Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 108, January 2020, Pages 286-294
Geoforum

Thick temporalities of planned relocation in Fiji

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.06.012Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper examines the temporalities of planned relocation in response to climatic and environmental changes in Fiji. It is based on fieldwork among seven low-lying coastal villages under threat from sea- level rise and where planned relocation has been implemented, initiated or anticipated. The paper highlights how residents of these villages make sense of different temporalities and timescale: climate impacts and adaptation are understood to disrupt personal and intergenerational histories of attachment to place; climatic and environmental changes – such as sea-level rise, coastal erosion and flooding – and relocation planning and implementation are central to contemporary everyday experience; and climate impacts and relocation extend into the future in uncertain ways, albeit informed by future-oriented scientific estimates and local experience and observation. This paper argues that these temporalities are experienced as 'thick time' in which the past, present and future of climate change and relocation are palpable in the everyday.

Introduction

Human mobility and migration, including climate-related mobility, are widely viewed as spatial processes that relate to space, place, territory, sovereignty, citizenship, transnationalism, borders, mobility and scale (c.f. Bettini, 2014, Osbahr et al., 2008, Warner, 2018). While emerging literature focuses on the temporalities of mobility and migration (Griffiths et al., 2013), studies typically refer to processual temporal dimensions such as long-term versus short-term migration trends (c.f. Leyk et al., 2012), or time is taken for granted as an aspect of migration journeys. As Baldwin states, ‘we should reckon with the temporalities of the climate-migration nexus’ (2014: 520).

This paper examines the ‘thick’ temporalities of planned relocation in low-lying coastal iTaukei (Indigenous) villages in Fiji. In their discussion of bodily experiences of climate change, Neimanis and Walker (2014) refer to thick time in which different timescales interweave and interact at the level of the everyday. Thick time is heavy with a present, present-pasts and present-futures, and encompasses multiple ‘might-have-been’ and ‘could-still-be’ dimensions; “it gathers all of pasts and possible futures within itself” (Neimanis, 2014: 118). The past and possible futures are enfolded in the becoming present (Barad, 2006: 234). In climate vulnerable communities, for example, scientific discourses around future climate risks might be permeate the present as they shape contemporary decisions. So while the dominant timescale of climate change discourse is future-conditional – e.g. scientific forecasts of risk, anticipated emission trajectories – the temporal lens of thick time is attentive to past, present and future of climate change (Neimanis and Walker, 2014). The concept calls attention to the ways in which different timescales of climate change become palpable in the everyday as histories, contemporary experiences, and forecast and imagined futures coalesce and are recast in the context of a warming world.

This paper focuses on seven coastal iTaukei villages in Fiji and examines the thick temporalities of climate-related relocation. It highlights: personal and ancestral connections to place; contemporary experiences of biophysical and climatic changes – sea-level rise, coastal erosion and flooding – and planned relocation; and engagement with long-range forecasts and anticipated futures of climate risk and relocation. Informed by geographies of time and temporality (Anderson, 2010, Brace and Geoghagen, 2010, Fincher et al., 2014, Neimanis and Walker, 2014), the paper argues that environmental and climatic change and planned relocation in Fiji is experienced as ‘thick time’.

The paper first considers geographical theories of time and temporality with a focus on climate-related mobility. Next it outlines the research setting and methods. It then presents local accounts of climate change and relocation among residents of low-lying villages and considers how timescales interweave and compress such that histories and imagined futures have amplified significance and shape the everyday present. The focus is on thick time across four central themes: environmental changes, place attachment, anticipated relocation and retreat, and realised relocation. Understanding the temporal dimensions of planned relocation from the perspective of local people can inform climate adaptation policies and practices and ensure they are locally meaningful.

Section snippets

Climate-related mobility, time and temporality

Climate-related mobility – both phenomenon and discourse – is temporal, albeit often future-oriented. It involves projected climate impacts that are expected to contribute to population mobility, forecasts of the magnitude of climate-related mobility at specific time-points (although few have hazarded estimates beyond 2100), and calls for urgent greenhouse gas mitigation to prevent large-scale displacement in the future. For example, it is estimated that without adaptation, and assuming a

Research sites and methods

Fiji was the first country globally to ratify the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and as President of COP23 called for implementation of the Paris Agreement to achieve net-zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The stated goal of Fiji’s National Determined Contributions (NDC) Implementation Roadmap 2017–2030 “is to provide a temporal pathway with concrete mitigation actions and financing needs to achieve the transformational change called for under the NDC” (Republic of Fiji, 2017a: 4

Thick temporalities of environmental change and planned relocation

While past, present and future timescales of climate impacts and relocation can be partially disentangled they are not discrete temporal domains. It is through the interplay of different temporal reference points that people make sense of changing climates and planned relocation. The findings below are structured around four themes: (i) climatic and environmental change including observed impacts, recollections of place and landscape, and anticipated environmental futures; (ii) personal and

Discussion: thick time of changing climates and relocation

Although framed in language of urgency, it is widely noted that climate change can have an abstract quality. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other organisations have tended to present greenhouse gas emissions as a global problem affecting planetary climate systems (Brace and Geoghegan, 2010: 286). Melting ice caps and rising seas are perceived as spatially and temporally distant from everyday lives, particularly in Western societies (Slocum, 2004). Given the extended

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Teresia Powell (Climate Change Unit, Ministry of Economy), Asaeli Tamanitokula (Cakaudrove Provincial Council), Sailosi Qomate, Peni, and Professor Jon Barnett (University of Melbourne) for their contributions to in-country research. We are thankful for the kind assistance and support of the executive heads of relevant Provincial Councils: Roko Tui Cakaudrove – Filimone Naiqumu, Roko Tui Kadavu – Eroni Vunisa, and Roko Tui Lomaiviti – Ratu Penieli Velitikoduadua. Thanks also to the

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