Name: Jale Samuwai Curuki

Age: 30

Occupation: PhD candidate, University of the South Pacific

Passion: Accounting, climate financing

Country: Fiji

Climate change activist, Jale Samuwai Curuki, sends a powerful message from Fiji to the sceptics of climate change.

“I come from the second largest island in Fiji, Vanua Levu,” says the 30-year-old.

“There’s a village there called Vunidogoloa and [this is] the first village in the world to be relocated due to climate change.

“I’ve been to Vunidogoloa and seen the consequences. The entire village is gone and it’s not habitable anymore, they have had to shift so that in itself is a testament that climate change is real.”

“We’re not making this up,” he says. “If you are still a climate denier, I feel sorry for you.”

Currently completing his PhD in climate financing at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Curuki can often be found clicking away at the keyboard, getting stuck into his thesis.

Climate financing is one of the issues that affect small island countries in their effort to combat climate change, Curuki explains.

Climate financing
“The issue of climate financing is new. No matter how you spin it, no matter how many fancy words you apply to it, all comes down to money.”

Curuki followed the climate finance track at the 2015 COP21 conference in Paris, which he attended as apart of a selected delegation for Fiji.

“To actually live and experience how agreements and how treaties are made on the highest level is something else, it’s totally mind-blowing,” he says.

He recalls busily running from meetings to negotiations that would sometimes finish in the early hours of the morning.

“We can really appreciate the effort all these diplomats and negotiators do on our behalf,” he says.

Curuki encourages all Pacific communities especially those in New Zealand and Australia to mobilise and take action against climate change.

He makes it clear that if you’re still not convinced, the Pacific isn’t far away for people to come and see the effects for themselves.

“[We are all linked and] for now we might be crying, tomorrow it might be you.”

• Pacific profile: Jenny Jiva

By TJ Aumua in Daku, Fiji Islands

Rising sea levels are a major threat to coastal villages in the Pacific.

Daku village in the Rewa delta area in Tailevu, Fiji, is one village that faces the challenge every day.

Biu Naitasi, Daku’s headman, says that despite the village receiving a floodgate funded by USAid to help drain water, the sea level is still rising and the strength of waves is increasing.

Naitasi told Asia Pacific Report that sea water flooding in their village can reach up to their ankles, forcing some children in the village to relocate to another school.

The salt water has damaged their food plantations and eroded the wooden and concrete support beams on their homes.

While they wait for another floodgate to stop seawater flowing into their crops, they continue to be proactive, using people power to build higher seawalls and filling the flooded land with soil.

• Thanks to the people of Daku village and the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), USAid and the Pacific Community in Fiji for support in making this video.

By TJ Aumua in Suva

The crown-of-thorns phenomenon may sound like something from a Hollywood movie storyline. Instead it’s the name given to the rapid mass reproduction of the crown of thorns (COT) starfish – the biggest threat to the Pacific’s coral reefs.

Named for its long poisonous spines on its exterior, the starfish are the primary cause for the extinction of live coral in the South Pacific.

Dr Pascal Dumas, a researcher at the Institute for Regional Development (IRD), has been working on the phenomenon in the Pacific for almost a decade.

Although this has always been a natural marine cycle for the starfish, climate change such as warming sea temperatures and nutrient run off from floods and drains into the sea are possible factors for the starfish’s population explosion.

Standing on or being scratched by a COT spine can cause serious illness and infection.

This makes fishing for those who live on the Pacific coastlines a dangerous chore.

Dumas, together with IRD colleague and information technology engineer, Sylvie Fiat, developed OREANET, an online COT monitoring system.

This was previously launched in Vanuatu and New Caledonia to keep track of where COT clusters were present or growing around the coast.The project is planned to begin in Fiji this year.

OREANET relies on “citizen science” by encouraging locals to report on COT observations and submitting this via an online form.

Those involved in ORENET will be working with community leaders and NGO’s to help rural communities gain access to the project.

• The University of South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment & Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) is hosting a weekly seminar for students during their semester. This week, they invited Dr Pascal Dumas and Sylvie Fiat from Vanuatu to inform the students about their project.

Ami Dhabuwala and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor TJ Aumua are in Fiji on a two-week “Bearing Witness” climate change journalism project with the University of the South Pacific.

• OREANET Fiji
• OREANET New Caledonia
• OREANET Vanuatu
• Fiji set to start up clean-up of crown of thorns starfish
• ‘Bearing Witness’ project