Marica Malumuca's village, Nabavatu, was declared unsafe in 2021 after two cyclones cracked the ground beneath it. She now lives in a temporary settlement of 37 tents in Savadrua, some housing up to seven people. Her son, Sami Veloko, moved home from the city to care for her while they wait for Nabavatu to be rebuilt.
"Those people who stay in these tents, they used to stay in a good house, a cement house, a wooden house, of a high quality," he said. "You cannot believe, even they themselves cannot believe, that they stay in this kind of tent."
The United Nations has warned that tropical cyclones are becoming more severe due to rising sea levels and heavy precipitation, with over half of Pacific Island countries' infrastructure located in at-risk coastal areas.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is attending the pre-COP event in Fiji, with Australia spending millions of dollars on the lead-up talks as part of a broader regional security strategy to become the "partner of choice" for Pacific islands. However, Australia's continued expansion of fossil fuel projects has been labelled a "slap in the face" to Pacific nations, many of whom are on the front lines of climate change.
Mr Veloko had a message for the visiting leaders: "We are getting the effect of climate change and we are the vulnerable people, the Pacific people. Because of what they have contributed to carbon dioxide, the industrialisation that they have developed in their countries, we are getting the worst of it."