Faced with rising seas and falling aid, Fijian villages move uphill

The Washington Post · last updated August 9, 2025 – 1:16 AM

MUANI, Fiji — For years, this coastal village has tried to overcome the effects of climate change. When rising seas began to lap at their doors, residents built a seawall. When flooding continued, they dug culverts and trucked in rock and sand.

But the ocean now spills over the seawall, fills the culverts, and erodes the rock and sand. And so, villagers have decided it’s time to move. To move Muani, wooden house by wooden house, a few hundred yards to the top of a densely forested hill.

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