Sela Vosikata doesn’t know much about Donald Trump.
She didn’t know that the US president elect has called climate change a “scam” and a hoax” — she doesn’t really follow international politics.
But either way, she has a message for him.
“Come here and see the impact of climate change,” she said.
“Look at how we live. It’s changed everything.”
The 85-year-old has lived in the village of Buretu, north west of Suva, her whole life.
Sitting down with the ABC, she says she’s “grateful to god” to be able to tell her story; and these days that story revolves around what she’s seen, first hand, over the past few decades.
Sela Vosikata has seen the changes in her village over the past few decades. (ABC News)
“We had a big beautiful village, but when I look out [to it now], I am deeply saddened by what it looks like,” she said.
“Three rows of houses have been lost to the water.
“The severe weather, the cyclones and the flooding is too much.”
Village community leader Frances Dobui follows the ins and outs of international politics a little closer than Sela, her elder.
Frances Dobui will be watching world events closely this week. (ABC News)
And this week she’ll be watching what is an important week for her community, and the wider Pacific.
Leaders, including a 55-strong delegation from Fiji, are at the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan for the second week of negotiations.
There Pacific leaders are pushing hard for a deal on climate financing through what’s known as a loss and damage fund.
At the same time the G20 meeting is taking place in Rio de Janeiro, with talks between leaders — including Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanase — expected to centre on climate change.
All this as the elephant in the room, in the form of Donald Trump’s commitment to leave the Paris Agreement and roll back environmental protections, lingers.
For Frances Dobui, the need to act is urgent — but things have been moving slow.
“If they don’t act now by supporting us, then we lose [the village]. It’s just a matter of five to 10 years, not more,” she said.
“The soil salinity has really affected our agriculture. We can’t plant anymore where we used to . . . now we have to buy from supermarkets [things] we used to grow.”
Frances Dobui says soil salinity means her community has now been forced to buy food that they’ve previously grown for centuries. (ABC News)
As COP29 rolls into its second week, Ms Dobui said the community was still waiting for a response on financing submissions it put through during COP26, in 2021.
And in an eerie symbol of the ebbs and flows of climate financing — and the harsh impacts of climate change — a dirty US Aid sign from 2014 sits just outside the village.
The seawall built through that funding is now virtually useless.
The USAid came ten years ago to help with a seawall that’s now almost useless. (ABC News: Lice Movono )
“We’re thankful to US Aid for the civil work that they did,” she said. “But otherwise we haven’t had much help from stakeholders or from other agencies.”
‘One trillion’ per year needed
The real-life examples seen in Buretu village is what Pacific leaders are trying to change at COP29, with delegations highlighting the urgent need for more significant and accessible funding.
Fiji’s permanent secretary for the Ministry of Environment Sivendra Michael, who is at COP29, told the ABC, for example, he had seen communities forced to spend “$US300,000” just on a proposal to access climate funds.
Speaking on the elephant in the room, he said it was “a little bit concerning” what Mr Trump had flagged on climate and the lack of empathy to “brothers and sisters of the Pacific”.
But he said they were focusing on what they could control, and that came through advocating for their community to gain access to climate funding.
“With this funding, what are the principles? [It needs to be] direct, simplified and affordable,” he said.
“We cannot shift the burden of climate finance onto communities and force decisions based on profits and not on needs.”
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The loss and damage fund would be paid for by richer nations, such as Australia, the United States and Japan to poorer nations, such as those in the Pacific.
Discussions on the exact amount and the models for delivering the funds remain contentious, and negotiations, co-chaired by Australia’s Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, are continuing this week.
But some experts say the fund needs commitments of more than $US1 trillion a year by 2030.
“I think that one trillion reflects the need,” Professor Paul Dargish, the director of the Pacific Action for Climate Transitions, said.
“It is certainly what the region is expressing in terms of what the requirement is. So it’s up to the donors now as to how they do that.
“And also I think the critical thing is how pledges convert to actual contributions, [historically] pledges have not smoothly converted across the board into actual money.
“But the loss and damage fund is set to be a very significant activity in the region.”
Everything turned upside down
As the meetings continue in Azerbaijan this week, thousands of kilometres away, in central Suva, Fiji, Adi Sivo Yabakitolu was part of a different meeting.
Adi Sivo spoke to other Fijian leaders whose villagers are flagged for relocation. (ABC News: Lice Movono)
Adi Sivo’s village of Vunidogoloa is one of the first communities in the world to be forced into a government-planned relocation because of climate change. And the meeting was with 16 other village leaders across Fiji whose villages are either flagged for relocation or in the process of it.
“It is painful because we leave our ancestors there, our dad, our mum,” she said.
“They were buried there, and we were born there.
“It’s really hard for us to leave our old village, to move to the other to the new place, because it’s like our bodies are in our new side, but our heart is in the old side.”
She said the meeting was for other communities to learn from each other through the difficult process.
“One big lesson for us in Vunidogoloa is that we have to work together like in a solesolevaki (a group fundraising activity) where we work together and we have resources with us that we can do our relocation process.”
Sela Vosikata is hopeful her family will continue to live in Buretu, despite the talk of relocation.
For the time being, Sela Vosikata, Frances Dobui and the greater Buretu community are staying put. But they realise if nothing changes, relocation might not be far away.
“We have already discussed it as a village,” Ms Dobui said.
“Climate change has really turned everything upside down.
“And for anyone [questioning it] I would like to tell them: ‘it’s real’. If they come down here and experience what we are experiencing, then they will understand what is climate change.
“Other than that, they will never understand.”
