Rise Beyond the Reef

Stronger than Winston

In 2016, Tropical Cyclone Winston - the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere – reached its peak intensity shortly before making landfall on Fiji’s main island Viti Levu, inflicting extensive damage and killing 44 people.

The cyclone’s impacts were felt from reefs to ridges throughout the entire country.

Communities in these areas continue to face immediate, medium, and long-term impacts to their environment and livelihoods.

In Winston’s wake, the communities in Viti Levu’s Ra Province reported zero income; neighbouring Ba Province reported a 75-80% reduction.

Tropical Cyclone Winston’s strong winds and tidal surges destroyed fish breeding grounds and decimated coconut groves. In the coastal areas of Ra Province, communities could no longer rely on the steady income from fishing and selling coconuts.

Communities in the mountains of Ra and Ba lost perishable root crops and kava plants. Their teak, pine, and mahogany plantations were damaged and could not be salvaged post-cyclone due to damaged roads.

Resilient Recovery

For Ra and Ba - and other rural Fijian communities – recovery depends not only on the essential step of rebuilding, but also on creating resiliency for the future.

Resiliency in this context comes from establishing more stable alternatives that are more resistant to the ongoing effects of climate change, including setting up alternative income sources, exploring more resilient cash crops, and providing education and training opportunities – thereby establishing economically empowering pathways for women, including cash industries for women and girls.

This focus on women is vital, because:

For the future, building resiliency will be the key to helping rural Fijian communities weather challenges like Tropical Cyclone Winston.

Weaving Voice and Choice into Action

In 2017, RBTR received the support of the Small Grants Programme (SGP) for a project that reintroduces traditional crops to simultaneously address both local and global needs, along with emergency preparedness training and facility development.

Reintroducing traditional crops, and expanding local farmers’ agricultural skills and crops, results in more diverse - and therefore more resilient - income sources. The most recent diversification efforts include introducing vanilla and floriculture crops.

This work highlights the synergy between the environmental benefits of intercropping (decreasing the amount of chemical fertilisers required, decreasing time spent on cultivation, reduced runoff and soil erosion) and the economic benefits of crop diversification (overall income enhancement, reduced income variance, improved household welfare), leading to higher margins for farmers, better access to credit, and simultaneous environmental improvements.

Agriculture programs include technical training and monitoring, as The inclusion of technical training and monitoring in agricultural programmes, coupled with agricultural extension and product marketing instruction, has been shown to optimize yields and profits while ensuring provision of local and global environmental benefits and services.

The efforts provide women with leadership opportunities, income development opportunities, and skills and training through the promotion and preservation of traditional arts and skills.

Efforts also focus on empowering women through training and leadership development, in an effort to help them to take more control of their lives, and to resist traditional social structure and kinship norms that result in high rates of domestic violence. When rural remote women have an income, that money goes back into the community via their own household spending.