Fiji in the light. Since their entry into the 2023 World Cup, the Flying Fijians have attracted public sympathy with their spectacular play – nothing new here – and an almost unique ability in rugby to shake up major nations. If Wales narrowly escaped the guillotine thanks to questionable refereeing, Australia has been put on the scaffold and risks elimination in favor of the island outsiders.
A hint of history: the latter only made it through the pools once, in 2007, in a group that already included Welsh and Australians. Better, in the event of qualification in 2nd place, the most likely England of recent years will face them, giving a glimpse of the possibility of playing an unprecedented semi-final. The challenge is sporting but not only that: it is about putting Fiji and the Pacific Islands on the world map. Soon it may be too late.
Small subtlety and great injustice of climate change, a few million owners of SUVs proud to vomit CO2 through the exhaust pipe have the power to ruin the lives of populations whose greenhouse gas emissions do not even reach one percent of the world total. If the rich countries are themselves beginning to suffer the consequences of their blindness, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, to name only the participants in the Rugby World Cup, have been gradually being submerged for a long time. “Climate change is a crisis these countries did not cause, but it is the struggle they are suffering the most from,” declared Samoan player Jonny Fa’amatuainu in 2019who at the time urged his Pacific peers to use their status as rugby players to get the message across.
For decency and in the event of another disappointment for the Tongans against Scotland on Sunday, let us therefore avoid the lexical field of shipwreck: the most pessimistic scenarios show a rise in heights to a height of 126 cm by 2100 in this area of the globe, where the rise in water levels is at least twice as rapid as elsewhere according to various scientific studies. With dramatic consequences.
The rise in ocean levels is causing the erosion of certain territories, coastal villages are being eaten away by the sea, testifies Adrien Berlandi, director of “I am because we are”, a documentary film on the impact of climate change in Fiji. Cemeteries are being swallowed up. That’s very concrete. There, Fijian friends showed me the shore several meters from the village in the distance, telling me, “my house was there before”. There are lives at stake, children have died due to rising waters on the way to school. »
To cope, the inhabitants of the Fijian archipelago, made up mainly of coastal populations, build dikes as best they can, sometimes with great ingenuity, often with the means at hand (tyres, for example). But they are only pushing back the deadline. The progression of the ocean also causes salinization of soil and air, poisoning crops, local biodiversity and even solar panels. Adrien Berlandi: “The trees are falling, the coconut palms are completely exposed, they are walking on their roots because of erosion and the sand which disappears, little by little. » Ultimately, there is little choice but to leave.
The Fijian president visits Bordeaux to discuss climate
Well aware of the problem, local authorities have implemented, since the previous decade, projects to relocate villages inland, where the volcanic nature of the archipelago offers a certain relief. “This is the first subject that Fijian officials raised,” reports Céline Papin, deputy mayor of Bordeaux in charge of international relations, who received a visit ten days ago from a delegation led by the president of Fiji, Wiliame Katonivere. They have an approach to planning these movements over decades, but have not mentioned to us the hypothesis of the external relocation of Fijian populations, because it is a delicate subject, even if in their projections and in view of the growth of their population, this question arises. »
The primary desire nevertheless remains to preserve the island lands from the apocalypse. “We must deconstruct the image according to which these people only want to leave and escape the climate,” explains the director. On the contrary. These are their lands. And the earth is where the ancestors, gods and nature are found. » Among the other objects of the visit of the Fijian Head of State to Gironde, where the Flying Fijians are established, there was also question of the technical means allocated to the fight against natural disasters. A visit to the Ramsès remote control site, a real-time flood risk control center, thus seems to have aroused the interest of Wiliame Katoniverewho hopes “that one day we will have this kind of system [aux Fidji] “. “They too have a lot to give us,” replies Céline Papin, “because they have been able to adapt their agricultural production to climate change, and this is a point that interests us. »
Tuvalu loses two atolls, Vanuatu relies on The Hague
The interest in island issues is received with enthusiasm by the Pacific nations, long snubbed by the major emitting nations. In 2022, island states called for “urgent and immediate” global action against climate change, hoping that the Hague Court could put pressure on big polluters. This year, Vanuatu succeeded in passing a historic resolution at the UN. The text, supported by more than 130 countries, requests the opinion of the International Court of Justice on whether or not the moral and legal obligations of emitting countries are respected in terms of climate. Vanuatu had also already proposed, in September 2022, the creation of a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” at the United Nations, arguing that the time was no longer for fine words but for action.
Last part, that of aid. During the COP26 in Glasgow, representatives of the small archipelago of Tuvalu, two of the 11 atolls of the archipelago have already disappeared, complained about too little funding intended for the adaptation of infrastructure in the territories hit hard by cyclones and rising oceans. As one of the Tuval ministers, Simon Kofe, explained at the time, most economic aid is allocated to “mitigation” (the reduction of emissions). However, and this is the complexity of the situation, even if emissions ceased overnight, Oceania would continue to sink for a time and suffer heavy material and human losses. Hence the interest in financing them.
The Fiji XV will not disappear in the short or medium term
While waiting for the international community to wake up, the Pacific islands can more or less count on their neighbors New Zealand and Australia (Camberra released 360 million euros for the neighboring archipelagos in 2019), and a little on World Rugby. The supreme body of the oval launched, at the beginning of 2022, a new “Environmental Strategy 2030”. “The plan addresses the urgent need to halve emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2040,” WR writes.
Another beautiful gesture of relative significance which confirms that the Oceanic islands can, above all, count on themselves. Here again, Fiji depicted by Adrien Berlandi serves as an example. “We see super beautiful sequences, every day, the Fijians work together either to build dikes, or to go and help everyone on their farm when there are problems. They also play a lot of rugby, obviously. One of the solutions they have to bring us is this notion of the collective. » The Rugby World Cup stadiums bear witness to this. But until when ? Fiji and Tonga are expected to hold in the medium term. But for Samoa, very close to sea level, there is cause for alarm.