When Poiongo Lisati returned to her home of Kioa after decades away, she welcomed the shift in the pace of life. The 58-year-old left the busyness of Fiji’s capital Suva for the island of about 400 people, who live off the land they are deeply connected to. But some changes she noticed were stark.
“When I left the island, a good part of the beach was there,” Lisati says. “But when I came back after 40 years … around six metres or more had been washed away.”
Lisati saw other changes: king tides now swept to the flats of the island and the water reached closer to the villages. Coconut and pandanus plants, relied on for food and medicine, no longer grew on the beachfront. Months that were once hot and dry had become colder and windier.
Above: Kioa island, Fiji, at sunrise.
Below: A resident of Kioa strips the thorny edges from the fronds of pandanus palms. It is one of many steps in the process of preparing the fronds to be woven into traditional baskets, floor mats and ceremonial skirts.
Like islands across the Pacific, climate change is reshaping life in Kioa. The tiny Fijian island has experienced increasingly frequent and more intense cyclones, disrupting crops. Fish, a staple of the local diet, live further out from the shore. In the past, residents would go fishing on the coast; now they must head out to deeper waters to get their catch. Corals have bleached and some fish no longer survive in the reef.
This week the Cop28 climate summit begins in the United Arab Emirates, aiming to build consensus for limiting global warming. Maina Talia, a climate activist who also works on development projects in Kioa, says the region had a “big win” at last year’s summit in securing a loss and damage fund to support nations experiencing increasingly severe climate impacts.
“Now we need to see commitments from governments, including Australia, to make significant contributions to that fund,” he says.
Churchgoers leave Sunday morning service in Kioa.
Talia lives in Tuvalu and works regularly with his community on Kioa. Last year he visited more than a dozen times. The two places are tightly bound: in the 1940s a group of men from Tuvalu purchased Kioa over fears their homeland was becoming too crowded. Later that decade some families migrated from Tuvalu to start life in Kioa. Talia calls both places home.
He says almost all the food people eat in Kioa comes from their garden. The islanders are “totally reliant on subsistence farms so the change in weather patterns challenges the way they do their traditional planting”.
“These people are very close to nature. They are tied to the environment,” Talia says. “They are happy people.”
Above: A cook chases a chicken out of the kitchen of the Kioa community hall.
Below: Children leave school for lunch break on Kioa.
Earlier this year Pacific activists and civil society groups met in Kioa to formalise the Kato Fund, a development launched at the Cop27 summit to enable better access to climate finance. Talia was one of the organisers of the Kioa talks. Now, he wants “more ambition from Australia” at the Cop28 summit, which begins on 30 November.
“Phasing out fossil fuels urgently must be their highest moral obligation to the region and the world – it can’t wait.”
As he pushes for action on the climate crisis, Talia also works on projects that help Kioa adapt to a changing environment. They have built a seawall on the island – which is 18.6 sq km and around 120m above sea level – to battle erosion. A “mini-fishery” fitted with solar panels, freezers and an ice maker gives them more steady stocks of fish. After they fish, the men fill two big freezers with leftover catch, taking it to a nearby island to sell.
Maina Talia (wearing light blue shirt, third from the right) stands with Kioa elders as they prepare to receive Tuvalu’s climate change minister, Seve Paeniu, to the island for climate talks earlier this year. Talia says climate change has ‘disturbed the traditional way of living on Kioa’.
“That’s how we generate income,” he says. “Because of the change of climate and weather patterns … people who have refrigerators now will store them in case of bad weather.”
Children play in the shallows and aboard a boat on a rainy afternoon on Kioa.
For the men, the day starts in the plantation; after that they fish, sometimes into the evening. The women weave handicrafts, baskets and mats. They sell their wares to tourists, who arrive most weeks from neighbouring islands.
Above: Alfred Kaisami in the doorway of his home.
Below: A Kioa resident makes traditional fresh flower garlands, ‘salusalu’, and crowns for guests attending climate action meetings.
At night, Talia says, the men drink kava and the women get the children ready for school. There’s a primary school on Kioa for about 80 children, while older children travel to a nearby island for secondary school. After school they play and later a bell will chime for evening devotion. Religion is a big part of life on the island, and time is given to hymns, recital and prayers through the day. Lisati says it is mostly Methodist, but other religions are practised as well.
Above: The Kioa island choir welcomed guests as they arrived for climate talks earlier this year.
Below: People attend a church service on Sunday morning in Kioa.
Talia says the island is known across Fiji for its hardwood and the elders have been approached by many logging companies. But they turn them away over fears of what cutting down trees might do to their water sources.
“[Elders] don’t want to engage in logging,” he says, explaining that many on the island don’t want life to change.
Lisati says it’s “good to back home”. She lives with her sister in Kioa and connecting with family is central to life on the island.
“In Suva, life was very, very busy. Now I’m back on the island the pace is very different, it’s more relaxed.
“Irrespective of what climate change is doing to us … it’s home for me and I’m happy to be home.”
Andrew Quilty travelled to Kioa, Fiji on the Rainbow Warrior with Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
