Climate change is radically altering the lives of indigenous peoples in the Pacific

A new United Nations report reveals that the South West Pacific region faced drought and more extreme than average rainfall last year, as well as dozens of disasters, including two cyclones in Vanuatu. The report underscores long-standing concerns about how climate change is dramatically altering the lives of indigenous peoples in the Pacific.

“The world has much to learn from the Pacific and it must also mobilize to support your initiatives,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, last week at the Pacific Islands Forum. His speech coincided with the release of the report.

The Pacific Islands Forum is the region’s principal diplomatic body, representing both the Pacific peoples who have achieved independent statehood since World War II and the territories that remain under Western domination.

“When governments sign new oil and gas licences, they are putting our future at risk,” Guterres added.

The report says 2023 was one of the three hottest years on record in the South West Pacific region. Higher temperatures caused a severe six-month marine heatwave off the coast of Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand, while two cyclones that hit Vanuatu in 2023 damaged more than 19,000 homes and disrupted health services for about 185,000 people.

The report’s findings resonate with Brianna Fruea, a 26-year-old musician and climate activist from Samoa. She is part of Pacific Climate Warriors, an organization dedicated to advocating for climate action, and her roots are not only in Samoa, but also in Tuvalu.

“It’s almost like we need Western science to validate what our people have already said, just so the world will hear us,” she said.

Fruea now lives in Aotearoa, but on her last visit to Samoa she found it was so hot that rugby was on hiatus. “They wouldn’t let the kids on the field because they were fainting,” she said, adding that it would have been unheard of to suspend the sport in the past.

But the effects of climate change are not limited to contemporary culture. In Tuvalu, Fruea’s ancestral homeland, and on other islands such as the Marshall Islands, communities are grappling with the cultural upheaval that comes with the migration of entire villages within their nation. Existing social structures, such as chieftaincy, are often based on geography and village composition, and internal migration has the potential to disrupt these traditional social structures.

“If a village ceases to exist and has to merge with another village, who then becomes the chief? Will they lose all that structure?” Fruea asked, adding that even in Samoa, each village has different rules and regulations, and merging two of them would be a cultural challenge.

The report says that the annual amount of climate finance in the Pacific region has increased, but the vast majority (86%) is for project-based interventions, such as strengthening coastal infrastructure in Tuvalu, while direct budget support accounts for only 1%. Both Guterres and Fruea highlighted the need for more financing as an urgent concern.

“This is very important because the Pacific is experiencing the full impact of the climate crisis,” Fruea said. “With the trajectory we are on with climate change, we have to think about the unthinkable.”