After a cyclone, resilience and recovery

Junior Roman remembers being in a small boat with his father when the biggest wave he had ever seen—a wave like a mountain—bore down upon them. “I was too small,” he says. Terrified, he cried.

That was when he was in seventh grade. Fast forward a few years, and he’s fearless. “I love the ocean,” he says, with a broad grin. “It’s awesome.”

His mother, Tulia Naikasowalu, remembers the change in her son as he grew in confidence. She began to “see him in a different way altogether.” Now, she says, “when we go out in the boat, he’s there shouting, ‘Mom, don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened!’”

Tulia is the self-described first lady of the district of Nacula, in Fiji’s Yasawa island chain. Junior’s father, Ratu Manasa Naikasowalu, is the Tui Drola, the chief of Nacula.

“All the kids in this island, we’re like cousins, brothers,” Junior says. “We all know each other.” He and his friends fish at the reef break a hundred yards offshore and in the mangroves on the other side of the island. The fish they catch feed their families. “He loves going out to the sea, he loves sea life,” says Tulia. “We can’t stop him.”

The cyclone and COVID delivered a one-two punch to the community. Tourism is the foundation of Fiji’s economy, and many villagers work at resorts. When resorts shuttered during the pandemic, boat captains—and pretty much everyone else working in tourism—went home to their villages, where they could live off the land and, moreover, the sea. But during lockdowns, the commodities like rice that supplement Nacula’s largely subsistence lifestyle began to run out.

In September 2021, with village-to-village travel suspended, WWF-Pacific helped deliver rations of flour, rice, sugar, dhal, cooking oil, and soap to Nacula, part of a larger effort to help communities recover after the cyclone. The rations addressed an acute need. They also underscored the depth of the ties between the community and WWF.

Ratu Manasa Naikasowalu first attended a WWF capacity training workshop in 2018. The workshops were created to help communities sustainably manage both marine and land resources. “I never knew how important it was, and it took a while for me to realize,” he says. “I was saddened to see the extent of damage.”

Today he is a leading advocate for community-based natural resource management in the Yasawas, which trace the arc of the Great Sea Reef to the west of Fiji’s main islands. “The District of Nacula sources its food from our traditional fishing grounds that lie within the Great Sea Reef,” he says. “We are working with the Ministry of Fisheries and WWF in plotting and identifying areas that need to be sustainably managed, areas that our forefathers used to source their food from.”

How mangroves can help

Closer to shore, just steps from where the cyclone toppled trees, another initiative is taking hold: a newly planted thicket of mangroves, their tangle of gnarled prop roots exposed at low tide. Mangroves fringe much of Fiji, forming a natural barrier against storm surges and trapping reef-smothering sediment. By supporting coastal communities like Nacula in “climate-smart” protection and restoration of these “blue forests,” WWF is helping villages prepare to weather future tropical cyclones. And mangroves, which can store 3-4 times more carbon than other forests, also mount a powerful defense against the impacts of more frequent and more intense storms.

A future with food security and abundance

Next to the family’s home, Tulia Naikasowalu gives a tour of her vegetable garden—representing yet another way the community is managing its resources. “I love cooking. And I love veggies in most of my cooking,” she says. “Now, I have all this—orange trees and lemon, lemongrass tea. I have a bit of spinach here. And eggplant and some cabbage seedlings at the back …” Tulia’s garden, as well as the larger one WWF has helped the women of Nacula establish at the leeward end of the village, are important to food security, reducing pressure on the reef.

Ratu Manasa Naikasowalu enjoys the fruits of Tulia’s labor in the garden (“She’s a chef,” attests her son), and says he has seen results of the communities’ other efforts too: “the return of seagrass and lumi [an edible seaweed], certain species of fish that we thought had disappeared, seashell delicacies that our elders used to enjoy are becoming abundant,” he says. “We have begun to witness the return of bigger fish to our reefs. Turtles that we no longer saw on our beaches are now a tourist attraction.”

“WWF has enlightened our people, and we in turn have taken what we have learned to educate the rest of our communities on the need to sustainably manage our marine resources,” he says.

That self-reliance, the ability to live off the bounty of the land and the sea are part of what Junior Roman says will draw him back to Nacula. “We can go plant some cassava, coconut trees. You know, everything’s free.”

“I just want to go and learn how to be a real captain,” he says. “And then come back.”

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