Dr Sevanaia Sakai, University of The South Pacific

Sakai’s research topic:The Impacts of Lease Economy in Fiji

“The lease income livelihood strategy resembles the hybrid economy associated with the Indigenous community. In 2001, Jon Altman (2001) introduced the hybrid economy framework as a means of addressing the economic development problem faced by Indigenous people living on Aboriginal land in remote and regional Australia.  The iTaukei, or Indigenous people, of Fiji own 91 percent of the land and constitute 62 percent of the country’s total multiracial population. However, although critical in development discourses, these figures do not quite have the same effect on the development plight of the biggest landowners in the country. As it is, the 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) revealed that 75 percent of iTaukei participants were below the basic need poverty line, the highest of all the ethnic groups living in Fiji. The two months of fieldwork in two iTaukei villages in Nadi explored the relevance of a hybrid economy involving lease income from customary land development as a form of indigenous economic empowerment. The research investigated two different customary land tenure holdings to determine how lease income is invested at the individual, family and community levels and its related impacts. One compelling piece of evidence from this research is the response of landowning units to native law amendments, which encouraged communal investment of lease income to sustain the socio-economic, cultural and environmental wellbeing of both communities. On the other hand, poor individual land governance stemming from land law illiteracy is a major obstacle to improving commercial land utilization.”  

Dr Sevanaia Sakai, University of the South Pacific