Student no: 19172452
DEVP7005 - Shelter after disaster
Assignment 2: 4000 words
Appendix: Transcript of Interview with Masi Latianara Interviewee: Masi Latianara, National Director of Habitat for Humanity Fiji Interviewer: Tanya Haldipur, DEP Masters student Date - Monday 13th Dec 2021 Location: Zoom [start of interview] Tanya: I understand that land ownership in Fiji is quite complex and can impact different communities. Can you give a bit of background on that? Masi: so the land tenure system in Fiji, there’s three types of land, there’s crown land as you said, there’s itaukei or communal land and then there’s freehold and you’ve probably seen the percentages of that breakdown. Itaukei land or communal land is around 86/87% and the remaining 14 or so % is split between crown and freehold. So freehold land, anybody can own, including foreigners. Um Crown land, there are restrictions to crown land which anybody can own but depending on the restrictions and then communal or itaukei land erm cannot be sold and only belongs to the itaukei people and it’s broken down through erm clans right so clans have ownership and so the legal ownership of that land stops at the clan level. It doesn’t go down any further right so it doesn’t go down to the families and it doesn’t go down to individuals it stays at the clan level and that land is protected into perpetuity, it cannot be sold. It can be leased um but it cannot be sold. And erm it can be leased, depending on the zoning or the type of use, it is erm, restricted to er I think around from 30 to 99 years, depending on the type of land right so agricultural leases are around 30 years and then residential leases are around 99 years and then everything in between. Tanya: in terms of relocation, are there steps that have to be taken before that, is that the last measure? Masi: erm yh definitely, its a costly measure to move right? Erm and so its definitely always the last resort. Erm im thinking of different situations erm coz you have land thats desirable and land that’s not desirable for whatever reason access to services or whether its low lying, flood-prone things like that. I think that regardless of the condition of the land, across all of the economic levels I would say that is similar access all economic levels moving would be the last resort. Now the reasons why people move is varied. They go from land disputes to temporary security of tenure um to climate change. Erm obviously when it comes to climate change, erm it affects, mostly it’ll affect coastal communities, communities in low lying areas. These would be formal as well as informal communities. Of course informal communities inevitably end up in the least desirable locations and these could be flood-prone they may not necessarily have the necessary infrastructure to protect the community from things like land slides things like that. But even then, yh, relocation is usually a last resort, as miserable as the some of these communities conditions are, its still, quite often and part of it is you know in informal settlements, if they were given a more desirable location they would certainly move. But, so part of the difficulty for moving for informal settlement is the attachment to the land but also there is no other alternative. Tanya: How closely have you as a shelter practitioner come across or worked with more agriculture and planting strategies? I was researching strategies related to replanting mangroves to mitigate the impacts of storm surges. Is this something that shelter practitioners deal with or have any kind of interaction with or is it quite separate? Masi: er its actually not separate its very much related. However, the way that funding comes in, erm, because a lot of the work thats done around this is externally funded right it’s not like the private sector that does this that go out and look for funding as a business opportunity. And so as a result, erm yh my knee jerk reaction is that because of the cost associated with both housing and this kind of protected remedial infrastructure, the two don’t often come together. The unit cost for housing and the unit cost for you know that kind of infrastructure is so high that er donors, funding opportunities don’t deal with them both at the same time. You know so but yh they are definitely directly related yh. Tanya: So does that mean that even cross-sectoral collaborations don’t happen? Would you have different donors for different sectors? Masi: Yes that’s certainly a reason for cross-sectoral collaborations not to happen - because of the funding yh. Tanya: Is there often resistance to relocation because of place attachment and the cultural values and history of the land? Masi: yh absolutely and it isn’t always one voice. It’s usually one part of the community wants to move and the other part doesn’t. And again it all comes down to access to resources. Erm, you know investment in the current site erm certainly there are cultural connections to the site. There’s obviously economical connections to the site that will affect decision making and yes yh for Fiji, formal communities, there’s definitely sort of cultural, almost religious connections historical connections. Because in Fiji, the land and the people are very much tied to historical relationships so anything that happens to the land is seen or is determined by the historical relationships between the people that are there now and the people there in the past. The decisions that were made as a result of relationships between different peoples that brought them to that land, erm these 16 are all very much kept alive, this relationship through oral record keeping.
