tuesday, 20 July 2021

Bula Vinaka and a very good morning to you all.  

On behalf of the UN family, welcome to the Fiji national consultations on climate related mobility. We gather virtually at a very difficult time for Fiji and Fijians as we go to battle against a devastating pandemic here and around the world. But it isn’t only about winning battles. There is a war to win. While we will no doubt win this battle in a matter of weeks or months, the war we are in dear friends is another story. For many in the Pacific it is an existential threat that affects every facet of our lives: our homes, our jobs, our health, our culture, our lands and seas and our way of life.   

As some people around the world continue to rape and plunder our planet at will for short term gains, just last year alone the world lost 150 billion USD because of climate induced disaster. In the meantime, the climate crisis has also sparked a crisis of mobility: around the world. In 2019 alone, some 23.9 million people were involuntarily displaced by weather-related disasters.  According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, more than 50,000 people in the Pacific region are at risk of having to flee their homes each year due to extreme weather events. For some of them, returning home eventually will not be an option.  Pacific islanders are amongst those most at risk of being displaced and for bearing the brunt of sudden and slow-onset effects of climate change with humanitarian consequences.  

In Fiji, for too many people, climate migration is not simply some academic conversation about a futuristic possibility. It is the reality, here and now.

I spent a fair amount of time with various communities affected by TC Harold, Yasa and Ana in the last year all across Vanua Levu and Kadavu and traveling to 15 islands in the Lau group. I have witnessed first-hand the damage climate-induced disasters can bring, the pain and suffering, the displacement, but I have also seen the abiding resilience of families and communities in the face of these vulnerabilities. 

In Kadavu, some low-lying coastal communities have already been moved to higher ground. I visited one such community last year where they described to me how the rising sea level had swallowed much of the shoreline and told me how they had to wade through sea water inside their homes during king tides. I heard similar stories when I traveled to an informal settlement on the outskirts of Lautoka. I visited another community near Ba that had to move in its entirety after a landslide buried a family of five during a storm. More than 80 communities have been earmarked by the government across the country for potential relocation, and the number is increasing.  

But this country and its people have not sat on the sidelines lamenting their plight, expecting the rest of the world to come to its rescue. It has taken up the challenge and led from the front in every battle of this war. While it deals with the impacts of a crisis it didn’t help create – three cyclones in 12 months, entire communities needing to be relocated and the consequences of ever increasing floods and droughts, Fiji continues to punch well above its weight and lead the charge on climate action globally. Fiji became the first country in the world to formally approve the UN climate deal agreed by 195 nations in Paris. The Agreement among other things, established the Task Force on Displacement. As we begin our deliberations today, I would like to remind ourselves of some key recommendations of that Taskforce that remain urgent here in Fiji and across the Pacific.

First – Adopt and implement national and subnational legislation, policies, and strategies recognizing the importance of integrated approaches to avert, minimize, and address displacement related to adverse impacts of climate change and issues around human mobility, taking into consideration human rights and other relevant international standards, and with interministerial and cross-sectoral inputs, with the participation of relevant stakeholders;

Second - Enhance research, data collection, risk analysis, and sharing of information, to better map, understand and manage human mobility related to the adverse impacts of climate change.

Third – Strengthen preparedness, including early warning systems, contingency planning, evacuation planning, and resilience building strategies and plans, and develop innovative approaches, such as forecast-based financing, to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change;

Fourth – Integrate human mobility challenges and opportunities into national planning processes, including nationally determined contributions and national adaptation plans.

Fifth – Protect and assist persons internally displaced in the context of climate change, and strengthen efforts to find durable solutions, taking into account the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and other relevant international standards;

Sixth – Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, by considering the needs of migrants and displaced persons, communities of origin, transit and destination, and by enhancing opportunities for regular migration pathways, including through labour mobility

It is time to move beyond the rhetoric, it is time for real action.

As you contemplate today on what action to take, remember Fiji’s global advocacy on climate change and its leadership on climate action through example gives the country the moral authority and unique opportunity to show the rest of the world how climate mobility must be addressed: through a human security lense.

“people-centred, comprehensive, context-specific and prevention-oriented responses that strengthen the protection and empowerment of all people.”

It is an approach that calls for integrated actions; promotes multi-stakeholder partnerships, reinforces responses grounded in local realities and strengthened local capacities and focuses attention on emerging risks while emphasizing social cohesion and advancing respect for human rights and dignity.    

Allow me to close by quoting the Honorable Prime Minister of Fiji,

“Climate driven displacement is not a doomsday proposition; it is happening right now. In response we have to change and adapt as quickly as the climate.” 

I wish you all a fruitful dialogue.  

Vinaka vaka levu.