Tag: climate-change

• The Eight Days Are Telling Us Something. Are We Listening?

  This week, the Fiji Meteorological Service issued a Strong Wind Alert for Fiji. Fresh to strong southeast winds were expected from Wednesday, 15 July, before gradually turning easterly from Sunday, 19 July.

  On its own, this is unremarkable. It is the dry season. The southeast trades blow.

  But these wind events are occurring closer together than normal. And that may be a red flag we cannot afford to ignore—not just for Fiji, but across the Pasifika.

  Local mariners know these winds as Bogi Walu—literally, “eight nights”. Typically, these stronger winds—20 to 25 knots, sometimes gusting 30—last for a week and a day. It is the kind of knowledge that kept our seafarers safe and our farmers prepared, long before weather satellites and climate models.

  But here is what is different: these eight-day winds are no longer just seasonal background noise. They are appearing more frequently, more intensely, and closer together than the patterns our elders once knew.

  The reason may be the Super El Niño now bearing down on the Pasifika.

  On 12 June, the World Meteorological Organization declared that an El Niño event was underway. For Fiji, this means significantly drier-than-normal conditions through the end of the year. Below-normal rainfall is expected from now through September, persisting into the final quarter. The impacts could be severe: prolonged dry spells, pressure on electricity supply, significant strain on agriculture, water shortages, and added stress on food security and livelihoods.

  SPREP Director General Sefanaia Nawadra put it plainly: “Knowledge empowers, and preparation essential.” He urged families to conserve water, invest in water tanks, and prepare now. Farmers were advised to adjust planting schedules and use drought-resistant crops.

  But Fiji is only one part of the Pasifika. The question we must ask—urgently, collectively—is whether all our island nations are ready.

  The answer, across the region, is deeply uneven.

  Solomon Islands has been warned that it faces a more severe threat than the devastating 1997–1998 event. Experts estimate that the current event could result in declines of more than 30 percent in agriculture and primary exports, and reductions of more than 40 percent in freshwater availability in Honiara and other centres. The warning is stark: “business-as-usual, reactive responses are insufficient.”

  Papua New Guinea is bracing for what could be “possibly the worst in human history”, with millions facing increased risks of hunger, poverty and disease due to El Niño-related droughts, erratic rainfall and frost.

  Tonga has declared that El Niño conditions are now in force, with meteorologists warning of increased drought risk, reduced rainfall and a potentially more active tropical cyclone season.

  Vanuatu faces prolonged dry conditions that could impact local crops, leading to lower food production and higher market prices.

  Solomon Water is already urging customers to begin conserving water, warning that temporary water rationing could be introduced if water sources continue to decline.

  And Fiji? Nearly one in four water sources are already under stress ahead of forecast El Niño conditions. The government insists that existing measures will suffice. But when asked about new El Niño-specific measures, officials acknowledge that contingency measures—including greater reliance on generators—would be considered should water levels decline significantly. Not “are in place.” “Would be considered.”

  —

  The Pasifika has built a genuinely new layer of regional climate architecture in recent years: the Pacific Resilience Facility, new partnership mechanisms, and deeper engagement from partners like India. As the Devpolicy Blog observes, El Niño’s arrival on top of an already-activated emergency mechanism gives that architecture “something concrete to be tested against”.

  But is the Pasifika ready to access and deploy these resources effectively? Are our national disaster management offices adequately funded and staffed? Are our communities receiving timely, actionable information in languages they understand? Are our leaders treating this as the existential threat it is—or as just another weather pattern to be managed with existing budgets?

  The Bogi Walu is traditional knowledge that thinks in patterns, not election cycles. It watches the winds, the bees, the breadfruit trees, the breaking waves. It plans for the long haul because survival depends on it. Across the region, the story is similar: short-term thinking, reactive responses, and a reluctance to invest in preparedness before the crisis arrives.

  The Super El Niño is not coming. It is here. And if the eight-day winds are coming closer together, that is not a curiosity. It is a warning.

  The question is not whether any single government has a plan. The question is whether our political leaders have the political will to act with the urgency this moment demands—not for the next election, but for the next generation.

  Our ancestors read the winds and prepared. Are we reading the signs?

  2026.07.15

• The Vision We Cannot Afford to Lose: Lessons from China’s Long Game

  When I was younger and read in the Fiji Times of the USSR’s “five-year plans,” it conjured images of failures—bureaucratic rigidity, empty shelves, and a system that ultimately crumbled under its own weight. China has rewritten that script. What the Soviets got wrong—inflexible ideology, isolation from markets, and a disregard for efficiency—China has reimagined as something entirely different: strategic patience married to ruthless pragmatism.

  China began investing in renewable energy in the early 1990s. They invited Western firms in, learned the technology, adapted it, and then dominated it. Twenty years ago, when the West congratulated itself on offshoring “dirty manufacturing,” China was quietly building the infrastructure that would make it the undisputed king of solar, wind, batteries and EVs.

  China today, generates more clean energy than fossil fuels. It has added more power capacity in five years than the US has in its entire history. And it is on track to have half its energy from renewables.

  This was not luck. This was a state that understood something the West has forgotten: energy security is the foundation of every other form of power.

  What This Means for Fiji

  We sit in the blue Pasifika, surrounded by renewable energy potential. The sun beats down on our islands with reliable intensity. The waves and currents never stop.

  And yet, our debates are stuck.

  We argue about possible waste-to-energy projects. We treat fossil fuel imports as a necessary evil while watching our foreign reserves drain precariously to pay for diesel shipped from halfway across the world.

  Are we disadvantaging ourselves?

  For the Pasifika, the answer is yes. We lack resources, and we lack strategic vision.

  The American Warning: Policy Whiplash and Short-Term Thinking

  The US is the richest country in the world. It has Silicon Valley, the world’s deepest capital markets, and a culture of innovation that has produced more technological breakthroughs than anywhere else.

  And yet, the US is floundering on energy. The Biden administration’s serious attempt to reboot American clean energy, has seen 95% of its incentives rolled back. Utilities cannot meet demand. Electricity prices are spiking. And the country is pulling back from a sector China increasingly dominates.

  Why? Because American energy policy changes with every election. A five-year plan in the US is a political fantasy. What China built over thirty years, the US cannot sustain for thirty months without partisan warfare.

  Here is the hard truth for the Pasifika: we do not have the luxury of partisan debate that fails to address our core energy dilemma. We are small. We are vulnerable to global shocks. Every barrel of oil we import, is a bet against our own future. Every year we delay a coherent alternative energy strategy is a year lost to high fossil fuel costs.

  What we can learn is the discipline of long-term thinking.

  China’s bet on clean energy was not just about the environment. It was a real economic play. And it is now realising the benefits of that bet.

  For Fiji, we can command our own destiny. Every megawatt of solar we install, every microgrid we build on a remote island, is not just a climate victory—it is a sovereignty victory. It is foreign exchange not sent to fossil fuel exporters. It is resilience against global price spikes. It is electricity that cannot be cut off by a cyclone taking out a shipping lane.

  The real debate is whether there is political will to commit to a twenty-year alternative energy transition and actually stick to it. Not through one government. Not through two. But through a national consensus that transcends election cycles.

  The Trust Deficit We Must Close

  We have a trust deficit—between government and communities, between environmental advocates and economic development proponents, between those who want to move fast and those who fear being left behind.

  We will not close that deficit with more debates about waste-to-energy alone. We will close it by articulating a vision that is honest about trade-offs, ambitious in its goals, and patient in its timeline.

  China showed that five-year plans work when they are built on strategic vision and executed with consistency. The US shows what happens when policy lurches from one administration to the next. The choice is ours.

  We in Fiji have something China and the US do not: an identity rooted in the ocean and a deep understanding that the long game is the only game that matters on a small island.

  The question is whether we have the vision to rise above our partisan debates. Whether we can think strategically about energy alternatives. Whether we can say to our children that we saw the opportunity and took it—not because it was easy, but because it was necessary.

  The sun is rising on a new energy era. Let us not waste the light.

  2026.05.17

• The Hard Reality We Can No Longer Ignore

  My friend Charlie Charters has meticulously catalogued the sudden proliferation of waste-to-energy companies across our social media feeds and newspapers in Fiji. His observation on the TNG project has become a hot-button issue, but the forces driving it—our deepening energy crisis and our chronic failure to manage waste—are not going away.

  Let us be clear about what his catalogue actually demonstrates. When three separate foreign entities materialise; each offering capital-intensive technological solutions to a problem Fiji has ignored for decades, that is not merely evidence of opportunism. It is evidence of a vacuum. It is evidence that our inability to govern basic municipal functions—waste collection, landfill management, environmental protection—has become so glaring that it now invites outside intervention. The alternative is not a clean, controversy-free, locally funded solution. The alternative is what we have right now: creeks and drains choked with plastic, dumps on fire, and a national grid teetering and being put under pressure like never before.

  The Energy Crisis Is Here, Not Coming

  The never-ending war in the Persian Gulf continues with no end in sight. Even if it miraculously ended tomorrow, our energy crisis would persist into next year and beyond, because the underlying problem is structural, not episodic. We rely on imported fossil fuel. We have no clear alternative. And our government’s response—appreciating a modest fuel reprieve from Australia while otherwise projecting a lackadaisical approach—is concerning, to say the least.

  I wrote at the start of the current Gulf war that any government with vision should be planning for a worst-case scenario. Where are those plans? Where is the load shedding schedule, the four-day work week strategy, the vehicle reduction measures, the mandatory energy conservation for government entities? The National Security Council should be convening energy executives and major users, not just politicians who view these matters through a lens disconnected from ordinary Fijians. The fact that I see none of this planning suggests a government either unwilling or unable to grasp the severity of what is coming.

  What Alternatives Does Fiji Actually Have?

  This brings us back to the waste-to-energy question. Beyond hydro, what does Fiji offer? What alternatives exist? Who will help us fund them when we all know that any serious transition will cost millions—if not billions—of dollars we do not have?

  The answer is uncomfortable but necessary: any alternative cleaner energy source will invite controversy. That is the nature of the beast. Waste-to-energy draws fierce opposition. Solar farms demand vast land and capital. Wind power struggles with reliability and maintenance. Geothermal remains untested at scale in Fiji. We can and should demand guardrails. But to oppose every available option while refusing to acknowledge the scale and cost of alternatives is to remain blind to an undeniable trajectory: fossil fuel use is trending downwards, and the never-ending Gulf war, is only accelerating the global search for what comes next.

  We are not Australia. We are a small Pasifika nation, disproportionately reliant on imported energy, with a fragile economy, a growing population, and a waste crisis that we have proven incapable of solving through conventional means. And right now, we are actively battling over one of the few alternatives being offered, while other separate companies circle in the background sensing opportunity.

  A Toxic Mix That Demands Action

  On top of our drug epidemic, HIV crisis, and NCD burden, an energy crisis creates a toxic mixture that in my view, now calls for urgent action. I repeat what I have said before: government needs to bite the bullet and declare a state of emergency sooner rather than later. Not as a press release, but as a framework for action—load shedding, reduced working weeks, vehicle restrictions, mandatory conservation, and above all, a serious, transparent, and expedited process for evaluating and implementing alternative energy solutions.

  Charlie’s observation about the sudden appearance of alternative companies confirms what many of us already sense: the vacuum is real, the crisis is accelerating, and the private sector—foreign and domestic—is moving faster than our government. Whether any of these specific proposals survive scrutiny is a separate question. But the underlying point remains. We cannot afford to reject every alternative because of controversy, because the alternative to controversy right now is continued reliance on fossil fuel, continued vulnerability to global shocks, higher import costs and inflation, and continued degradation of our environment and our economy.

  The guardrails must be strong. But the door must be open. Because closed doors lead only to one place: the dark.

  2026.05.16