Lovely bunch of coconuts (Fiji)

Spend a few weeks visiting indigenous villages in the Pacific, and you get use to the taste of coconut. Little bits of coconut appear with the rice, the bread, the meat, the fish, and even the drinks, if you are foolish enough to accept some homebrew coconut "wine".

Despite what one may think surveying the spread at a lovo, a traditional Fijian BBQ, the vast majority of the coconuts harvested in Fiji are not used for food. They go toward the production of coconut oil. In that sense, it is very similar to that popular crop, the soybean. A visit to the health food store gives the impression the popularity of soybeans is due to the number of vegetarians clamoring for tofu. But the vast majority of the world's soybeans are actually used to produce animal feed or soybean oil.

It is the production of soybeans in other parts of the world that precipitating changes in copra production (coconut flesh) in villages in Fiji. As soybeans became a popular cash crop in places like the US and Brazil in recent decades, the price of coconut oil dropped. In turn, it became harder for villagers in many parts of Fiji, especially the Yasawa Islands, to make a living cultivating copra. So they have looked for other sources of income.

When I first visited Fiji seven years ago, there were only three simple Fijian-run resorts in the Yasawa Island chain. All three were on the island of Tavewa, a piece of freehold land owned by the descendents of a European (who had acquired the island after marrying a woman from a neighbouring Nacula over 140 years ago). Now there are over twenty basic resorts in the Yasawas, operated by villages looking for a new source of income.

The change has had an impact on local people and the local environment. Walk along the beach on Tavewa at low tide and you're likely to step in a few patches of dark green weeds (see top photo). The weeds only began growing a few years ago. The most obvious culprit is nutrient pollution from the small local-run resorts on the island. The word "resort" is an exaggeration; each features just a few traditional huts, a central dining area and usually shared bathroom facilities. But on an isolated, seasonally dry island, a few more people living near the beach can translate to a significant increase in sewage and a lot more nutrients seeping out to the reef flat and promoting plant growth.

This, to steal a popular term in ecology, could be called a land use "cascade": soybean cultivation expands in one part of the world, the demand for coconut oil drops, coconut cultivation decreases in Fiji, and people turn to tourism for income. The influx of tourists brings other local social and environmental pressures like the degradation of water quality and possibly reductions in live coral cover.

One could never reasonably argue that the expansion of soybeans in the US and Brazil are directly to blame for the weeds growing inside a reef in the Yasawas. The local people are complicit in any damage done to their marine environment. It is only a reminder that, with the current global exchange of goods, especially in agricultural products, changes in one region will always have unintentional and maybe unpredictable effects in distant countries. Nothing on this planet happens in isolation.