Witnesses to Climate Change- Fiji

WWF has been working to combat climate change -- and its devastating effects on wildlife -- around the world for many years. In our efforts to save natural ecosystems and the communities that live in and around them, we have collected stories from people who are witnesses to how global warming is destroying their homes. Read their stories and learn more about the effects of climate change around the world. Their personal stories help to let us all know that climate change is a global problem that we all need to address -- and we need to address it quickly.

Witnesses to Climate Change

Penina Moce, 43, is married and has five children. She lives with her family in Udu on Kabara Island in Fiji. She is a witness to the sea's slow erosion of their coastline. This is her firsthand account of the effects of climate change.

Penina Moce - Kabara Island, Fiji
photo: WWF

We have begun to notice that the fish and shellfish we used to be able to gather so easily are getting harder to find.

There also used to be colorful, live coral from the edge of the beach out to the reef. But now everything has gone white.

We used to catch enough fish in the shallows. But now we have to go further out, and the women are spending longer and longer in the seawater. Fish used to bite quickly - now we can spend more than an hour in the seawater before we get a single bite.

"The sea is slowly eroding our coastline"
- Penina Moce

The fish are often tiny. Barely enough for a meal. One of our great delicacies, the gera shellfish, is now very difficult to find.

Another thing we've noticed is that the sea is slowly eroding our coastline and spreading the sand over our fishing grounds. The seagrass beds have also spread quickly, clogging up the natural flow of water within the fishing grounds and burying the coral.