Columban Fr Pat Colgan travels by boat with two parishioners in Fiji. - Photo: Fr Pat Colgan
The Columbans have been ministering in the Pacific Islands since 1952, after the Society’s expulsion from newly communist China. A very large feature of life there is the climate, which attracts sunshine deprived tourists, but can also wreak havoc through hurricanes, floods and droughts, the incidence and unpredictability of which have recently increased.
In a recent feature article of the respected journal New Scientist, we learn that rising seas and intensifying storms in Tonga, Fiji and Samoa are already “having a devastating effect on people’s livelihoods, health and well-being and that in some cases, the threat is truly existential. Tuvalu, comprising nine low-lying islands halfway between Hawaii and Australia, could be almost completely submerged at high tide by the end of the century.”1
Pacific Island nations, which account for less than 1% of global emissions, have an average elevation of 1–2 metres above sea level, with 90% of their population living within 5 kilometres of the coast and half the infrastructure (roads, bridges, schools) located within 500 metres. A “perfect storm” for the uniquely exposed 10 million people who call the islands their “vanua”, their home.
In my own time in Fiji (1995 to 2023), I never lived more than a kilometre from the sea and in some cases, was right up at the coast. I have seen coastal erosion, one home or garden plot at a time. In the Formation House in Suva, we regularly ate the coastal crabs we caught in our garden, while root crops generally could not survive the increasingly saline soil. There were many days when sea-swimming was more akin to taking a sauna! On the macro-level, rising ocean temperatures are killing off coral reefs and depleting fish stocks, while higher land temperatures are sending mosquitoes further inland, with many Fijians succumbing to the dengue fever that the insects often bring. Some of my saddest funerals in the coastal parish of Ba were of school children who died from dengue, as well as young farmers or fishermen perishing from leptospirosis, particularly following the floods and heavy rain Fiji gets annually from November to April.
Conversely, more frequent and severe dry spells (from May to October) have intensified the pressure on freshwater supplies, food and public health. Ironically, the country continues to export millions of gallons of premium bottled water (“FIJI Water”2), extracted from a high-quality aquifer in the Yaqara Valley (near Ba) for global export, often creating a stark contrast with local water shortages. With ocean warming, food security becomes a huge issue; there is a lack of reef fish and an increasing reliance on ultra-processed food (the iconic example being the low-grade, i.e. high-fat, tinned mutton or beef, unsold in Australian/New Zealand shops and “repackaged” as a cheap staple, or “aid” in times of natural disaster). All these problems overlap and inevitably, climate migration is underway. On Abiang Atoll in Kiribati, for example, the village of Tebunginako has been fully relocated inland and 280 Tuvaluans are to be granted Australian citizenship each year through a ballot system. Nearly half the country’s 10,000 residents have applied.3
A Fijian village plantation is washed away. - Photo: Fr Patrick Colgan SSC
Many of the islands are experiencing surges in seasonal workers leaving their shores, due to the economic pressures of all the above. Fiji has become the largest supplier of workers to the PALM scheme (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility), with over 6,379 workers as of mid-2024, a dramatic rise from only 266 in 2019. Combined with New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme, total Fijian seasonal worker numbers have surpassed 15,000 as of late 2025. This is quite stunning, given an overall population of just over 900,000. Many teachers, social workers and pastoral agents in the islands describe the destabilising effect of the absence of young parents in villages and towns, with children often unsupervised, vulnerable to online or peer recruitment as drug couriers to locals and tourists and the loss of culture, language and faith that nature intended be transmitted through parents and older siblings.
There are, of course, some signs of hope. Many villages, unable to afford large-scale coastal engineering, are turning to nature-based interventions, such as restoring mangrove swamps. Healthy swamps not only prevent further land loss but also safeguard fish and crab stocks. Sometimes, shipping companies or non-government organisations sponsor such initiatives. For example, Project Halo (UNSW/Swire Shipping) is a five-year project that started in 2025 to reinstate natural tidal flows and integrate mangroves into large- scale regeneration.4 The Kiwa Initiative (C3 Fiji) focuses on “Restoring mangroves for livelihoods” in Northern Vanua Levu, training over sixty community members and planting thousands of mangrove propagules and saplings.5 A SPC (South Pacific Community) Innovation Project 6 ran from 2024 to 2025, aiming to restore 9 hectares of mangrove ecosystems in Vanua Levu for carbon offsetting.7 The biggest obstacle is obtaining finance at the scale necessary for climate resilience. In a landmark advisory opinion in July 2025, the International Court of Justice declared that states have a binding legal duty to protect the climate system and help vulnerable countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. This grew from a campaign led by Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations, who argued that existing climate commitments were too weak to safeguard their survival. To date, though, the Pacific Region has only accessed about 0.22% of global climate funds, sometimes due to regulatory checks, multiple intermediary banks, currency conversions and so on.8
For the people of the Pacific, it is not a matter of “adapt to thrive”; it is a matter of “adapt to survive”. How truly catastrophic it would be to see whole ways of life drowned in the sea on our watch. In 2018, the Archbishop of Fiji, Peter Loy Chong, launched a song called “Climate Change Victim’s Lament”, which has these haunting lyrics:9 Earth is ravaged by our hand. Oceans weep for beauty lost ... Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy on us, Lord.
A Fijian village plantation is washed away. - Photo: Fr Patrick Colgan SSC
At a time when the world seems endlessly convulsed with wars designed by humans against each other, let us not lose sight of the deadly attack we have also launched on our Mother Earth. Without her sustenance, there will be no ‘land’, ‘rights’, or ‘principles’ to fight over. In a message commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication of his predecessor’s encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Leo left us with this startling question: God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created for the benefit of all and for future generations and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters - and what will be our answer, my friends?10
Columban Fr Pat Colgan lives and works in Ireland.
1 Katie McQue, “Trouble in Paradise”, New Scientist, 17 Jan 2026, p. 34.
2 https://www.fijiwater.com.au/faqs
3 Ibid, p. 36.
4 Harnessing the power of nature-based solutions. https://tinyurl.com/4jp7de6n
5 https://www.spc.int/cces/the-kiwa-initiative
6 https://www.spc.int/
7 https://lrd.spc.int/projects/mangrove-restoration-for-carbon-offsetting
8 Ibid, p. 37.
9 https://tinyurl.com/23ajyafp
10 Leo XIV, Speech at the ‘Raising Hope’ Conference, Castelgandolfo, 1 October 2025.
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