"We Don't Blame the Sea". the Reasons for Climate Im-Mobility in a Fijian Village.

While the ocean still sustains the livelihoods of coastal villages in Fiji and articulates the ancestral ties between Indigenous people and their environments, it has become the source of new concerns and fears in a multi-faceted and dynamic relationship. Communities come to the sea for fishing and mobility and the sea comes to land jeopardizing cultivations and the geography of Fijian villages. Climate change-induced relocations are challenging the traditional lifestyle of iTaukei people, transforming their sense of belonging, their perceptions of past and future and their aspirations. This paper will look at how a relocating community in rural Fiji engages creatively with the ocean as the place in which the problem lies next to the solution, and think of the sea as a source of hope and loss simultaneously.

Explouring the communal lifestyle of indigenous Fijians, this paper will discuss local perceptions of environmental accountability and relational use of the commons. Based on ethnographic research conducted through the Vanua Research framework, a methodology nested in Indigenous Fijian values and temporalities, this paper will specifically look at how traditional Fijian ethics and socioecological relations have been transformed by environmental challenges while further exploring the relationship between the local understanding of climate change discursive regime and hegemonic development expectations.