Fiji's Future

Harmony with the land and the sea has never eluded the people of the central Pacific's largest island -- when they haven't been used and swindled by the world's industrial colonizers

By Marc Ethier and Lisa Archer

For Friends of the Earth

The old man can still get up into the hills. Years of wear and recent leg problems can't keep him from clambering, determinedly if slowly, up the steep natural steps across the road from his village, up to his little farm, a tiny patch of fertile soil on a tiny fertile island amid many that dot the central Pacific.

On his little scrap of land in Taveuni, foremost of Fiji's eastern group of islands, Aisake Talemainakorovou, 66, keeps a few taro plants, maybe a bit of cassava -- not much food for practical purposes, and more than enough for a man who has few real needs. He lives with his wife and son in a large house near his home village, revered and cared for by his neighbors. He may keep working the farm -- something he laughs to call it -- now more out of habit than anything else.

But when Aisake speaks of his quarter-acre overlooking the village of Vidawa, something else becomes apparent: it isn't for nostalgia any more than for food that he drags himself -- sometimes leaning on a crutch, sometimes on a young arm -- up the slick green paths into the wilderness of Bouma National Heritage Park (http://www.bnhp.org), high up on Taveuni, where a command of much of the island's uninhabited eastern shore is possible. Aisake does it because he still honors his practical duties as lead guide for the tourist attraction he was integral to founding a few years ago: the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, which runs past his plot deep and high into the otherwise impenetrable and unknown jungle. He goes up there to cut away brush, keep the track clear, and offer advice to the handful of guides whose charge it now is.

The story of the founding of the hike is one Aisake happily tells. Its origins lie in Fiji's colonial past, when the islands served as little more than resource commodities for the British Commonwealth; this ended more recently than most people realize, if indeed it has ended even now, Aisake says.

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Aisake knows better than anyone -- even the village chiefs, who collectively hold sway over more than four-fifths of Fiji -- the value of the land. He vividly recalls when, in the 1960s, the islands were ravaged for copra, dried coconut used for oils and candies. Taveuni's villages were paid handsomely to tear down vast tracts of native vegetation and plant groves of coconut trees, guaranteed work in perpetuity and an indefinite share of profits. Only the boom didn't last, demand failed; untold numbers of trees were lost to vines and disease. Poor protection measures further exposed miles of lowlands to timber harvesting. It took decades for the ecology, and the economy, to recover.

Like all patterns in life, these things tend to occur in cycles. Twenty years ago an attempt was made to influence Taveuni's chiefs to lease the rights to vast tracts of trees. It was resisted. But in the last decade Aisake sensed another turn in the tide. Pressure is once again mounting.

It is the oldest problem in Fiji: As memories of the past fade, new corporate ventures arrive, offering first this village, then its neighbor, enormous sums for the rights to exploit their varied resources. In the '60s it was copra, coffee, sugarcane, other vegetables, and, of course, softwood lumber. Now, since the lowlands have already been decimated, the focus is on the rainforests. "I see this happening again. Before it was the coconuts: they paid us to cut down all the trees and plant coconuts, and they paid us to [harvest] them. But when the vine took over, the coconuts died. Now they seek to buy our land up on the mountain, to do the same thing, to cut down the trees, to use our land."

Aisake had an idea how to break the cycle. For years he had provided the occasional traveler -- ornithologists, botanists and biologists, mostly -- small guided tours of Bouma, which was itself established with sustainable development-focused aid from New Zealand. With the help of Raleigh International (a U.K.-based youth development organization that operates charities all over the globe) and the cooperative effort of the villages of Vidawa, Bouma and Lavena, three months of effort began to carve out a path through the uncharted tangle of verdure that bordered Aisake's farm and village. Two years ago the rainforest hike was completed, and the tourists -- brought to Taveuni by its reputation as Fiji's "Garden Isle" and myriad opportunities to experience the mysterious expanse of Bouma, such as the Lavena Coastal Walk and the Tavoro Waterfalls -- began to arrive.

Vanua Bouma -- the name for the land, sea and people of Bouma -- was breaking the cycle of agricultural dependence. And of dependence on forces outside Fiji for economic succor. "This is better: this way we keep our land, we keep our trees and our forest, and we have work, and we have money," Aisake says. "This is better. We help tourists understand about the land, about the trees, and they go away knowing more about us and about the beauty of the land.

"It's like advertising. The more we advertise, the more we keep the forest."

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Aisake's revelation for Taveuni's future was not an isolated event. All across Fiji over the last several years the movement toward ecologically sound stewardship in response to the ever-growing demands of tourism has been marked, and remarkable. As the island nation anticipates a move from Third to Second -- and then, rapidly it seems, to First -- World status, the government has begun to subsidize wind and solar power. The pride with which this progressive Parliament and its Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, pursue sustainable development is evident in the advertising campaign now flooding Fiji's airwaves, dominating its newspaper coverage and adorning its billboards. Environmental Impact Assessments are widespread, especially in places, like the Mamanuca Islands, where coral reefs are in peril.

The rise of ecotourism is a natural adjunct to all this. In the Yasawas, a chain of tiny islands on the northwest side of the archipelago where the ecosystem is radically climatically different than Taveuni's, most resorts now boast some degree of environmentally friendly practice. They take their building materials strictly from local sources, and work to fit into the natural landscape. They offer only local fish and organic fare. They use little motorized transport besides boats, and put little to no restriction on access to lands or sea. And they do everything they can to protect the reefs, one of the Yasawas' main attractions, which are negatively impacted by everything from mainland sugarcane industry pollution to global climate change.

On islands that are Taveuni's geographic and atmospheric converse, where the soil is dry and the weather consistently sunny -- and where the reefs are unrivaled for variety of sea life, yet constantly threatened by bleaching and the effects of heavy visitation -- care and thought are required, and exercised, to prevent irremediable loss.

For many resorts, this is their calling card. They aim to attract a burgeoning demographic of young, progressive travelers who hope to leave as small a footprint as possible wherever they visit. Resorts like Mantaray Island (www.mantarayisland.com) and Oarsman's Bay (www.oarsmansbay.com) appeal to that significant segment of tourists who have researched and understand the long-term needs of their destination.

As the resorts go, so do the villages: Tourism isn't just the top industry in the Yasawas, it's the only game in town. Most resorts take 90 percent or more of their staff from among the locals. In places like Naviti and Nacula islands, besides fishing, there simply aren't any opportunities for villagers to earn a living, and feed their families.

So it's in everyone's interest to make these resorts money-making enterprises -- of course -- but also enterprises that will last. Several practices make Manta Ray, a two-year-old accommodation on Naviti owned and managed by Australian Ryan Irvine (link to interview), stand out among the competition. Most of the resort's water is taken from desalinated ocean water. No air conditioning is used, and fans are used only sparingly. The privies and private bures use only composting toilets, and strong efforts are made to educate visitors and protect the reefs and marine life under Manta Ray's purview.

These practices have made Manta Ray a model for the University of the South Pacific, in Suva, to show how to run a resort. "We've built it to a level where it's probably one of the top environmental resorts in Fiji right now, and we're still going, we haven't finished yet," Irvine says. "We don't have water, so we had to think of other means of getting water and treating waste. And we've got a recycling center, and we've gotten the local people here to get involved with that."

Manta Ray is still behind the times in one aspect: it uses diesel fuel for electricity. According to Irvine, there are no plans to switch to solar. He says costs are prohibitive.

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Yet at Oarsman's Bay, in the far north of the Yasawa chain, solar power is used for the showers, whose heat is a considerable portion of the resort's demands. Alison Bone (link to interview), who manages Oarsman's under an agreement with its financier, Richard Evanson (owner of nearby Turtle Island), says that's just one way in which Oarsman's looks to the long-term benefits of Nacula's natives. "It's all about trying to keep the money in the community, which is what's happening with a lot of the resorts out here in the Yasawas: They are community-owned, community-run, so the community benefits."

The community always benefits when its environment is healthy. Recognizing the importance of the coral reef to the way of life in and around Oarsman's Bay, the island's chief recently placed a Tabu (pronounced "tambu") on the bay, including all the sea life and the water itself, forbidding any kind of fishing or the desecration in any way of the biota. He came to understand, Bone says, that some of the islanders' traditional ways had to be changed in response to modern reality -- and that this change could in fact help, not harm, his people. "He saw that he needed to generate some income to improve the lives of his people, and to provide education for everybody, and the health of the bay was vital to that," Bone says. "He could have leased the land to Sheraton or Hilton and probably gotten millions of dollars for it, but the money would have gone straight out of the community. The development here, instead, has been small-scale, with a focus on sustainability. It's about trying to maintain a balance. Of course there is going to be an impact. ... We've started recycling. We've started composting. But it's hard out here, because people are slow to change."

Change is slow in Fiji, yet inexorably it comes. Everywhere, the change to a more sustainable economy is sweeping like an ocean wind. On Viti Levu, Fiji's main island, second-growth forests like Colo-i-Suva thrive just outside major metropolitan areas; the nearby Raintree Lodge has earned widespread acclaim as a destination hotspot. It lies next to an old water-filled quarry, offering canoes to paddle around the makeshift pond. All food is locally grown and harvested.

Back on Taveuni, accommodations like the Waimakare Camping Ground use only natural materials and take advantage of their setting along a mountain spring. Boasting a rock pool formed by runoff, Waimakare intentionally seeks fewer customers to avoid overburdening the land. It is owned by villages on the island's western side with familial ties to the people of Bouma, and serves as the potential base for a planned connecting route over the mountains to the territory of their brethren, one that will link to the Vidawa track. It may take a few years, but once completed such a path would serve as an additional source of income to the campgrounds and other minor tourist attractions now dotting the coast.

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Aisake Talemainakorovou (link to interview), lead guide emeritus for the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, was part of an effort a couple years ago to establish that overland track. It proved too difficult, largely because cooperation between tribes could not be established. Aisake says things are different now, times have changed and he hopes that the cooperation of Taveuni's clans will soon make the track a reality.

He still gets around to where such a track might lead. On the days when he doesn't need to lean on a crutch -- the good days when his legs let him get around without pain -- Aisake still wields a mean machete. The Vidawa guides who have learned from him, and who have assumed maintenance of the trail and business that promise to be his legacy, see the marks of his coming and going and marvel at the old man who still ambles around the steep hills of Bouma. He isn't as able as he once was, they say, but there's little he can't do, and his faculties are not so bad that he can't still identify any birdcall over the murmur of wind in the treetops and the purl of running water, or spot the slightest flutter in the fronds that signifies the rare orange dove, or koki, Fijian parrot.

Aisake has grey hair now and a wizened countenance but his smile, as he relaxes in the shadow of the misty mountains towering over Bouma, is contagious. And his back is straight and proud.

Aisake knows success of the Vidawa Rainforest Hike will help safeguard the land he has traversed and loved all his life. He knows the business, which grows yearly, will be well run by local villagers when he is gone because they are all guides he has trained. He knows they will make every effort to follow his example and resist the pressure to sell the land, compromise the biota, mortgage the future for temporary profit. "We know now how to protect the trees and protect the land," he says.

"We have learned from our mistakes."