Planned Relocation and Health: A Case Study from Fiji

Abstract

In Fiji, low-lying coastal villages are beginning to retreat and relocate in response to coastal erosion, flooding and saltwater intrusion. Planned relocation is considered a last resort as a form of adaptation to the impacts of climatic and environmental change. The health impacts of planned relocation are poorly understood. This paper draws on data from multi-year research with residents of the iTaukei (Indigenous) Fijian village of Vunidogoloa. We used qualitative research methods to examine experiences of planned relocation, including residents’ accounts of their health and quality of life. In-depth interviews and group discussions were conducted with villagers living in a site of relocation, at four points in time (2015, 2016, 2019, and 2020). Twenty-seven people in Vunidogoloa, Fiji, participated in in-depth interviews, several on more than one occasion. Six group discussions with between eight to twelve participants were also conducted. Qualitative analytic software (NVivo) was used to analyse interview transcripts and identify themes. Villagers report both health benefits and challenges following planned relocation. Key facilitators for good health include movement away from some environmental risks to health, adequate drinking water and sanitation, food security including through farms and kitchen gardens, livelihood opportunities, improved access to schools and health services, and appropriate housing design. However, residents also refer to unanticipated risks to health including increased consumption of packaged goods and alcohol, disruptions to social structures and traditional values, and disrupted place attachment following movement away from a coastal site of belonging with consequences for mental wellbeing. Therefore, planned relocation has altered the social determinants of health in complex ways, bringing both health opportunities and risks. These results highlight the need for context-specific planning and adaptation programs that include meaningful involvement of community members in ongoing decision making, and call for an understanding of diverse social determinants of health that emerge and evolve in contexts of planned relocation.

Managed retreat and planned retreat: a systematic literature review

“…There are also emerging concerns that managed retreat and similar policies are being used to disconnect Indigenous communities from their land, community, cultures and traditional knowledge [75,150]. Negative social and health impacts and a need to centre human rights feature strongly in Oceania case studies [106,107,152,153], but also in the United States, where Solecki & Friedman [154] offer an analysis of the relationships between climate risks, adaptation actions and the impacts of both on well-being and mental health for coastal residents.…”

“…The vast majority explore these factors at the state scale via localized/regional case study examples. This trend is reflected across a range of geographies, including the United States [57,58,[69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]; South America [79,80]; Canada [81,82]; Western European countries including France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden [83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]; the United Kingdom and Ireland [56,94,95]; and the South Asia and Asia-Pacific region [20,21,52,82,85,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107]. Almost all of these papers are concerned with understanding retreat from coastal or lowlying areas, with the exception of some o...…”

THE EXPERIENCE OF LOSS AND GRIEF IN FORCED DISPLACEMENT & PLANNED RELOCATION IN THE PACIFIC

“…Until now, only a few I-Taukei (Indigenous) villages have been entirely or partially moved to new locations inland. One of them is the village of Vunidogoloa on Fiji's second largest island Vanua Levu, which has been the focus of several empirical studies (e. However, although the new location is only a short walk away from the former coastal settlement, many villagers reported that they missed their connection to the ocean and to ancestral land (Piggott-McKellar et al 2019;McMichael and Powell 2021). As the following quote from a female resident demonstrates, some villagers also reported a loss of agency as they could not participate in decision-making about the relocation: 'We were not consulted.…”

“…g.,Bertana 2020;McMichael and Powell 2021;Piggott-McKellar et al 2019). The village community was relocated around two kilometres inland because it faced frequent floods and was increasingly exposed to coastal erosion that threatened their land and village infrastructure(McMichael and Powell 2021).…”

Qi no tu i baba ni qwali (living down by the river): Impacts of flooding and mining on ecosystems and livelihoods

“…These extreme natural events threaten the livelihoods of coastal people in Fiji and other PICTs. In 2014, the people of Vunidogoloa Village in the province of Cakaudrove were relocated (in a planned effort) from their traditional home due to coastal erosion and other socioeconomic factors, including limited access to services and its geographic isolation from road and public transportation (McMichael and Powell, 2021). However, there are instances where such relocation of villagers was unplanned, like the Tukuraki Village in the Ba Province (Coca, 2021).…”