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Article Politics and Space
The role of power in
community participation:
Relocation as climate
change adaptation in Fiji
Amanda Bertana
University of Maine, USA
Abstract
As the impacts of climate change intensify, potential relocation is becoming more of a reality for
coastal communities throughout the world. This is furthering the demand for the implementation
of governance relocation frameworks. In order to stay true to the principles of environmental
justice while at the same time ensuring an effective policy that meets the needs and wants of
affected communities, an adaptive relocation framework requires collaboration between state
and non-state actors. It is thus important to pay attention to how non-state actors are incor-
porated into public participatory climate change adaptation efforts. In order to affectively address
previous limitations of public participation, stakeholders must pay attention to already existing
power systems. Through a case study approach of a village relocation project in Fiji, I examine the
role of power in a climate change adaptation plan that involved the community of Vunidogoloa,
local government, and national government stakeholders. I employ Steven Lukes’s three-
dimensional framework of power to the case of Vunidogoloa, a Fijian village that relocated
inland due to coastal erosion and shoreline flooding, to illustrate how the political arrangement
of participation reinforced existing hierarchies between the village and the government.
Keywords
Fiji, relocation, participation, power, climate change adaptation, Steven Lukes
Introduction
The expected risk of increasing coastal erosion and shoreline flooding related to sea-level
rise has sparked discussion on planned relocation efforts in small island developing states
(SIDSs) (Albert et al., 2018; Mayer 2013; Oliver-Smith 2011) To date, SIDSs are taking the
Corresponding author:
Amanda Bertana, University of Maine, 5754 North Stevens Hall, Orono, ME 04469-5754, USA.
Email: Amanda.bertana@maine.edu
EPC: Politics and Space
2020, Vol. 38(5) 902–919
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2399654420909394
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lead in relocation policies by exploring ways to provide adequate technical and financial
assistance to coastal communities threatened with displacement. The Fijian government has
created Planned Relocation Guidelines, a national policy instrument that acknowledges relo-
cation as a viable climate adaptation, and bureaucratizes the relocation process from the
initial decision to move a village inland through to the construction of a new village site.
These proposed guidelines represent the forward planning needed to properly implement
relocation.
The relocation planning policy places significant emphasis on community involvement.
For example, the Ministry of Economy, Republic of Fiji (2018) offers guidance for govern-
ment stakeholders when working with communities:
Collaborate with the affected communities, ensuring the diverse needs of the community are
integrated in preparing and elaborating the relocation plan, in accordance with conserving
traditions, cultural practices, and human rights standards, by initiating a real dialogue with
the affected population. (12)
The above excerpt reflects a broader shift in climate change adaptation efforts, one that
supports, and in some cases legally mandates a more decentralized form of managing the
environment (Kapoor, 2001).
The demand for public participation in environmental governance emerged during the
1960s and 1970s as a response to critiques against the traditional top-down model of
governing (Turnbull, 2004; Wesselink et al., 2011). Since then, public participation has
become informally and, in some cases, formally mandated in climate change adaptation
due to its linkages to the tenets of environmental justice (Boli and Thomas, 1997; Endres,
2012; Wesselink et al., 2011). Public participation is touted as a way to give community
members a say in policy decisions that directly affect their lives; however, as political
scholars point out, participatory processes are problematically assumed to be devoid of
power (see Bixler et al., 2015; Cornwall and Brock, 2005; Dietz and Stern, 2008; Vincent,
2004; Wesselink et al., 2011). Others argue that public participation is nothing more than
“lip service,” coopted by powerful actors as a mechanism to conceal undemocratic or con-
troversial political practices (see Cooke and Kothari, 2001).
To date, much of the literature on public participation in environmental scholarship
focuses on improving participatory processes (Wesselink et al., 2011). By focusing solely
on the observable formation of public participation in climate change adaptation efforts, we
have limited our theorizing to the visible role of civil society and the state, thus perpetuating
superficial approaches to participation efforts. This is largely a byproduct of an incomplete
understanding of how power relations inform the public participatory agenda in adaptation
efforts. To address this shortcoming, I present Steven Lukes’s theory of power to the
Vunidogoloa relocation pilot project to situate public participation in a broader context
of power. This approach will show the complex ways in which power can covertly and
overtly manifest in multistakeholder climate change adaptation projects.
In 2014, Vunidogoloa village, with assistance from the Fiji government, became the first
Fijian village to be permanently relocated because of the impacts of climate change.
1
In
addition, the Vunidogoloa relocation is suggested to be an exemplary climate change adap-
tation project for its progressive approach to relocation (see Tronquet, 2015). National and
international sources have described two distinct characteristics differentiating Vunidogoloa
from most other documented relocations. First, village residents are said to have taken an
active involvement in all stages of the relocation process—from the initial decision to move
the village inland and through the construction of the houses at the new village site. Second,
Bertana 903
unlike past relocation efforts where communities have been forcibly displaced for develop-
ment projects such as mining, dams, and agriculture (Bronen, 2015; Edwards, 2013),
Vunidogoloa villagers initiated relocation efforts.
The atypical involvement of Vunidogoloa residents in the relocation project presents an
opportunity to explore power relations between multiple stakeholders in a broad political
context for several reasons. First, without any visible conflict, the project has been depicted as
a harmonious partnership between the village and the Fiji government (see Tronquet, 2015).
Second, in the context of sovereignty, indigenous Fijian villages have a distinctive relationship
to the national government. In 1940, the British colonial administration, established the
Native Land Trust Board (NLTB) to oversee all leasing, logging, and mining on Fijian
land (Turnbull, 2004). The NLTB continues to be the governing body that oversees mataqali
2
land for indigenous Fijians and manages all leases for non-indigenous citizens. However,
much like other South Pacific communities, villages have complete autonomy over local
development and environmental protection (Turnbull, 2004). Lastly, Vunidogoloa is embed-
ded in a dominant local hierarchy that resembles a pre-colonial governance system where
community leaders are responsible for decisions regarding the community (Betzold, 2015;
Nunn et al., 2014). In Fijian villages, community leaders are a hereditary Chief, Turaga Ni
Koro (elected village headman), and male village elders. The social context of the local-level
hierarchy complicates the democratic principles of community involvement outlined in the
Ministry of Economy, Republic of Fiji (2018): “To ensure an inclusive and gender responsive
consultative and participatory process to strengthen communities’ riposte to climate change
impacts” (3). The arrangement of the above variables raises considerable questions and con-
cerns about the community’s involvement in the relocation process.
The structure of this paper is as follows. I proceed by giving an overview of Steven
Lukes’s (1974) three-dimensional framework of power. I then introduce the method and
background information to this study. I provide a detailed overview of the Vunidogoloa
relocation process, and I apply Lukes’s framework to specific parts of the Vunidogoloa
relocation project. I then conclude with a discussion on how the political arrangement of
participation reinforced existing hierarchies and ultimately transferred agency from the local
to the national context.
Steven Lukes’s theory on power
Every decision that requires input from multiple stakeholders is significantly determined by
the distribution of power (Albrechts, 2003). Although an intrinsic characteristic to decision-
making processes, power often remains conceptually and theoretically ambiguous.
This substantial shortcoming catalyzed a debate among political scholars about how best
to study power. From these debates emerged Steven Lukes’s three dimensions of power.
Lukes’s (1974) analysis is a useful tool for understanding power relations in participatory
governance models because it provides insight into the realm of hegemonic political agendas
(Hathaway, 2016). The added value of Lukes is that his theoretical framework allows us to
distinguish between actors that execute power knowingly and those that do so without
realizing it. The importance of this caveat is that it opens up a dialogue in which power
is a systemic process and the agents are merely enacting their appropriate role. This provides
a dual understanding of both agents in powerful positions alongside those that acquiesce to
their dominance (Lukes, 1974).
In Power: A Radical View, Lukes maintains that we have a narrow understanding of
power that focuses too much attention on observable characteristics such as conflict and
grievances. He suggests our conceptualization of the term has been oversimplified to the
904 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
power to execute one’s will, and the power over an individual or group. He thus argued for a
more nuanced approach to power studies, which equated to more attention toward
the covert applications of persuasive control, or what Terry Hathaway (2016) refers to as
the “invisible” facet.
Lukes reaches this broader conceptualization by building upon the contributions of his
predecessors. He starts with what he sees as the most remedial discussion of power—the first
dimension of power, Robert Dahl’s (1957) pluralist view, which argues, “The locus of power
is determined by seeing who prevails in cases of decision-making where there is an observ-
able conflict” (Lukes, 1974: 11). In this context, power is only visible through an analysis of
behaviors and outcomes in which the more powerful actor uses resources at their disposable
to get their way. For Lukes, this explanation is insufficient in that it relies on the presence of
visible conflict and grievance to see who occupies the authoritative position, consequentially,
if there is no clear winner or loser, there is no power being executed.
The second dimension of power draws on criticisms offered by Peter Bahrach and Morton
Baratz (1962) who emphasize that the pluralist perspective put forward by Dahl fails to
acknowledge the more covert forms of power, specifically structural barriers embedded in
political systems that exclude people from decision-making processes. Lukes (1974) succinct-
ly identifies this element of power as “examining both decision-making and nondecision-
making” (22). Unlike the first dimension in which power is exercised through whose interests
prevail, the second dimension analyzes power relations by focusing on who is allowed to
participate in which conversations and who ultimately shapes the agenda. Power is thus
the ability to avoid conflict by suffocating competing interests from entering the arena of
discussion. Although Lukes (1974) praises the latter for drawing attention to the ability of
the dominant actors to formally execute power by framing larger social structures, he
critiques the second dimension of power for overemphasizing individual behavior, observ-
able conflict, and grievances.
Based on the limitations of the first two dimensions of power, Lukes (1974) proposes the
third dimension of power. His seminal work illustrates that the most insidious exercise of
power averts conflict altogether by giving the illusion of consensus (Gaventa, 1982;
Hathaway, 2016). He concludes that true power manifests in unobservable form, which is
embedded in legitimated and manipulated domination (Roscigno, 2011). Unlike the previ-
ous dimensions, the third dimension of power emphasizes the role of assumptions built into
social arrangements rather than the behaviors of individual people: “Amay exercise power
over Bby getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over
him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants” (Lukes, 1974: 23). Simply stated,
power is the ability to keep the masses content with their powerlessness. In this view, people
are given the impression that the decisions they make are in their best interest, without
recognizing how they are influenced by structural processes. Thus, more powerful actors and
institutions navigate social structures to shape beliefs, wants, and preferences in order to
create the very ideologies that make the masses participate in processes that do not enhance
their wellbeing or social position. Examples of this may take on the form of dominating the
flow of information, socialization processes, or shaping the participatory format (Bell and
Stockdale, 2016; Lukes, 1974). By controlling these avenues of society, those in authoritative
positions are able to create complacent individuals that adhere to the status quo.
Lukes (1974: 51) articulates the construction of false beliefs as not always intentional.
Rather, power can be exercised unconsciously in three distinct ways: (1) unawareness of
one’s intentional motives, (2) unawareness of how a third party perceives one’s actions, and
(3) unawareness of the consequences of one’s actions. This raises criticisms associated with
accountability: can one be held responsible for the exercise of power if they are unaware of
Bertana 905
it? No, but an unconscious exercise of power amplifies the degree to how deeply ingrained
certain values and roles can embed themselves in social relations. This particular dimension
of power is found throughout the Vunidogoloa case study.
Methods and materials
This study draws upon ethnographic research carried out in the Fiji Islands from August
2015 to April 2016. As part of a larger research project, I interviewed over 20 individuals
who worked with rural South Pacific communities on relocation efforts. Interviewees includ-
ed affiliates of the Pacific Conference of Churches, community organizers, individuals who
worked with the Secretariat of the Pacific, local Provincial Officers, and national govern-
ment workers. In addition to interviews, I collected data through observation at three
national conferences where civil society, local, and national government representatives
discussed the potential to relocate Fijian villages. I also analyzed primary and secondary
documents including drafts of the Planned Relocation Guidelines, local newspaper articles,
community documents, and governmental speeches given by Fiji’s Prime Minister,
Voreqe Bainimarama.
This specific case study also draws on data gathered in Vunidogoloa village. Between
September 2015 and October 2015, I spent three weeks in Vunidogoloa conducting struc-
tured and semi-structured interviews with village residents, observing community meetings,
and engaging in participant observation. While English is the lingua franca of education and
government, Fijian is the primary language in most rural villages. Therefore, I conducted
interviews primarily in Fijian and relied on assistance from a female research assistant, a
native Fijian speaker, to translate during the interview itself.
Household gender dynamics posed a challenge to this project and limited the degree to
which women would participate in interviews with their husbands present. In some instan-
ces, wives refused to be interviewed without their husbands. In others, female interviewees
would stipulate in the beginning of the interview, “My husband will speak for me.”
However, given my identity as a female, I had the privilege of occupying both male and
female social spheres. Similar to most Pacific Island societies, adult women can interview
women and men, whereas adult men may only interview other men (Nunn et al., 2014),
so I was at an advantage in that I was able to gather insights about how women were
involved in the relocation process from female occupied social settings such as Women’s
Committee meetings, and gendered household labor activities such as washing clothes,
cooking, mat weaving, and fishing.
A major limitation of my study comes from inconsistencies stemming from two-year
government contracts in conjunction with minimal written records regarding the
Vunidogoloa relocation. Because the relocation project spanned longer than any short-
term government contract, external stakeholders had insight into specific points in time
rather than the duration of the completed project. In addition, the relocation itself is best
described as an “ad-hoc” pilot project, and consequently there are no contracts, written
timelines, or memorandums of understanding outlining responsibilities. The latter limitation
especially poses an obstacle in verifying diverging claims. Nevertheless, an array of inter-
viewees gives insight into the opposing perspectives of the relocation process.
Area of study
Prior to relocation, Vunidogoloa was a remote 26 household village that sat on the shoreline
of Natewa Bay on Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second largest island (see Figure 1). The community
906 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
itself is relatively homogenous. All village residents are of indigenous Fijian descent, speak
Fijian with English as a secondary language, and most villagers identify as devout
Methodist; however, since the relocation some individuals have converted to Seventh Day
Adventist. The relocated village is located approximately a mile inland from the original site,
next to the main road that runs through Cakaudrove Province. After relocation, the village
grew to 32 houses, with each nuclear family receiving their own house, and approximately
100–120 people living in the village at any given time. The reason for the shifting population
is constant mobility with households moving between villages or the capital city of Suva on
Viti Levu for urban amenities such as school, work, or access to health facilities.
For example, during my fieldwork five houses were empty, one family was in Suva, two
were staying with family in other villages, and it was unclear where the other households
were. Yet some households also moved back to Vunidogoloa from their respective homes in
other villages and towns to secure housing for the relocation.
As a geographically remote village, Vunidogoloa residents operate mostly out of the
market economy relying heavily on subsistence fishing, farming, and gathering. For most,
a modest income is earned from women selling sasa brooms (broom made out of coconut
leaves), woven mats, and coconut oil, and men selling surplus crops and fish to neighboring
villages or in the nearby town of Savusavu, which is approximately an hour drive from the
new village site. For other households yaqona (kava) farming brings in a larger cash flow.
Environmental changes in Vunidogoloa
The coastal village’s physical landscape had been drastically altered due to the impacts of
climate change. A dilapidated seawall constructed out of stones and crushed up coral once
acted as a buffer between the village and the ocean (see Figure 2). The seawall became inef-
fective overtime, and during high tide Vunidogoloa would inundate with seawater causing soil
salinization and gradual shoreline erosion. In addition, increased rainfall during the wet
months (December–April) led to the two rivers that flowed through the village, Vusetakala
and Nabua Rivers, to flood more frequently, creating severe riverbank erosion (see Figure 3).
The impacts of climate change were leading to a complete loss of land, consequently leaving
the village physically smaller, and restricting people’s ability to build new houses or rebuild
houses post disasters.
Figure 1. Map of Fiji indicating Vunidogoloa.
Source: The World Factbook, 2020.
Bertana 907
Moreover, more frequent and extreme storm surges put Vunidogoloa villagers in
physical danger. For instance, in 2010, Cyclone Tomas left the village underwater within
minutes, forcing the residents to evacuate two miles inland to Nabua Primary School where
villagers stayed in the school dormitories for a week until it was safe to return to their
homes. Cyclone Tomas served as a stark reminder that nature can pose a threat to human
lives and it subsequently acted as the catalyst for the village to move forward with the
relocation.
Relocation timeline
In 2009, the local Provincial Office, Fiji’s National Disaster Management Office, the
Ministry of Local Government, Urban Development, Housing & Environment, and
village leaders began collaboration for the relocation effort. After the initial decision to
move was made by village leaders and government officials, stakeholders began discussions
regarding the logistics of the project—where to move the new village and how to fund the
relocation. Village residents often described 2009 as the year of “talk,” but it was not until
Cyclone Tomas in 2010, that the relocation project gained momentum and talk transitioned
into action. After the cyclone, village residents and the government collaborators became
Figure 2. Dilapidated sea wall.
Source: Amanda Bertana, 2015.
908 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
more proactive with selecting a new site, a mile inland along the main road that runs
through Cakaudrove Province. From here, the Northern Commissioners Office, the political
representation for Cakaudrove Province, located in the main town of Labasa arranged for a
logging permit and negotiated a contract between a logging company in Labasa and the
village.
3
The profit from the timber was then allocated toward the relocation.
In 2012, Prime Minister Bainimarama sent the Fiji military to Vunidogoloa to begin
excavation at the relocation site, which was initially suggested by village leaders.
However, the project prematurely stalled when an environmental assessment conducted
after the logging and excavation found that the sediment was too loose to sustain any
buildings (see Figure 4). Consequently, more land had to be cleared. Government
agents then chose the site directly below the cleared hilltop. The following year the national
government solicited laborers from the National Employment Center (NEC) to assist the
village men with the construction of the houses for the relocated village. In 2014, Prime
Minister Bainimarama reopened Vunidogoloa at the new site and village residents moved
into their new homes. The Prime Minister commemorated the relocation project with a
publicized ceremony in which he delivered a speech emphasizing the collaborative nature
of the project:
Figure 3. Riverbank erosion.
Source: Amanda Bertana, 2015.
Bertana 909
A high-level Government team came here to inspect the situation and – working with you –
concluded that only the most drastic action – moving the entire community – could meet the
challenge you were facing.
The total cost of preparing the new site, building 30 new houses and putting on a new water supply is
just under one-million dollars. 240-thousand dollars of this has come from your community through
your existing arrangement with a Labasa company to log the forests that you own around you. That
company will provide timber for your new houses based on the value of the logs extracted from
Vunidogoloa. So the community has a real stake in this initiative, working in partnership with
Government, and I want to pay tribute to you all for making that partnership succeed.
Bainimarama’s speech aligns with the public facing portrayal of the village relocation as an
equal partnership. However, defining the partnership between the village and the govern-
ment as successful is subjective and requires a deeper look as to how community involve-
ment was executed.
Participation in Vunidogoloa
I begin my analysis with inconsistencies that emerged during my fieldwork. The primary areas
of contention that problematize the degree to which the community was involved in the
relocation are centered around (1) the unanimous decision to relocate, (2) the way in which
community participation took form, and (3) the local hierarchical structure of the village.
The unanimous decision to relocate Vunidogoloa
The Fijian government advertised community involvement in Vunidogoloa to reinforce the
notion that all future communities, and even individual households at risk of potential relo-
cation, have full agency over their decision to shift inland. A scholar who was involved in the
drafting of the guidelines stated, “One principle that is completely unquestioned is that it’s up
to the village if they want to shift or not. Even if the family doesn’t want to, but the village
does then the family doesn’t have to.” According to external stakeholders and government
documents, the community has complete agency over the decision to relocate. Moreover, the
Figure 4. Picture of the relocated village site. Original relocation site. Source: Amanda Bertana, 2015.
910 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
initial proposal seeking government assistance for relocation should theoretically come from
the village (Ministry of Economy, Republic of Fiji, 2018). These guiding principles were
emphasized throughout interviews with government workers, as a local provincial officer
stated:
They [villagers] were given options as to whether they should go ahead with the seawall or relocate
to another site. Then the government could intervene. Most of them didn’t want to move in the
first place. They saw they that the sea level was changing, but they didn’t care. The NGOs did the
forecast and told the people by the forecasting year the old site of Vunidogoloa will be vanished.
From this point forward, “They did awareness first, the advantages of a seawall and the
disadvantages, and the advantages and disadvantages of relocation. After we did a consul-
tation, all the village agreed to relocate.” The above quotes have a critical point of conver-
gence and divergence with villagers’ responses regarding the decision to relocate. Villagers
and government workers converge on villagers’ initial resistance to relocate. However,
absent from all but one government worker is a reference to Cyclone Tomas:
When I came in 2009 we [Provincial Office] organized another visit to that village.
Our Permanent Secretary from National Planning, we all went down to Vunidogoloa and
discussed the issue [relocation] again with them. How best we could work together to try and
plan out something for them.
In one of the Hurricanes [Tomas] the village was flooded during the night, from the seawater and
also from the river overflowing. Before that because of climate change the boundary of the village
had moved a few times. The river was moving towards the village site, so they had to pull a few
houses and move them inside. Even the river had moved towards them. We discussed [relocation]
with them and they were the ones who felt what happened. They fully agreed with us that we
relocate them to another site because of that danger. From there we started out planning.
The former provincial officer’s quote aligns with the timeline posed by village residents.
However, the above response shows a slight deviation from the circulating discourse that
suggests the relocation was initiated by village leaders, instead the interviewee points out
that the decision itself was collaborative.
It is ambiguous as to who suggested relocation as the adaptation solution, the govern-
ment or the community. However, there is a clear delineation between government workers
and village residents’ responses regarding unanimity to relocate. As an example, a local
government worker stated, “There was never any resistance from the community them-
selves. They were the ones suffering from the hurricanes they had. There was never an
argument in the community. Everybody fully agreed to relocation.” Contrary to depictions
of consensus, numerous village residents emphasized that there was resistance to move. As a
village resident pointed out, “There were some people that didn’t want to move. I don’t
know why. I don’t know what’s wrong with them why they don’t want to move.”
Community participation in the relocation
From the beginning, villagers were expected to be involved in the relocation to some capac-
ity. However, the community’s involvement was confined to two distinct realms: (1) funding
and (2) labor. A government worker noted the benefits associated with having the villagers
actively involved in the relocation:
Bertana 911
We looked at the resources the community had, and what could the community contribute
because that reduces the cost of the government, and we wanted them to be actively involved
in this so they always feel that. Like when we move them using their resources they have
something in their heart to keep them focused in what we were doing. If we had just taken
money to relocate them, the ownership of the project itself, by using their resources it means
the communities commitment towards the plan that we were making up for them. You guys
came in and took us here. If something happens in the future you keep on pointing to
the government, this is you. You came in, dismantled our houses, and told us to move there,
but we don’t want that.
This feature of the relocation aligns with one of the primary assumptions that validates public
participation in climate change adaptation projects—participation equates to people working
toward upholding the necessary measures for the project to be successful. It also reinforces the
assumption that active involvement creates ownership over projects and participation works
as an insurance mechanism for external stakeholders (Kothari, 2001; Olstrom, 1990).
Village residents did in fact refer to the linkages between participation and empowerment.
They recalled with pride the commitment they had to ensuring the success of the project.
Some men and women alike referred to the relocation as a “blessing,” while acknowledging
the long days they devoted to constructing the new site. Village men who were active in the
construction of the new houses spoke about having to save their farming duties for the
evening. It is, however, important to emphasize that the men were compensated for their
time with what they described as a fair wage.
The village women were also actively involved in the relocation but contributed a bulk of
their resources in the form of unpaid domestic labor. Women discussed their role in the
domestic duties, making sure that their husbands and the NEC workers ate, and the house-
work was taken care of, as one woman pointed out, “The women everyday they bring lunch
and breakfast from the old site to the new site. We couldn’t even come by road. With the
rainy weather we crossed the road.” The young mother went on to discuss the hardship of
having to make the mile-long trek from the coastal village site across the unpaved path to
the new hillside village numerous times a day.
In addition to labor, villagers were the primary funders of the project. Women made sasa
brooms, and sold fish, crab, and surplus crops in the town of Savusavu. The community
regularly held solis (ceremonial money giving contribution toward a village project), but the
bulk of the financing came from logging their forest. Vunidogoloa was in an advantageous
position relative to other villages that were slated for relocation because they had an abun-
dance of resources on their land. Following the governments’ suggestion, village leaders
moved forward with logging part of their forest in order to financially assist with the relo-
cation. Under the jurisdiction of the Northern Commissioners Office, the community
obtained a logging permit, and raised approximately 250,000 Fiji dollars (equivalent to
125,000 USD) by harvesting the timber.
The local hierarchical structure
The local hierarchical structure posed a barrier to fully inclusive community participation.
This aspect of the relocation called attention to the political consequences of neglecting the
social context in which decisions about climate change adaptation are made. Furthermore, it
elucidated the multiple scales of power, specifically the power between the government and
the village and within the village. Vunidogoloa operates within a traditional local hierarchy
912 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
found throughout the Oceania. Within this structure, the concentration of decision-making
power reside in the hands of a select few—Chief, Turaga Ni Koro, and male elders.
Following the exclusion of women from local level decision-making processes, the women of
Vunidogoloa were omitted from the decision to relocate the village. A brief exchange with a
young woman in her 20s illustrates this point: I asked, “Did you go to the village meeting about
the relocation?”. She replied, “I wasn’t invited.” I asked, “Were you told not to go?”. She
responded, “You’re not told ‘not to attend,’ but if you are not asked to attend then you do
not go.” Curiously, government workers expressed awareness that women were disregarded in the
decision to relocate the village, but they continued to proclaim that there was complete consensus.
Articulations of power
On the surface, villagers’ role in the relocation process provides an illusion of equal part-
nership between the community and the local and national government. In addition to
community involvement in the funding and construction of the new village site, disputes
about the relocation process between the community and the government. We might simply
conclude that the relocation exemplified an egalitarian adaptation project considering vil-
lagers took an active role in the funding and construction of the relocation. Yet the com-
munity’s role in the relocation might also be analyzed by structural factors, shaped by how
the community was not involved and the wider social, political, and even environmental
context in which the relocation was situated. Intersections of Lukes’s second and third
dimensions of power elucidate structural and non-decision making factors.
Second dimension of power
The Vunidogoloa relocation has numerous characteristics that align with the second dimen-
sion of power. In a non-decisional sense, power is manifested as exclusion of certain issues
from the policy agenda (Lukes, 1974). This dimension of power answers to the grievances
that emerged after the relocation was complete. My examples here come from two conten-
tious characteristics of the project outcome, the housing structure and the village layout.
By excluding villagers from having an opinion on the housing structure and village layout,
the Fiji government was able to successfully suppress potential disputes.
My first example discusses the inadequacies of the housing structures. Interviewee’s unan-
imously referenced the limitations of the house as a primary challenge to the relocation
effort. A local level government worker stated:
They are smaller than they were before at the old site. If you see the houses at the old site, they
decide the size of the houses. At the new site, the government decides for them. The government
provided the technical expertise. They said if you shift this is the size of the house we will provide.
Another local government employee echoed the concerns about the inadequacies of the
housing structures, “I see that the houses are not really what we expect from a house. If
you have a house you need a room and a kitchen. There’s no extension of the kitchen. That
is the biggest drawback.” Villagers also spoke about the limitations of the small open floor
plan for larger families with young children (see Figure 5). While it is unclear who or what
government ministry designed the houses and the motivation behind the floor plan, village
residents were excluded from any input regarding their housing structure.
My second example of the Fiji government’s execution of the second dimension of power is
evident in Figure 5, which depicts the village layout. Many villagers commented that they
Bertana 913
Figure 5. House and kitchen at the relocated village.
Source: Amanda Bertana, 2015.
Figure 6. Relocated village along the main road of Cakaudrove.
Source: Amanda Bertana, 2015.
914 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
would have preferred the relocated site to resemble a more traditional Fijian village with the
church at the epicenter and the Chief’s house located at the top of the village. The coastal
village site experienced severe shoreline and riverbank erosion, creating spatial limitations that
forced villagers to build where they could find viable land. Consequently, they were never able
to physically organize Vunidogoloa in accordance with the traditional village layout. Here we
see how adaptation projects can present opportunities that would otherwise not exist. In this
case, the relocation ended up as a missed opportunity for Vunidogoloa to be organized in a
culturally appropriate way that aligned with the values of the villagers.
The government’s authority over the “technical” components of the relocation affected
the project outcome and advanced their political interest. The uniformity of the new
Vunidogoloa site not only deviates from a traditional Fijian village layout, but it also
resembles a United States housing subdivision (see Figure 6). This model was intentional.
Numerous government workers maintained they (national government) wanted to spark the
interest of people driving along the main road of Cakaudrove Province where Vunidogoloa
is located and ask, “What’s this, a housing subdivision?”. The physical organization of the
relocated site is a symbolic depiction of values associated with “Westernization” and
“modernity” that are being embedded into the general relocation agenda.
Third dimension of power
The most ubiquitous form of power found throughout the relocation project hints at
Lukes’s (1974: 23) third dimension of power, the shaping of perceptions and preferences.
While the first and second dimensions of power have empirical advantages, they fail to
answer the question: why do the masses acquiesce to their domination, especially when it
goes against their best interest?
The transfer of power from the village to the government began with the external climatic
event that created a shock to the community, Cyclone Tomas. After the storm, villagers
were overwhelmed with the idea that another cyclone may occur during the night leading to
potential casualties. From this threat, the rationalization for government intervention
emerged under the scope of public safety, and top-down processes were then enacted on
to the community. As the relocation process moved forward, there became a more pro-
nounced uneven balance of power between the village and the government. Not necessarily
visible as power, the Fiji government exerted power by controlling access to information,
exploiting the climate change discourse on sea-level rise, and relying on an international
script of governments as the dominant decision-making entity.
It is common practice for Fiji’s rural communities to be ill informed about government
policies, particularly because of spatial distance and infrequent access to resources (Betzold,
2015). However, in this context, government workers engaged with the community but
withheld information on project outcomes. This allowed them to lead with the attractiveness
of the new houses and amenities that most people in the village would not have been able to
afford otherwise. By controlling the flow of information, the government was also able to
bypass accountability for the less desirable outcomes of the project and unfulfilled expect-
ations. Whether or not this was intentional, the consequences were very real for the villagers.
Vunidogoloa villagers accepted government assistance, but in doing so they lost agency
over certain aspects of their village. As I pointed out in the previous section, in the reloca-
tion process villagers have no control over their houses including the color or any modifi-
cations. In addition, villagers were explicitly warned not to deviate from the uniformity of
the village. For example, a few households spoke about how they were stopped by village
leaders when they began building extensions to their house. It was rumored that the
Bertana 915
government has a blueprint that all household modifications must comply with in order to
keep with the uniformity and “look” of the village. The blueprints are lost among the
bureaucratic disorganization of the project. Consequently, villagers were unable to make
any changes to the external structure of their houses.
The lack of autonomy to modify their homes speaks to an emergent hidden interplay of
power—the reorganization of the village’s relationship to the Fiji government. Fijian villages
have been autonomous and execute full agency over local development, governance, and infra-
structure. With the relocation effort, the government strategically interjected their agenda and
interest in local processes that were once controlled solely by the village. In doing so, they
created a micro (village)–macro (government) dichotomy. Given an international script of
governments as dominant decision-making entities, especially in Fiji, this newly formed rela-
tionship assumes that the people comprising the micro are powerless (Kothari, 2001).
Consequently, villagers are now expected to comply with governmental requests and demands.
The most provocative example of power explores the question, why did Vunidogoloa
villagers choose to relocate? According to village residents, it was clear that some people did
not want to move. In addition, the size of the houses and unfulfilled promises did not align
with what was presented to the community, therefore some people left larger homes that
were better equipped to meet their family structure. Despite the contentious outcome,
people still chose to relocate, and purportedly without grievance. Why?
There was a clear coercive financial mechanism at play that signaled the consequences for
people who decline to relocate. As a scholar who worked on the relocation guidelines draft
stated, “What does happen is that it’s told to people in that situation, if you don’t shift now,
you have to pay everything yourself later on.” This response illustrates how the relocation
guidelines, in general, have the potential to exploit community’s financial vulnerabilities.
In the case of Vunidogoloa, financial restrictions swayed some households to relocate because
the short-term benefit of a “free house” outweighed the long-term cost of autonomy.
The idea of an inevitable shift also sheds light on a prevalent theme found throughout the
discourse on climate change, sea-level rise, and SIDSs, one that suggests that relocation is an
inevitable future (Farbotko and Lazrus, 2012). The apocalyptic messaging of climate change
relies on scientific and IPCC projections that predict displacement caused by sea level rise for
coastal communities and in more extreme cases whole island nations, in as early as 30 years.
The discourse alone has the potential to entrench geographically vulnerable communities in
unequal power relations by limiting their agency and narrowing their option to relocation
(Farbotko and Lazrus, 2012). Here we see the fatalistic messaging operating in conjunction
with financial vulnerabilities to create an illusion of choice. In reality, the only choice pre-
sented to coastal communities is when they would like to relocate.
Other Vunidogoloa villagers who initially resisted relocation chose to eventually move
because of their reliance on the social organization of the community. For instance, an
elderly couple that voted against relocation ended up moving because they relied on assis-
tance from their neighbors. As on elder man went on to say (translated from Fijian), “If we
were younger we would have stayed.” Instead the couple’s age and dependency on the
communal structure of the village was a limiting factor in their final decision to move.
This evidence suggests that autonomy itself operates on a spectrum with marginalized
populations having even more coercive mechanisms that influence their decision-making.
Discussion and concluding remarks
There is no shortage of literature that addresses the pros and cons of public participation in
climate change adaptation projects. However, less attention is given to the specific role
916 EPC: Politics and Space 38(5)
power plays within the participatory governance process. This raises important considera-
tions about how public participation can be implemented in a way where it moves beyond
the obligatory policy requirement and actually encompasses democratic principles. One way
in achieving this goal is to explicitly address already existing power dynamics in adaptation
projects that involve multiple stakeholders. I took this approach in this paper and I reintro-
duced power back into the discussion on public participation in climate change adaptation.
I drew upon Lukes’s second and third dimension of power to unveil the uneven power
dynamic between the Fiji government and Vunidogoloa villagers. Yet, I took it a step
further to show how the participatory arrangement of the relocation process astutely trans-
ferred power from the local to the national level. By analyzing less visible dimensions of
power through Lukes’s theoretical framework, we gain a greater understanding of how
existing social arrangements materialize as unequal power relations.
The Vunidogoloa relocation exemplifies Lukes’s critique of traditional power studies that
isolate conflict as the sole indicator of power. While empirical evidence that identifies a
“winner” and a “loser” is a clear indication of uneven power relations, it is naı
¨ve to suggest
that a process devoid of this dichotomy is egalitarian. Instead my findings indicate that
power is still present even in the absence of conflict. As I have shown with Vunidogoloa, the
Fiji government used the relocation process to gradually erode the villager’s autonomy until
they were left with an adaptation project that compromised their wants and values for the
interest of the government.
Power was exerted on to the community in visible and coercive ways. The Fiji government
employed non-decisional making power by excluding the village from the technical compo-
nents of the relocation—housing structure and the village layout. In doing so, they suppressed
any potential for conflict. At the same time, they shaped Vunidogoloa villager’s preferences
and wants. This characteristic aligns with a general trend in adaptation projects. Governments
around the world are continuously prioritizing climate change as more violent and frequent
storms create widespread public panic. As the case of Vunidogoloa demonstrates, climatic
events are creating states of emergencies and are acting as the impetus for government inter-
vention. This then creates the rationalization for top-down processes to occur, so it is critical
to pay attention to how governments engage in these partnerships with the public, especially
because the government assumes a powerful position in relation to marginalized populations.
This article comes against the backdrop of a shifting approach to climate change adap-
tation policies that tend to promote public participation as either a legally mandated func-
tion or a genuine transformational approach to the traditional top-down governance
process. Independent of intention, these adaptation policies are employing consensus and
community involvement as keywords (Elander and Gustavsson, 2019). Furthermore, as the
impacts of climate change intensify, potential relocation is becoming more of a reality for
coastal communities throughout the world. This is advancing the demand for government
managed relocation frameworks. In order to stay true to the principles of environmental
justice while also ensuring an effective policy that meets the needs and wants of affected
communities, an adaptive relocation framework requires collaboration between state and
non-state actors (Bronen, 2015). This requires a different way of governing, one that
increases the adaptive capacity of institutional structures or what Robin Bronen (2015:
36) describes as “the ability of institutions to balance power among interest groups and
engage in an iterative learning process that can generate knowledge and be flexible in solving
problems.” As demonstrated in this case study, existing power systems have critical con-
sequences for adaptive outcomes. Thus to be inclusive, adaptation frameworks must include
reflexive analyses of power as a social system.
Bertana 917
Author note
Amanda Bertana is now affiliated with Southern Connecticut State University in the Department of
Sociology.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant under Grant #1519218.
Notes
1. Since the Vunidogoloa relocation, only one other village, Denimanu Village on Yadua Island, has
been fully relocated. However, there have been a number of partial relocations, whereby a few
households shifted to higher ground.
2. The Fiji land tenure system is called a mataqali (land owning unit) system. Under the land tenure
system, approximately 85% of Fijian land is mataqali land that is granted to indigenous Fijians as a
birthright and cannot be sold. The remaining 15% belongs to the Crown or is characterized as
Freehold Land. For further explanation, see Ward (1969).
3. Contrary to the Prime Minister’s speech, interviewees unanimously claimed the government orga-
nized the contract with the logging company, which has since went out of business.
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