Questions have been raised about why the head of Fiji’s Bureau of Statistics was fired by the Bainimarama government this week.

Kemueli Naiqama recently published this year’s household income and expenditure survey that showed three quarters of Fiji’s poorest people are indigenous Fijians, or i-Taukei.

It is the first time ethnicity has featured in data published in the annual survey.

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RNZ’s correspondent in the capital Suva, Lice Movono, told RNZ FirstUp the bureau had been “enhancing their ability to report information” and trying to be in line with sustainable development goals reporting.

“And the latest report shows that the poorest people in this country are the i-Taukei people,” Movono said.

“But more importantly that our poverty population — or the population that is living well below the poverty line — is very high.

“It would be directly opposite to the policies of this government to give information segregated according to ethnicity — it would be extremely embarrassing for a government that has been talking about producing an all time record high boom – economic growth,” she said.

Sacking defended
The Statistics Department comes under the Ministry for Economy.

The Minister, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum who is also Fiji’s Attorney-General, has defended his sacking of the country’s chief statistician.

Sayed-Khaiyum questioned the methodology used for the study and labelled it flawed.

“Poverty in Fiji is now measured by consumption, including the food grown in a family backyard, and not just income,” he said.

Sayed-Khaiyum told a media conference in Suva he had issues with the bureau’s analysis of ethnic and religious data in its 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES).

“We appreciate any independent office carrying out a proper, professional independent analysis of any data and understand the importance of reliable, timely and accurate statistics,” Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“And many may not know this or many may not delve further into this — we in fact approved this new methodology of moving away from what we call using the traditional income measure for welfare analysis — to using consumption expenditure for poverty measurement.”

New measuring yardstick
Sayed-Khaiyum said the consumption-based methodology for measuring poverty would “accurately and better assist in policy-making”.

He said the new yardstick did not just look at how much money a household earned but also at how they had access to services.

But there were many who disagreed with the attorney-general.

The University of the South Pacific’s senior lecturer in economics, Dr Neelesh Gounder, said the poverty estimates produced at all levels were reliable.

He said those not happy with the ethnic-based policy needed to target the policy and not the data.

Gounder said the survey was just the “messenger and shooting the messenger would not help.”

“Regarding data on ethnicity, there are several policy areas where ethnic-based data is relevant and required,” Dr Gounder said.

Ethnic data important
“Ethnic data allows us to see beyond presumed beliefs and prejudices that underly ethnic groups and it seems the government wants to avoid race-based policies that may arise from ethnic data.

“Recognising diversity based on ethnicity does not necessarily mean such differences should also lead to policy based on ethnicity.”

However, the government needs to understand that it is not the census or HIES that is causing ethnic tension in Fiji, Dr Gounder said.

The leader of the opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), Bill Gavoka, said reports Naiqama was escorted out of his office were “shameful”.

“It is truly troubling,” Gavoka said.

He said the Bureau of Statistics is independent of ministers and instead reported directly to Parliament, with staff who are civil servants, but without being under ministerial control.

“The statistics they generate are independent of government and to hear that the FBoS CEO Kemueli Naiqama was unceremoniously dismissed and escorted off-premises for the report of poverty in Fiji, says a lot about the type of democracy we have in Fiji,” Gavoka said.

Independence needed
He said SODELPA wants the Statistics Bureau to have independence from any undue outside influence, especially from a government that has been hyping about a “boom” that many knew was not true.

“The collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction, and publishing of statistical information relating to the economic and general activities must be carried out without fear and SODELPA tells the Attorney-General and FijiFirst, ‘hands off’,” Gavoka said.

By exceeding the scope of data collection and ignoring fact-based methodology, the government said Naiqama had breached the terms of his contract with the ministry.

Under his employment contract, Naiqama will be paid all salary and accrued entitlements for the period up to September 15, 2021.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Among the many hard truths exposed by covid-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already huge fortunes by 27.5 percent.

And as many ordinary people lost their jobs and fell into poverty, The Guardian reported “the 1 percent are coping” by taking private jets to their luxury retreats.

Such perverse affluence further fuelled criticism of the so-called 1 percent, which has long been the standard rhetoric of the political Left.

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In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protesters called out growing economic inequality by proclaiming: “We are the 99 percent!”. And an Oxfam report in September last year lamented how the richest 1 percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest half of humanity.

But you might be surprised to find this 1 percent doesn’t just comprise the super-rich. It may include you, or people you know. And this fact has big implications for social justice and planetary survival.

Look in the mirror
When you hear references to the 1 percent, you might think of billionaires such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Tesla founder Elon Musk. However, as of October last year there were 2189 billionaires worldwide — a minuscule proportion of the 7.8 billion people on Earth.

So obviously, you don’t have to be a billionaire to join this global elite.

So how rich do you have to be? Well, Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report in October last year showed an individual net worth of US$1 million (A$1,295,825) – combined income, investments and personal assets — will make you among the world’s 1 percent richest people.

The latest official data shows Australia’s richest 20 percent of households have an average net worth of A$3.2 million. The average Australian household has a net worth of A$1,022,200, putting them just outside the world’s richest 1 percent.

If you’ve just done the sums and fall outside the 1 percent, don’t feel too sorry for yourself. A net wealth of US$109,430 (A$147,038) puts you among the world’s richest 10 percent. Most Australians fit into this category; half of us have a net worth of A$558,900 or more.

What does all this mean for the planet?
It’s true the per capita emissions of the super-rich are likely to be far greater than others in the top 1 percent. But this doesn’t negate the uncomfortable fact Australians are among a fraction of the global population monopolising global wealth. This group causes the vast bulk of the world’s climate damage.

A 2020 Oxfam report shows the world’s richest 10 percent produce a staggering 52 percent of total carbon emissions. Consistent with this, a 2020 University of Leeds study found richer households around the world tend to spend their extra money on energy-intensive products, such as package holidays and car fuel. The UN’s 2020 Emission Gap Report further confirmed this, finding the top 10 percent use around 75 percent of all aviation energy and 45 percent of all land transport energy.

It’s clear that wealth, and its consequent energy privilege, is neither socially just nor ecologically sustainable.

A potential solution
Much attention and headlines are devoted to the unethical wealth of billionaires. And while the criticism is justified, it distracts from a broader wealth problem — including our own.

We should note here, one can have an income that’s large compared to the global average, and still experience significant economic hardship. For instance in Australia, the housing costs of more than one million households exceed 30 percent of total income – the commonly used benchmark for housing affordability.

Here lies a central challenge. Even if we wanted to reduce our wealth, the enormous cost of keeping a roof over our head prevents us from doing so. Servicing a mortgage or paying rent is one of our biggest financial obligations, and a key driver in the pursuit of wealth.

But as we’ve shown above, as personal wealth grows, so too does environmental devastation. The rule even applies to the lowest paid, who are working just to pay the rent. The industries they rely on, such as retail, tourism and hospitality, are themselves associated with environmental damage.

Existing economic and social structures mean stepping off this wealth-creating treadmill is almost impossible. However as we’ve written before, people can be liberated from their reliance on economic growth when land – the very foundation of our security – is not commodified.

For social justice and ecological survival, we must urgently experiment with new land and housing strategies, to make possible a lifestyle of reduced wealth and consumption and increased self-sufficiency.

This might include urban commons, such as the R-Urban project in Paris, where several hundred people co-manage land that includes a small farm for collective use, a recycling plant and cooperative eco-housing.

Under a new land strategy, other ways of conserving resources could be deployed. One such example, developed by Australian academic Ted Trainer, involves cutting our earnings sharply – with paid work for only two days in a week. For the rest of the working week, we would tend to community food gardens, network and share many things we currently consume individually.

Such a way of living could help us re-evaluate the amount of wealth we need to live well.

The social and ecological challenges the world faces cannot be exaggerated. New thinking and creativity is needed. And the first step in this journey is taking an honest look at whether our own wealth and consumption habits are contributing to the problem.

Dr Alex Baumann is a casual academic, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University and Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.