What happens to a country when the land it was built on goes beneath the sea? Not metaphorically. Literally. It's a question international law has never had to answer, and for the Pacific it now comes with a deadline. Sea levels in the region are rising at roughly 3 to 4 millimetres a year, faster than the global average, and faster still in some locations due to local subsidence and ocean currents. This essay examines what that means for statehood, for maritime boundaries, and for peoples who have lived on their islands for three thousand years.

Pacific Dispatch is an audio essay series from Fiji Political Review. The written essay is available at fijipoliticalreview.com.

Australia and Fiji have signed the Vuvale Union, a framework agreement spanning security, the economy and people-to-people ties, and one of the sharpest questions in Pacific development is whether agreements like it build self-reliance or erode it. In this episode, Associate Professor Andrew Levula speaks to Fiji Political Review about The Vuvale Union and the Dependency Trap. They discuss what a dependency trap looks like in practice for a small island state, why the agreement's full text remains unpublished despite cabinet approval, the migration of more than 15,000 Fijians in the past 15 months and what genuinely indigenous-led development would require for Fiji to grow on its own terms.

Hosted by Lanieta Tukana, founding editor of the Fiji Political Review.

Subscribe now and join us for Episode 1, coming soon.

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