WE NEED a healthy river in order to benefit from the healthy oceans these waterways flow into — so looking upstream to examine how human action impacts the sea is the way to adapt to the changes the Earth is going through.
The chiefs of the Rewa Delta, a province completely surrounded by Fiji’s widest river, the “Rewa” face growing immense water pollution, quickly dwindling fish stock and an eroding river bank taking away already fragile homeland.
Before they understood the science of climate change, the people of the ‘tebara’ (the Fijian word for delta/bayou/marsh land) had already seen its symptoms.
It started with the disappearance of moci (mangrove shrimp or Palaemon concinnus) said Ro Dona Takalaiyale, the head of the Sau Turaga the clan with whose ritual endorsements, the Kings of the province are made.
For the better part of the last century, Rewa has not had a King, instead a woman has ruled the delta since 1957 when the current monarch Ro Teimumu Kepa’s elder sister Ro Lady Lala Tuisawau-Mara set that precedent.
It has almost been this long too since the elders of Rewa, the smallest of Fiji’s 14 provinces, with a meagre land area of 272 square kilometres to call home, found the ‘moci’ and the river bank water plants it likes to live under, had started to disappear.
The shrimp is the critical ingredient to the ‘Rourou vaka utona’ (loosely translated to mean the heart of the spinach!) a dish iconic to the province.
“When we were younger, our mothers would just lift up the plants in the water by the banks and use their nets to gather the shrimps,” Mr Takalaiyale said with a kind of gleeful sadness.
These days though, the women of the delta go further down river where the Rewa meets the ocean to catch a different kind of shrimp in the shallow pools of the mangrove swamps.
Freshwater mussels are another highly valued commodity residents of the delta do not harvest in the same abundance. In the neighbouring tikina (district) Tokatoka, the village of Dratabu have a self imposed ban on the harvest of the mussles for commercial use.
Village chief Peni Kamakorewa said while the people of his village were allowed to gather the ‘kai’ as the mussels are known locally, to eat at home or to take to relatives elsewhere, they have had to reduce what they extract from the river for two reasons.
“The scientists told us they can find plastic in our kai. It saddens me to know that our own rubbish is getting into this food we used to take so easily from the water,” Mr Kamakorewa said.
As he watched more than 70 paddlers conduct a part sporting, part clean-up marathon regatta on the turn of the Rewa River, Kamakorewa had hope.
“My people are inspired that something can be done to clean up our river and more importantly we can do it ourselves.
“We have tasted the difference in the food we eat; we have seen our shrimps get stuck in the rubbish we put ourselves.”
Then two chiefs, Mr Kamakorewa and Mr Takalaiyale represent a growing body of traditional leaders of the three provinces Naitasiri, Tailevu and Rewa who “own” the Rewa River.
Led by the Ro Teimumu Kepa, paramount chief of Rewa and of Burebasaga, one of the most powerful confederacies in traditional Fiji, the movement show that partnership between the land, its people and science could be key to climate change adaptation measures.
Once viewed as a fragile princess, in the shadow of an older sister who was not only powerful but well-connected having been one of the only leader in her time to link two confederacies through marriage, Ro Teimumu commands the respect of her people. At least the people concerned with the environmental protection of her province’s jewel, the Rewa River.
The chief said her province had watched while industrial waste and household refuse from the nearby town of Nausori and the capital city’s surrounding suburbs drifted towards the province.
Ro Teimumu said countless efforts to alert local authorities to the changes the people of Rewa had witnessed in the ocean, on their beaches and now upstream of the river had not yielded results.
With at least five of the 12 villages in her district alone completely dependent on the river and the ocean which immediately surrounds the province, the chiefs were moved with the news that among them lived a strange creature.
The paramount chief said that like any other Fijian she valued the natural resources she was custodian of, it took research findings by the University of the South Pacific to bring home the importance of taking conservation to another level.
The research findings in a paper entitled “Fiji’s Secret Cradle: The Rewa Delta” details the existence of one of the province’s worst kept secret but nonetheless a fact which provided the basis for the progressive chiefs to fiercely protect the river.
Conducted by Amandine Marie, Celso Cawich, Tom Vierus, Cara Miller, Susanna Piovano and Ciro Rico the continuing research found that a stretch of the river from Naililili to the river mouth had become one of the world’s largest ever documented sanctuary of scalloped hammerhead sharks.
“When they came to us with their findings, it was then that it dawned on us that the river was something extra special,” Ro Teimumu said.
“We decided then that we needed to seriously start thinking about what more we could do to preserve the shark and to conserve the other species there in the river.”
Over a couple of years, the chief heard calls from the leaders of her province to do something about the sharks and together they learnt that not only was the scalloped hammerhead harmless but it enjoyed the same delicate organisms humans of the province did.
It dawned on the leaders that letting go of the quality of their river directly affected the health of 1217 sharks which also called the Rewa River home.
So on the committee which is spearheading conservation efforts are two village headmen, a position which performs the role of conduit between the traditional leadership and government.
The headmen also happen to be fish wardens who perform a kind of community policing role on commercial fishermen.
“I see that it’s very important for the country that we look after our environment but having said that we have to also look at our people who look to the river for their livelihood and they do this on a daily basis,” Ro Teimumu said.
Consultation is key and the female chief has asked her chiefs to ensure that initiatives made to adapt to the changing environment or to mitigate the effects of those changes involve the very people who live off the environment and who take from it.
This week Ro Teimumu launched several initiatives to bring healthy attention to the river, including a festival celebrating the bilibili, a traditional water craft made of bamboo; a provincial environment day designed to bring the Rewa people together working to protect their environment at individual levels and a marine protected area where the sharks breed.
Ro Dona Takalaiyale, who heads the conservation on behalf of Ro Teimumu admits there is still a lot the leaders don’t know including and they have not even explored the potential economic benefits of having a sanctuary.
Referring to the sharks as Na Gone (the child), Ro Dona said what they did know was the sharks were an indication their river was special and its protection necessary.
“We have to be careful in how we preserve the environment while also ensuring that our people have enough from the river that is just enough for them to live on and not too much so that we deplete our environment,” Ro Teimumu said.
“We have to find a balance. So it is important that we include the village headmen who are themselves fisherman and fish wardens.
“The village leaders know what the people in the villagers are going through, what they are doing in the river and in the sea.”
