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January 2025
Walande, Solomon Islands
Johnson Sua
Police Officer
I did not want to change my life. My previous life, my good life. But due to the cause of climate change, caused by the global world, factories, companies, I have to move.
Eva Cathy Iroga
Student
It’s a sad thing to see suddenly everything just wiped away, or stripped away. Everyone cried and yeah, I feel sorry for their homes that gone.
Johnson Sua
We need government to address those who directly affected. Walande is the one of the villages
who are directly affected. We already moved from the island. You can see the empty posts standing. Wave are now coming.
Fred Dauburi
Secretary for Walande Community
As a little boy we feared nothing. We don’t worry about things. We only enjoyed fishing and then going out in the garden. But now we know that climate change really bringing disasters.
Johnson Sua
I expect government to do something for us.
Title
No More Land
Richard Kwai
We are people migrating from one place to place. So originally we came from Northeast Malaita. That's where our ancestors came from.
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Extreme weather events, intensified by climate change, repeatedly displaced Walande community members from their island home.
Today their island has been completely submerged by
the sea.
As a result, the people of Walande were forced to relocate to the nearby mainland.
May 1986
Solomon Islands
Richard Kwai
Chairman, Walande Church
The first destruction to the island was in 1986 when Cyclone Namu destroyed Solomon Islands. They escaped to the mainland after one week they came back and rebuild the island again to its original size. 2009 is the worst time of the climate change. Properties on the islands all destroyed. Houses were washed away, and the sea washed through the village and destroyed the houses in the middle of the village.
Susie Waita Fakaia
Nurse
I was there at that time. I was too scared. I almost break down, because I haven't seen such a big mighty waves like that, in my growing up in this village.
Richard Kwai
And that's when people decide to move.
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By the mid-2010s, the community had relocated to a small area on the mainland that was given to their ancestors.
87% of land in Solomon Islands is held under customary tenure, regulated by unwritten laws and oral tradition passed down from generation to generation.
Richard Kwai
And when they come to settle here, they become best friends with the landowner here. And the best friends allow them to live in this part of the southern Malaita.
Johnson Sua
We are not move here by the government. We are moved to this mainland by ourself. By our strength. The walkways and other things, it’s not built by the government. If we lean on the government, or if we lean on the other organizations of the world, we still remain the same.
Richard Kwai
During that time too, the Solomon Islands’ government supported the community by providing ten cartons of nails to build a house. Yeah...
Eva Cathy Iroga
This community here, they always work together as a family. There's a lot of many tribes here, but when it comes to do things together like (building) the footpaths, they all come together and then (get) the job done.
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The people of Walande showed ingenuity and leadership in their relocation, but moving an
entire community inherently involves losses.
Johnson Sua
It's really painful. Some older people they are desperately cry for the old village. Saltwater people used to live and love living in the sea. The changes of this new place really, we really lost the culture and the tradition.
Richard Kwai
We are still feeling the effect of climate change. In terms of food security, people find it difficult to catch fish now because the environment is changed. The fish habitats is already destroyed, and people move even farther to find fish. Most of our gardening on the coast is already washed away. We live on swamp taro. And now I think about 80% of the swamp taro is already destroyed and people no longer have enough of that crop. In 2021 we secured funding to put up this seawall, hoping it will mitigate coastal erosion. In 2023 we began to notice the gabion wire’s already destroyed, rusted and falling apart. We need engineers especially, because our only fear is that if we are not careful the sea erosion will continue to drag us inland.
Susie Waita Fakaia
Some of our piece of lands, especially in lowlands, the sea has already washed away, that's why we get short of land.
Fred Dauburi
At present we are just surviving on just about 50 hectares plot of land. The population of this community is increasing rapidly but a piece of land will not expand.
Richard Kwai
We will have to convince the landowners to allow us extending the boundary. With good negotiation, perhaps we can break through. It also depends on the landlord, if they're willing, they can extend the boundary for us.
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The future ability of the community, and its members, to remain in their new village is at risk, as is protection of their rights.
Landowners in neighboring villages say the Walande community never had permission for long-term settlement, only agricultural use.
Richard Kwai
One of our dreams is to have this land registered by the government so that we are feel secured in the future. The landowner always disturb us with this because they want to return the land from us, but then it's not our agreement with them, but it's our agreement with our ancestors.
Peter Fletcher Wate
Teacher
A lot of young people are flooding out to live somewhere especially in Honiara (capital of Solomon Islands). I also send my picaninny out, children out.
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The Solomon Islands’ government should uphold Walande community members’ rights, including their land rights and right to food.
It should also assess the needs of other communities facing the impacts of climate change, and provide them with adequate support if they request to relocate.
Robert Misimaka
Ministry of Lands Housing & Survey, Solomon Islands
In my view the government of Solomon Islands do seems to forget most of the people in the rural areas. We have representatives from some of these areas, but you know... They fully aware of the situations but they focus on other things apart from what’s supposed to be done when it comes to climate change, so it's kind of a wakeup call for the country because people out there really really need the support of the government, so. There are lots needs to be done.
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The Solomon Islands’ government launched national Planned Relocation Guidelines in 2022.
The Guidelines are a positive step but Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for their implementation are still under development.
Robert Misimaka
At the moment, as we speak, we are still working on our SOP: Standard Operation Procedures. We anticipated that once this is completed this year, then we might try and see how we start working on this.
December 5, 2024
Video Courtesy of the International Court of Justice
John Muria Jnr.
Solomon Islands Attorney General
While the impacts of our changing climate will continue to affect us all, those impacts are not distributed equally. As a small island, developing state and least developed country in the Pacific, Solomons is on the frontlines of the most severe and devastating impacts of climate change.
Harj Narulla
Counsel for Solomon Islands
As a least developed country, Solomon Islands will simply not have the financial and technical capacity to meet the challenges of climate change without the assistance of other states under the Paris framework.
Johnson Sua
So it's everybody's responsibility. The world, the government, ourself here in this village, myself, it's our responsibility.
- Intensifying climate impacts have displaced members of Walande and other coastal communities in Solomon Islands, threatening the enjoyment of their economic, social, and cultural rights.
- Walande community members relocated from a small island to mainland Malaita due to rising seas and intensifying storms, but they face ongoing threats from climate impacts, insecure land tenure, limited access to land, and inadequate support.
- The Solomon Islands’ government should implement its Planned Relocation Guidelines, prioritizing support based on need. The government and high-income countries should expand funding and technical assistance to ensure that frontline communities can relocate or stay in a manner that protects their rights.
(Honiara) – Sea level rise and other climate impacts—compounded by insecure land tenure, limited access to land, and inadequate government support—are undermining the rights of the people of Walande, an Indigenous community in Solomon Islands, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Despite taking the last resort measure of leaving their island home to escape the impacts of climate change, the community is still at risk.
The 66-page report, “‘There’s Just No More Land’: Community-led Planned Relocation as Last-resort Adaptation to Sea Level Rise in Solomon Islands,” documents why Walande community members made the difficult decision to relocate after decades of adapting to climate change in place, how they moved without adequate government and international assistance, and how their enjoyment of their economic, social, and cultural rights is still threatened. Human Rights Watch found that the Solomon Islands’ government has taken important steps to support communities facing the most acute impacts of the climate crisis, including by adopting Planned Relocation Guidelines, but has not yet fully put them in operation.
“Walande’s story is a warning that communities cannot face the climate crisis alone,” said Erica Bower, climate displacement researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Solomon Islands’ government can be a global leader on rights-respecting planned relocation approaches, but only if it urgently implements its guidelines and ensures that communities displaced by the climate crisis have adequate support.” Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 130 community members from Walande and other coastal villages, government officials, and experts, and analyzed satellite imagery, data on adaptation aid, and additional documents.
Walande is a community of approximately 800 people on the coast of South Malaita in Solomon Islands. Until the mid-2010s, the community lived on a small island off the coast. For decades, after being hit by cyclones and storms, the people of Walande would rebuild their houses and adapt in place. However, following devastating “king” tides in 2009, the entire community relocated to the mainland.
Walande’s experience highlights the dangers of government and international donors failing to adequately support community-led planned relocation. Despite requesting assistance, community members largely financed and executed their relocation on their own. The move enabled only short-term safety. Seawater is breaching protective seawalls at the new site and destroying the community’s traditional food sources.
The community has minimal funds to protect itself from sea level rise, has insecure tenure to its relocation site, and lacks access to more land further inland. Some members are considering another relocation. “We look for higher ground—again,” one community member said.
A close-up view highlights land erosion and the disappearance of trees caused by sea incursion, further exposing houses to disasters. (From left to right): May 27, 2010 © 2025 Maxar Technologies. Google Earth. June 2, 2024 © 2025 Airbus. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.
Women in Walande face particularly acute concerns, as their control over land is limited under their province’s patriarchal land tenure system. A few women said that community leaders had pressed them to marry outside Walande as an adaptation measure.
Planned relocation is an adaptation measure of last resort with serious risks. Planning needs to respect human rights principles, such as informed consent, and involve members of relocating communities, like Walande, at all stages of the process. A community’s new site should enable members to enjoy their economic, social, and cultural rights.
The Solomon Islands’ government has obligations under international law to protect communities from foreseeable climate risks, by facilitating rights-respecting climate adaptation and upholding Indigenous rights, customary land rights, and women’s rights. The 2022 Planned Relocation Guidelines establish a strong framework to implement those obligations on paper. But until they are operationalized, relocated and relocating populations remain exposed to the effects of climate change and risks to their human rights.
The Solomon Islands’ government should fully implement the guidelines, including establishing a plan for a countrywide assessment to determine which communities are most exposed to climate hazards and prioritize support based on communities’ needs. The government should also scale up funding for community-led relocations, ensuring that funds cover the costs of not just rebuilding homes and making people safer, but also providing for the full spectrum of rights, including education, health, and cultural heritage.
Under international climate and human rights law, “developed” nations have obligations to support climate adaptation in the least-developed countries, like Solomon Islands. Yet between 2011 and 2021, Solomon Islanders received an average of just US$20 per year in foreign aid for climate adaptation.
A few countries have begun supporting community-led adaptation efforts, including Australia, which supported preparation of Walande’s new site. But international donors should rapidly scale up financial and technical assistance to ensure that Solomon Islands can respond to climate change and frontline communities, like Walande, can adapt in place or relocate with their rights protected, Human Rights Watch said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that “as climate risk intensifies, the need for planned relocations will increase.” Every country with a coastline, at a minimum, needs to anticipate this challenge, learning from past community-led relocations, like Walande’s, and policies, like the Solomon Islands’ guidelines.
“Support for communities on the front lines of the climate crisis is already urgent and will only become more imperative,” Bower said. “Meeting these mounting challenges will not be possible without putting human-rights-centered policies in effect.”
