7. APPENDIX A - INTERVIEW WITH MASI LATIANARA

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 wer are all very much kept e al made as ive, this r a el result of ationship relationships through oral between different record keeping. 16 peoples that brought them to that land, erm these

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 are all very much kept alive, this relationship through oral record keeping.

Tanya: With regards to livelihoods, as you mentioned economical connections, erm so for example a community where there are predominantly coastal/ water-based livelihoods, um, when they get relocated inland, how do you mitigate or help to introduce different livelihoods? How does that work?

Masi: Habitat hasn’t done many relocations I think over the past erm 15 years, well I think for the whole life of Habitat Fiji which is 30 years, we have relocated 2 or 3 communities and even then it was partial relocation, some decided to stay, some decided to move. Erm, and so when it comes to your question about the economic ramifications on livelihoods and income generation, erm, I mean our communities are small so for the experiences we are talking about maybe relocating about 15 houses. Erm and because they are formal communities they are also landowners so a lot of the time its moving them still within their own land. Yh so that’s one issue so the security of tenure is not affected however the point you brought up about being coastal and close to resources, erm, we haven’t done any formal studies on how that’s affected communities but its certainly a consideration in our planning and discussions with communities about how it’s going o affect their livelihoods so the discussions we have had has been around accessibility to their boats, being able to get out onto the ocean as quickly and conveniently as possible. We haven’t assessed whether any of the households have changed their resources focus you know like if they have gone from fishing to working in hotels. Although interestingly with covid, not so much about relocation erm but which might be of interest to you we are working with several communities right now who have historically for several generations have worked in hotels, coastal villagers who worked in hotels who are now, because of covid, because the tourism industry has shut down in Fiji, have resorted to fisheries and agriculture as alternative forms of income. And so I can imagine the communities that were terrestrial, you know further inland, are probably doing the same which they would only be able to do if they have access to land. So that’s probably only happening with formal communities and landowners. Informal communities are not landowners. They don’t have anything beyond the footprint of their houses. If they were working in the tourism industry they would be pretty you know hard up in finding work elsewhere. So you could bring that point into your discussion about how erm you know the tourism industry shutting down, that relocation might have been an opportunity had they not had the resources and access to the land that they do. I have heard of a lot of families who actually lived in the city, the urban centres, who have moved back to their land, to their villages, because of covid. Because of how it affected their income because they’ve been laid off so a lot of families are migrating the other way out of urban centres and back into rural settlements. So that’s a relocation of sorts so yh something like a pandemic would do that.

Tanya: in terms of habitat for humanity in Fiji, what is your focus? Is it mainly on reconstruction of existing houses?

Masi: yes, existing and new as well as a lot of focus on training, building capacities. Housing is so expensive we can’t build all of the houses and so really the sustainability comes in when people have the capacity to rebuild themselves.

Tanya: How do you deal with remote communities and getting materials to them, especially straight after a disaster?

Masi: we do a lot of work on reclaiming damaged materials, repurposing damaged materials. We try to build capacity through training so that people are able to rebuild themselves. We do work with communities er to build based on the resources that they do have access to. So we look at native timbers, other materials bamboo erm we’ve just started with bamboo and stabilised earth block. Again, The sustainability in housing comes when homeowners are able to afford to rebuild their own homes. Because it is such a huge investment and so if we can develop technologies that they can use, that they can access it increases the sustainability factor of housing. Fiji is in the process of transition going from village to city, from communal to individual, from [subsistence] to cash-based economy. Fiji is going through that transition which has affected housing technology. In Fiji, as a result of TV and magazines, movies etc, the perception of the housing process is contemporary style house, modern style house so the technology that our culture grew up with which is quite complex, changed overnight when colonialism came in, Christianity came in erm so just in a matter of years that perception of what progress meant started to change. So Fiji is now at the point where traditional construction which has gone through centuries of environmental testing is all but lost. Its been kept alive in the tourism industry but sort of a disneyland aspect of it. So in that transition, we have been brought up in contemporary style housing, we haven’t learnt the intimate details of living in houses like this. So that affects housing resilience.

Tanya: Does HfH try to address this at all? In terms of trying to find people that still have the knowledge and trying to share it around?

Masi: Yeah so we’ve got a few pieces of research we did around traditional resources and we are working with community builders to be able to, not revert to the traditional construction, but to first of all, recognise the VALUE of the traditional construction. And then the reverting to it will just come automatically when they see the value. So yh we are doing that we have done the research and that will probably translate into some sort of training module but there’s also certainly a lot of advocacy that needs to happen around it as well.

Tanya: Does HfH try to address this at all? In terms of trying to find people that still have the knowledge and trying to share it around?

Masi: Yeah so we’ve got a few pieces of research we did around traditional resources and we are working with community builders to be able to, not revert to the traditional construction, but to first of all, recognise the VALUE of the traditional construction. And then the reverting to it will just come automatically when they see the value. So yh we are doing that we have done the research and that will probably translate into some sort of training module but there’s also certainly a lot of advocacy that needs to happen around it as well.

Tanya: in terms of the traditional ways of building, are mangroves used as a material?

Masi: yes definitely yes they are

Tanya: does that cause issues with the deforestation of mangroves, because I know that they are very good for water protection.

Masi: In Fiji, no, because like I said we’ve all but lost the traditional methods of construction, so I suppose the mangroves are quite happy.

Tanya: And in terms of new ways of designing houses against things like rising sea levels, is elevating houses a strategy that is used often?

Masi: Yes, yh erm so the income bracket that we work with, when we do elevate houses, that space under the house is always seen as farm or living space so inevitably they will enclose it and you know put a floor down. But there’s always the understanding that this could flood and whatever happens in here may be temporary. And of course, human memory is so fickle, that if we don’t have a disaster in two years, everybody forgets and they start to have more permanent activities in those spaces, I suppose out of necessity as well.

Tanya: I came across Pathways to Permanence when researching about the cluster system in Fiji. Is that in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity?

Masi: yes it was developed globally but every country would have to localise it.

Tanya: what are the strategies for the pathway to ‘staying put’?

Masi: erm so obviously that pathway would depend on the threat. Obviously, if you are at threat of losing your entire house, you would look at a few things. Why are you going to lose your house, is it because of wind? Is it because of frost, swift water as in flash floods, is it because the house is not strong and so would fall down? Erm so you know you would make that assessment and then come up with a solution and so each assessment will be different. If the house is not safe erm you could either build a safe house or move, right? So if you want to stay there youd have to build a new house which would only happen if you have the resources to build it. Erm if you house just needed some remedial strengthening, retrofitting, you could do that. Erm we do talk about using vegetation as protection, you know mangroves or growing a wind break or something like that or cutting down trees that might be a threat.

Tanya: is erm subsistence farming generally done quite a distance from communities or is it relatively close?

Masi: no both yes both

Tanya: okay, do you know if there has been any research in terms of farming that can also act as a protective barrier?

Masi: nope but I can give you the name of someone who would know. His name is Lex Thomson. He is an agroforester based in Australia but has done a lot of research in Fiji. He would know a lot about that.

[End of interview]