Tag: sustainability

• Fatal Vital Signs: Why Fiji’s Sugar Industry Must Be Allowed to Die

  By the numbers, our sugar industry is no longer a struggling patient—it is a corpse kept warm by political ventilators. Under the previous regime, the Fiji Sugar Corporation bled $543 million in losses. Since the Coalition took over in 2022, it has haemorrhaged a further $106 million—achieved despite a $200 million government debt write-off. Production languishes at 1.33 million tonnes, far below the 1.5 million tonnes required to justify the current $85-per-tonne subsidy.

  When an industry loses a billion dollars across two decades, requires constant taxpayer top-ups, and fails to achieve economies of scale, it is not a commercial enterprise—it is a charity case. Yet we persist, primarily because of politics.

  The ICU Delusion

  Sugarcane farming has devolved into a “mom-and-pop” hobby. The children of farmers have fled to tourism hubs and supermarket packing sheds; they refuse to endure backbreaking labour for cents on the dollar. Traditional knowledge was deliberately not passed on, because parents wanted their children to escape the drudgery. We now face an aging farmer base with no succession plan.

  Meanwhile, the land lies fallow. One encounter with a tenant selling leased TLTB land for $100,000 an acre—land choked with para grass, no road access, no power—exposes the speculative fantasy propping up this industry. It is not farming; it is waiting for a payout.

  Politics Over Economics

  The National Farmers Union has dug in, demanding the government negotiate directly with them and threatening to boycott the 2026 harvest unless a $60-per-tonne delivery price is met. This is political hostage-taking, not economic negotiation. The union refuses to acknowledge global realities where Brazil, Australia, and India have mechanized and driven prices into the dirt. Instead, they demand ever-higher subsidies while resisting structural reform.

  Proposals to legislate maximum production and nationalize idle farms are equally misguided. We cannot cure an industry by forcing farmers into it with legal coercion. If you have to threaten farmers with nationalization to make them farm, the industry is already comatose.

  The Unforgivable Sin

  The most damning aspect is the opportunity cost. Why is the Fijian taxpayer pouring hundreds of millions into an unviable crop, while iTaukei non-sugar farmers receive virtually nothing?

  Consider the structural inequity:

  · The State subsidizes cane growers (predominantly Indo-Fijian lessees) to the tune of $85 to $106 per tonne, guaranteeing an income regardless of global market prices.

  · Meanwhile, iTaukei landowners receive paltry, below-market rent via the TLTB—paid late, undervaluing their ancestral inheritance.

  · iTaukei farmers who wish to diversify into ginger, turmeric, kava, or vegetables receive a fraction of government attention and none of the guaranteed subsidies sugar farmers enjoy.

  This is not just economic failure; it is a profound governance failure and a breach of fiduciary duty to the traditional custodians of the land. We are using public funds to trap one community in generational debt while another sees its land utilized for pennies on the dollar. The $105 million annual loss is effectively a transfer of wealth from the general taxpayer to a politically influential, shrinking minority of sugarcane growers. Landowners are left with degraded soil and cheap rent, while the Minister smiles and tells farmers in Labasa to “diversify”—without providing the capital that sugar subsidies so wastefully absorb.

  The Do-Not-Resuscitate Order

  It is time to issue a DNR order for the sugar industry. We must stop confusing nostalgia with national interest. The government should initiate a managed wind-down:

  1. Cease the Subsidies: Announce a three-year sunset period. No more taxpayer top-ups. Let the global market price dictate the farm-gate price. If it is unviable, it dies.

  2. Compensate Transition: Use the money saved from annual $100M+ losses to fund a massive vocational training programme for all farmers—sugarcane growers, iTaukei landowners, and non-sugar farmers alike. Teach them commercial alternatives, aquaculture, or agro-tourism.

  3. Empower the Landowners: Rewrite the TLTB framework to give landowners autonomy to form agricultural corporations, develop commercial plazas, and lease to productive ventures—not just sugar monoculture.

  For 56 years, politicians have deceived farmers to secure their votes, promising salvation while presiding over decline. The NFU and the Labour Party cannot be allowed to hold the nation hostage over a crop that no longer pays its way.

  Fiji does not need to produce raw sugar for the world. Fiji needs to produce prosperity for all its citizens. That starts by pulling the plug on a dying industry and directing resources toward the living, breathing farmers—iTaukei and otherwise—who are ready to grow something more valuable than a colonial relic. The time for bold, uncomfortable decisions has arrived. The sugar industry is on ICU, and for the sake of our rural economy, we must let it go.

  2026.06.24

• 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