Chronic and repeated disaster displacement took an enormous psychological toll on Walande community members. Residents told Human Rights Watch about their anxiety during extreme events. For Anna S. (61), whose home was among the most exposed and first destroyed, “life was hard on the island … it was easy for our homes to fall down. I was not able to sleep well, I feared the noise of the waves.”[45] Retired nurse, Ellen R. (70), described the emotional devastation caused by the 2009 king tide: “My body still shakes. The trauma stays with me because I hadn’t seen waves like that before. They came suddenly [and] swept the village … That was when we saw that Walande did not have a bright future.”[46]  Walande community members said that as the destruction of the island worsened, anxieties mounted over time and across generations. Grandparents expressed concern for the psychological and physical wellbeing of future generations. Meanwhile, community leader, Henry T. (38), shared his experiences as a young person during relocation decisions: “We saw the king tide and we were afraid … We looked to the future and knew more was to come. We talked to our parents about our fears. We convinced them to move.”[47]  Even more than the physical loss of property, the emotional experience of displacement was what lingered and pushed the community to contemplate planned relocation.

Planned Relocation as a Solution for the Internally Displaced and an Adaptive Measure of Last Resort

Facing the sobering realities of chronic disaster displacement and the disappearance of their island home, the people of Walande debated their narrowing options and ultimately developed a proposal for planned relocation as a last resort.[48]   

For the families who had abruptly evacuated and remain displaced due to the sudden-onset cyclone and king tides that hit Walande, beginning in the mid-1980s, the planned relocation to the mainland offered a path to a durable solution—a way for them to get back on their feet and build towards a safer future.[49] But for those who had not yet lost their homes, the planned relocation was a strategy undertaken over many years to prevent and reduce chances of future displacement. As Stephen M. (62) recounted, “We moved before the [king tides could] destroy us first.”[50] In both cases, members of the community saw that planning their own relocation to the mainland was a potential alternative to the serious losses and suffering of abrupt evacuations and protracted displacement.[51]  

Many Walande community members were understandably reluctant to relocate; it was truly a last resort. While community members first began discussing the idea of relocating in the late 1980s, following Cyclone Namu, community members did not all move at once. The community formally adopted a relocation plan in 1996, but many families continued to live on the island as long as they could, until the 2009 king tides, because of deep attachment to the land and their way of life. According to one of the last people to move, Alfred N. (66), “We are saltwater people. We fish and we swim; all that we do is with the water. We must live next to it.”[52] Many described the losses of their homes and ways of life after relocation and shared the views of Agnes T. (53), who told Human Rights Watch: “We were born on that island, we wanted to die on that island.”[53] Walande’s experience shows how no matter how well-planned, a relocation will inevitably involve losses.

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II. Relocating Without Adequate Government Support

Walande community members are proud of the resourcefulness and resilience that enabled them to relocate, despite significant obstacles and minimal government support. But they did not want to have to relocate on their own. Community members sought assistance from the Solomon Islands’ government and international actors, but they received an inadequate response. The absence of adequate support provided by governmental actors in the period from 1986 to the mid-2010s was a failure to protect the rights of Walande community members, and members faced significant financial burdens to relocate independently. It is urgent that the national government and international donors ensure that other communities in Solomon Islands do not face the same challenges and can relocate in a manner that respects and protects their rights.

Throughout the relocation process, Walande leaders repeatedly requested assistance from the national government to help carry out the relocation initiated and envisioned by the community. Specifically, Walande community members asked government officials to help the community obtain enough registered land for the community’s new site, mediate disputes over land with other communities, assess risk at the new site, and build new homes and services.[54]

But the government’s interventions were minimal and did not satisfy these requests. In the aftermath of massive destruction caused by Cyclone Namu in 1986, the National Disaster Management Office’s response was limited to dropping tents from a helicopter to serve as temporary shelters and providing ten cartons of nails. Community members used these nails in constructing houses on the mainland for the first wave of families who relocated.[55] After the Walande community adopted a relocation plan in 1996, they requested funding from the Australian High Commission in Honiara to bulldoze and prepare a new mainland site for settlement.[56] The Commission provided  funds, and the Solomon Islands’ Office of Rural Service Development drew up a plan for the relocation site in 1996, delineating ideal locations for houses and community infrastructure, and laid a foundation for a new church on the mainland.[57] However, the Office offered no further technical or financial support to implement the planned relocation.

Otherwise, community members financed and implemented the relocation themselves. Every family contributed money to the relocation, both from villagers in Solomon Islands and through remittances from community members working in the nation’s capital, Honiara, and abroad.[58] Walande community members also received in-kind support from neighboring communities, such as when volunteers from another village helped them to construct the church in their relocation site. Walande community members invested hundreds of hours of time and labor in carrying out the relocation—time that was taken away from fishing and their other livelihoods.

To make decisions regarding relocation, community members of Walande drew on their preexisting, strong community-based governance system. Community convenings in the village occur often and with broad participation. “When [someone] blow[s] the conch shell, everyone knows to gather and discuss,” noted one focus group member,[59] highlighting the deep sense of connection and mutual responsibility that exists among community members. Through these existing systems, Indigenous leaders and local authorities held regular meetings for decision-making throughout the relocation and site development process. Community-led efforts were supported by the Walande Association, which is comprised of villagers who live in Honiara, and who liaise between Walande community members and the national government and outsider stakeholders, and relay decisions the community makes about climate adaptation.

On paper, in the Planned Relocation Guidelines, the Solomon Islands’ government has committed to fulfilling its obligations and ensuring that other communities do not have to relocate without assistance.[60] The Guidelines—which were published after Walande’s relocation effort—state that if a community has decided to relocate, national, provincial, and local government actors should provide members with resources and technical assistance to identify a climate-resilient relocation site, plan how to move members and infrastructure, and ensure community members’ wellbeing, customs, and right to housing among others.[61]

Walande community members are calling on the national government and international donors to ensure that their interventions are not top-down but rather create conditions for locally led climate adaptation solutions. This involves external actors recognizing local and Indigenous knowledge and not presupposing that external experts have all the answers. As Patrick N., a Walande resident, emphasized, the community has lived experience of climate change and knows what it is doing to members of Walande—“Now we need help.”[62] On these points, the Guidelines have promising provisions: they stipulate that Indigenous knowledge and local customs must be respected during the planned relocation process, and recognize that planned relocations are more likely to be successful if they are led by communities.[63]

Implementing the Guidelines will better enable the Solomon Islands’ government to uphold its obligations to its people and to showcase to other nations why supporting a community-led and rights-respecting approach to planned relocation is a critical investment of time and money.

III. Human Rights Concerns at the New Walande Site

Fifteen years since most people moved to the mainland in 2009—to the community’s 46-acre relocation site, known as Tetele—the Walande community has not yet found a durable solution and continues to grapple with threats to its members’ rights.[64] Failure to address the risk of sea-level rising threatens and is already undermining their economic, social and cultural rights. HRW has documented specific impacts on the right to food and land rights, in particular for women.

Ongoing Risks Posed by Sea Level Rise

Since Walande’s relocation, the landscape of Tetele has been visibly transformed. Joy K. (29), a new mother who lives by the coast, observed, “The sea is eating up the shore.”[65] The oldest person in the relocated village of Walande, Evalyn H. (90), told Human Rights Watch: “We moved to get away from sea rise. But the sea reaches our house, even here [on the mainland]. Salt kills our flowers and fruit trees.”[66] Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch shows that between 2010 and 2024, about five hectares of land located just a few hundred meters south of the relocation site, as well as dozens of trees located between the mainland and the island site for Walande, were submerged.

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Impacts on the Right to Food

The ongoing sea-level rise threatens Walande members’ food security.  Walande community members have traditionally sourced most of their food from fishing and subsistence farming. Swamp taro (Cyrtosperma chamissonis) has been a culturally and nutritionally critical crop for Walande and other communities in Solomon Islands for generations. Swamp taro requires low salinity freshwater conditions and harvests size are declining in Tetele as sea level rise increases salinization in low-lying coastal cropland across the Pacific.[67] Community leader, Robert T., recounts that historically, the community planted swamp taro along the coast; “Now the sea rises and destroys everything ... It's all gone.”[68] Attempts by community members to grow taro further inland have produced smaller and less nutritious swamp taro, according to community members. Moreover, fishing, a traditional livelihood, has become a less viable for Walande members, in part because fish habitats have been destroyed by storms and, inadvertently, by members of Walande who took rocks and coral from the ocean to build small sea walls.[69] The threats to the community’s food supply have already driven some members to move to the capital, Honiara, or elsewhere.[70] Without interventions, rising sea levels are likely to pose further threats not just to Walande members’ enjoyment of their right to food.  

Gaps in ‘Climate-Proofing’ the Relocation Site

After having to relocate with little government assistance, the Walande community has been left on its own, even after relocation, to withstand ongoing and worsening climate-related hazards. A Walande community leader living in Honiara, John K., secured US$50,000 in grants from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme, which Walande members used in 2021 to construct a sea wall to protect the community from further sea level rise.[71] The community spent the money on mesh to hold the rocks forming the wall together and to pay community members to construct it. Men, women, and children from Walande built the sea wall from rocks and coral they hauled from the old, now submerged island site.[72]

But the wall has proven to be insufficient, and Walande members lack the resources to repair and buttress it. Days before Human Rights Watch visited in September 2024, heavy rains and winds that did not even rise to the magnitude of a cyclone had toppled part of the sea wall structure. The wall is now nearly submerged at high tides. John K. (74) explained that they want to bolster the sea wall by layering cement on its sides and along the top to prevent rocks from falling.[73] But Walande members do not have the additional US$25,000 that John K. estimates is required to complete this task. Community members spent the grant funding received in 2021 to build the sea wall, and they have not received further support from national or local government authorities to repair the wall or take other localized adaptation measures.  

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The national Planned Relocation Guidelines recognize the need to continue assisting communities to adapt to climate change, even after relocation. The Guidelines state, “Relocation is not an endpoint but one of the many steps in strengthening climate adaptation and resilience,” and note that the Solomon Islands’ national government should collaborate with local actors to “climate-proof” the relocation site—i.e., to help it withstand future climate hazards—and “support and facilitat[e] new adaptation planning.”[74]

Yet with respect to Walande, the Solomon Islands’ government has not delivered on its obligations to community members, at their new site, which is compounding the inadequate support that the government provided to Walande community members during their process of relocating to the mainland. If the Solomon Islands’ government had provided greater technical and financial support to the community decades ago during the relocation process, the challenges the community is facing today at its relocation site would likely be less acute. The national government should urgently heed the Planned Relocation Guidelines and help the community access financial and technical resources to protect their new site from pressing climate hazards by, for instance, reinforcing the sea wall.

Walande’s Limited Access to Land and Insecure Tenure

The most pressing challenge facing Walande as the community plans for the future is, in one resident’s words, that “there’s just no more land.”[75]

The land tenure system in Malaita province is customary and patriarchal, based on kindship relations and agreements. Walande community members chose Tetele as a relocation site because the community has customary tenure claims to it.[76] The land was originally given to the saltwater people from Walande by the mainland bush tribe in the 1940s. There is documentation of mainland Chief Mou Paine giving the land to Walande Chief, Maelasi, stating “the land is yours until the end of the world,” and that this was approved by the British District Officer of Malaita.[77]

But Walande members’ tenure to reside in and use Tetele is insecure. Residents’ claims to Tetele are not formalized in government records, which increases the chances of contestation of the security of their tenure. Communities holding land that borders Tetele are now contesting that the rights transferred under the agreement that allowed the people of Walande to use land for agricultural purposes, but not settlement. These other communities suggest that such claims should be abrogated given needs arising from their population growth and resource scarcity.[78]

Additionally, Tetele is too small for the Walande community, whose population has been increasing in recent years.[79] Some Walande members already cannot find a plot for their new housing or gardens; there is no room on the site to build a health center, so Walande members depend on a poorly staffed clinic in a nearby village. Walande community members have not been able to access more land on their own. Community members lack customary tenure over any land near Tetele. The surrounding communities have not been receptive to informal land negotiations for Walande members regarding occupation or use rights to additional land, including purchase of new land.[80]

Impacts on Food Security and Conflict

Rising sea levels and saline intrusion reduce the amount of land on which Walande members can cultivate food. The scarcity of land, combined with population increase, also threatens Walande members’ food security. Emily N. (51) shares that if the community cannot access more land, “hunger will come in: people will have no place to grow taro and other crops” that are staples for the community.[81] Land scarcity has also been driving small-scale conflicts among community members within Tetele and between Walande members and those in other communities. So far, community leaders have been able to mediate these conflicts, which are worst during what some community members referred to as “hunger times,” when not even swamp taro is available. A community member predicts that if their land is not expanded, these conflicts will intensify.[82]

The limitations on land availability have become so severe that some community members told Human Rights Watch that they are already hoping to plan another relocation further inland. Evalyn H., told Human Rights Watch that as the sea intrudes on Tetele, “We look for higher ground—again.”[83]

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Need for Government Intervention

Walande members have requested but not received help from the provincial government to formalize its claims to its relocation site and to mediate negotiation with surrounding communities. Robert T. noted that years ago, the community applied to record and register its claim to the land through the appropriate provincial government channels but has yet to receive a response, despite repeated requests.[84] Walande members have exhausted informal land negotiations to try and access more land and many expressed their desire for government support to navigate the land dispute and negotiate with inland communities for more land.

Both national and provincial offices in the Solomon Islands’ government have recognized that they need to help communities identify relocation sites where they can have secure land tenure,[85] which are steps that the government has not yet taken for Walande. A representative from the Ministry of Lands told Human Rights Watch, “Walande is one of the communities that we really want to visit because now and then they wrote in request [for] support from the government,” but he explained, “we lack financial resources” and “we don’t have a clear direction of how we can handle” the situation in Walande, until the SOPs are finalized.[86] 

The Guidelines affirm “the need to promote community-led processes for negotiating new land arrangements (including access to coastal and marine areas)” for relocating communities and detail how the provincial and national government should “support” these processes before a community relocates.[87] The Guidelines also outline mechanisms to address land-related disputes that may emerge in the planned relocation process,[88] stipulating that the local committee should address disputes between members of the relocated community and that any complaints between relocated persons and entities in charge of relocation planning can be escalated to the Honiara-based national Ombudsman.[89] Additionally, the Guidelines stress the need for the government to spread awareness about these mechanisms to relocating and host communities.[90]

But the Guidelines do not provide detailed guidance on how government officials should navigate land disputes between relocated and host communities. The SOPs should clearly articulate specific mechanisms for addressing such land disputes, given that they have already arisen in Walande and elsewhere. Such mechanisms may include mediation drawing on peace-building methodologies and quasi-judicial powers, where necessary.

Additionally, the commitments made in the Guidelines on negotiating land disputes are significant, but they focus on steps the government can take prior to a community relocating, and as Walande’s experience highlights, communities that have already relocated may face land insecurity. National and provincial government officials should extend the commitments outlined in the Guidelines to work with both relocating and already relocated communities, like Walande, to ensure that disputes are mediated, land tenure is secure and that relocation sites meet the community’s rights.[91]

On the national level, this includes developing and implementing SOPs to inform government stakeholders on how to acquire and record land in a rights-respecting manner.[92] It also includes continuing efforts to make title over customary land more secure and to reduce conflicts over land—such as the process the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Survey launched to record customary land in three provinces, including Malaita, under the Customary Records Act.[93] The Malaita provincial government should respond to Walande members’ requests to register their claims to Tetele and work with Walande leaders and leaders of neighboring communities to navigate disputes and support in acquiring more land in anticipation of population growth.[94]

Increase in number of houses at the relocation site since 2003, 2010 and 2024. (From left to right): December 8, 2003 © 2025 Maxar Technologies. EUSI. May 27, 2010 © 2025 Maxar Technologies. Google Earth. June 2, 2024 © 2025 Airbus. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.

Critically, Walande community leaders and other members told Human Rights Watch that they did not know that the Guidelines existed, let alone how to access the dispute mechanisms described, underscoring the need for government officials to raise awareness about the Guidelines’ purpose and contents.

Unique Land Access Challenges for Women

The scarcity of land in Walande exacerbates women’s lack of autonomy in Malaita’s patriarchal land tenure system and undermines women’s ability to have a say in where they move during planned relocation. Traditionally, communities in Malaita follow a patrilocal system where women move to where their husbands live. However, women are generally not permitted to return to their original villages, even if widowed.[95] With land scarcity, these traditional norms are further entrenched, reinforcing discriminatory practices that perpetuate inequality between women and men in how community land is used and managed. A group of twenty Walande women shared in a Human Rights Watch focus group that they felt like women were being, in one participant’s words, “put aside.”[96] One woman urged, “Government should help to secure more land because women would like to have the freedom to remain [in Walande] even when they are married [to someone from outside the community].”[97] Many others echoed this sentiment. A representative from the Lands Ministry acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that decisions around land “more than sometimes leave women out,” and stressed that women’s voices “must be heard.”[98] The Planned Relocation Guidelines reiterate this point.[99]

In the absence of adequately supported planned relocations, adaptation choices that families and communities are making have infringed on women’s rights. In Malaita, community members observe long-held customs of intermarriage between members of different tribes.[100] Community members in Walande and in other communities across Malaita told Human Rights Watch of cases in which authority figures within the community pressured young women to use marriage as a climate adaptation strategy, including by choosing a spouse who has secure tenure over land that is more insulated from climate hazards. As one worried woman described: 

Young [women] are being married off to boys higher [up on] the mainland because some families just need that security, so that when their homes submerge, at least they've got a connection on the mainland ... [it] is not good because we’re basically marrying off our … daughters for security in the future.[101] 

One 19-year-old said that she and other women her age, whose families struggle financially to support them in school, feel the need to “look for husbands,” and to choose a spouse “who has a good family with no fighting over land” and has land far from the sea.[102] Research from other contexts has shown that disasters intensified by climate change are one factor pushing women to marry earlier,[103] although it is unclear how widespread this new climate-related aspect of marriage decision-making is in Malaita. Still, the examples cited of pressure on young women underscore why it is critical to provide communities with comprehensive support to stay or move on their own terms.

For Walande, securing more land over which community members have secure tenure would help to address threats to their rights to food and housing caused by climate change impacts. It would also help the community ensure that women have equal land rights as men and that young women’s rights are not further eroded by harmful practices such as coercive marriages.

IV. Barriers to Accessing Funding for Community-Led Adaptation Solutions

“It’s been over 20 years since we relocated to mainland. I am frustrated because no one helps us … as a Solomon Islander, what can our government do for us? Our own government does not recognize and help us during the hard times … well, I heard of huge money for climate change. But the question is: where is the money going? Where is the money? We just heard it with our ears, but we have nothing to see with our eyes.”[104] 

These words from Brian S. (61), a Walande resident, underscore how the Solomon Islands’ government and international donors have failed to provide the community with adequate financial assistance to relocate and pursue durable solutions that fulfill their rights at the new relocation site. After being forced to finance much of its own relocation, the community now does not have the means to reinforce the sea wall protecting its new site or acquire more land for housing and food, given its growing population. It is urgent that the Solomon Islands’ government create non-discriminatory, rights-respecting, and adequate funding mechanisms for communities that choose relocation as their adaptation strategy of last resort. It is similarly urgent for international donors to finance adaptation solutions in Solomon Islands that can guarantee members’ rights during and after relocation, and in contexts where the community does not wish to relocate. To facilitate these actions, there needs to be more transparent, rigorous data worldwide to ensure more accountable and equitable funding decisions.

Inadequate Funding for Relocation

Costs of Relocation

In the absence of adequate government funds, Walande members had to finance the community’s relocation in an ad hoc manner, making the total cost of the relocation challenging to calculate. Community leaders estimate the entire process cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every family in Walande had to shoulder the cost of rebuilding its own new home in the mainland site—estimated at US$23,000 per household, by one community leader[105]—and contributing labor to construct the village meeting hall, church, school and other communal facilities. Most Walande community members rely on subsistence agriculture, fishing and the occasional sale of dried seaweed for income, so these financial burdens were heavy. The only external funding Walande obtained was the funds provided by the Australian High Commission to clear the relocation site,[106] and most recently, US$50,000 for a seawall at the relocation site from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme, which awards grants to community-led adaptation projects and other grassroots solutions.[107]

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Globally, there are persistent data gaps about how much it costs to carry out rights-respecting planned relocations. It is evident that relocating an entire village of people, homes, and services requires significant financial resources,[108] and typically costs more than initial estimates,[109] underscoring why flexible and long-term funding is necessary. But more transparent, rigorous information on the ultimate costs of relocation is needed to better understand the amount of funding that should be allocated to carry out rights-respecting planned relocations, and to ensure more equitable and accountable adaptation funding decisions.

Inadequate Domestic Funding

Solomon Islands does not yet have a centralized approach to funding and planning for relocations, which undermines its ability to deliver on its obligations with regard to climate-related planned relocations and impedes communities’ abilities to adapt to the climate crisis. This was evident, for instance, in thwarted attempts to relocate by the small islands of Ngongosila and Kwai off the eastern coast of Malaita, where Human Rights Watch also visited. These island communities decided to relocate to the mainland as far back as 2005. Without formal funding channels for their relocation, former Member of Parliament (MP) Joseph Sanga championed their cause and even purchased a parcel of land to which they could relocate.[110] MP Sanga’s efforts did not succeed. He died before the transaction could be formalized or relocation completed, and the communities of Ngongosila and Kwai, which do not have other claims to land on the mainland, are left exposed to worsening climate impacts and without further governmental support.[111]

Such individual actions are not alternatives to the Solomon Island’s government providing needs-based, non-discriminatory support to communities that are exposed to climate hazards and request support. The Guidelines recognize this issue and detail the need for national and provincial authorities to undertake a countrywide needs assessment to determine which communities are most exposed to climate hazards and for the most exposed communities to be prioritized for support.[112]  The government, together with communities, should assess needs and estimate budgets for planned relocation that entails not just rebuilding homes and making people safer, but also provides for the full spectrum of rights, including education, health, and cultural heritage.

Additionally, the Solomon Islands’ government should determine how to make more funding available for communities that choose to relocate as a measure of last resort, which the Guidelines do not address. One action the government can take is creating a focal point, such as in the Office of the Prime Minister, to coordinate implementation of Guidelines and SOPs across ministries and provincial governments and ensure that what happened to Ngongosila and Kwai is not replicated. Additionally, Solomon Islands should consider emulating its neighbors who are piloting dedicated domestic sources of funding for internal planned relocations.[113] For example, Fiji’s Climate Relocation of Communities Trust Fund is the world’s first dedicated, national fund for planned relocations.[114] It receives funding from a variety of sources, including a portion of a domestic tax on all tourism operations in Fiji.[115] At a COP29 side event, a government representative from Solomon Islands stated that the government is interested in developing a similar national fund.[116]

While it is urgent for Solomon Islands to make more funding available for rights-respecting relocations, it should not have to act alone: high-income countries have obligations to assist with adaptation efforts in nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis, such as Solomon Islands, as discussed further in the next section. High-income countries should contribute technical assistance, as well as funding, to improve governance of planned relocation and, in turn, equip Solomon Islands to receive more funds from international donors. A representative of an international organization commented to Human Rights Watch that if the Solomon Islands’ government can improve its governance on planned relocation—for instance, by creating “really robust” SOPs for the Planned Relocation Guidelines—that will, in turn, give international donors confidence that the government can manage funds efficiently and in a rights-respecting manner.[117]

Inadequate International Funding

In international climate accords since 2009, “developed” countries have pledged billions of dollars in climate financing for “developing” countries.[118] This funding is distributed through multilateral, regional, and national climate funds, bilateral development assistance institutions, and a variety of other mechanisms, including some to which communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis can apply directly.[119] However, high-income countries have fallen far short of their commitments and have contributed only a fraction of what Pacific Island nations and other small, climate-exposed countries need to adapt to climate change.[120] Between 2010 and 2021, for instance, the amount of international aid that Solomon Islands received for climate adaptation—from bilateral and regional donors, international climate funds, and multilateral development banks—translated to an average of just US$20 per Solomon Islander per year [121] (see total development finance for 2010-2021 in figure).[122] This is far less than the current and future amount of funding needed to protect the rights of Solomon Islanders.

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It is unclear how much of that and subsequent aid Solomon Islands has received has covered expenses related to climate-related planned relocation: funding received in this period may have gone towards costs associated with planned relocation, even though it was not explicitly demarcated as such by funders.[123] Only one grant (US$200,000) from the aid Solomon Islands received from 2010 to 2021 was explicitly designated as being related to planned relocation, and this funded the development of the national Planned Relocation Guidelines, not any particular relocation.[124]

In Solomon Islands and beyond, more transparent data on spending related to planned relocations is needed to improve knowledge about communities’ needs and the funding gaps communities continue to face.[125]

Barriers to Accessing International Funding

Solomon Islands face obstacles to accessing existing adaptation financing. For instance, Solomon Islands is one of many Pacific Island nations that has not yet received accreditation to receive funding from the Adaptation Fund or Green Climate Fund (GCF), the world’s largest fund dedicated to climate.[126] According to GCF’s Independent Evaluation Unit, the fund’s accreditation requirements “disadvantage” SIDs, many of which have lacked the human resources to meet the funds’ public financial management requirements and complete intensive accreditation applications.[127]

Similarly, multiple funding applications that the Walande Association has submitted to UN agencies and other international organizations were rejected on the basis that the Association did not meet accreditation requirements.[128] John K., a Walande community member who lives in the capital Honiara, who submitted these and dozens of other grant applications to international NGOs and UN agencies for adaptation funding, noted several additional factors that make it difficult for Walande to receive aid. It is extremely time consuming to search for aid opportunities, which are disaggregated across many different agencies and often hard to find. Funding applications are long, complex, labor-intensive, and must be submitted online. Walande is a small, rural village without Internet access or consistent cell phone service; its community cannot afford to hire professional grant writers.[129] John K. also shared that he often feels unclear what donors expect from communities in their funding applications and is frustrated by the lack of support that donors give Walande and other communities to navigate funding opportunities.[130]

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For Walande, the funding that the community was able to obtain from the Australian High Commission and GEF to cover expenses related to its planned relocations was vital, but piecemeal and inadequate in its duration and scope for accomplishing the relocation and protecting the relocation site. The community needed large amounts of flexible funding to cover the cost of rebuilding community members’ homes at the relocation site, installing water, building communal centers and climate-proofing the new site. Increasing the amount of bilateral and multilateral funding available, with appropriate accountability mechanisms to ensure funding is spent for this purpose, is urgent not just for Walande, but for the numerous other communities facing imminent threats of sea level rise and considering relocation, such as the islands of Ngongosila and Kwai.

Towards Adequate Funding and Support for Community-led Adaptation

In Solomon Islands and beyond, bilateral and multilateral climate donors (see Figure above with largest adaptation donors 2011-2021) have launched several promising initiatives that direct adaptation funding to community-led adaptation solutions, based on communities’ needs. For instance, in 2024, Solomon Islands launched the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL), through which New Zealand, the European Union, and United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDP) have dedicated over US$15.6 million to “finance locally-led climate adaptation projects identified by communities and provincial governments” in Solomon Islands.[131] The GEF Small Grants Programme, which awards grants of up to US$75,000 to local community based organizations and NGOs, has so far distributed US$58,000 to five different community associations which gives grants up to US$75,000 to local community based organizations and NGOs, has so far awarded US$58,000 to five different community associations in Solomon Islands—including Walande’s—for community-led adaptation solutions such as constructing sea walls, replanting mangrove trees, and other coastal protection measures.[132] Beyond Solomon Islands, New Zealand contributed over NZ$5 million to Fiji’s relocation trust fund.[133] Scotland contributed GBP£5 million to the Climate Justice Resilience Fund,[134] which funds community-led climate resiliency solutions primarily in East Africa, the Artic, and Bay of Bengal.[135] Many of these initiatives are new, and their flexibility, durability and accessibility by communities will need to be continuously evaluated over time. They are positive first steps towards ensuring that communities have more predictable and durable climate adaptation financing to relocate on their own terms, and more, similar commitments are urgently needed.

Moreover, climate donors should also expand the technical assistance they provide to help Solomon Islands improve governance and financing for adaptation. A representative from the Ministry of Lands told Human Rights Watch, “We need capacity building for the ministry, the technical capacity, the manpower and tools – all this could really support us in terms of the relocation aspects … with some lessons learned from other countries on how we can set this up.”[136] Such support will, in turn, equip Solomon Islands to receive more funds from international donors.[137]

Ensuring Planned Relocation Is a Last-Resort Measure

While it is critical for the Solomon Islands’ government to systematize funding for communities choosing to plan relocations and for bilateral and multilateral donors to increase funding that can be used if necessary, planned relocation is not always, or even often, the solution that most aligns with community needs and rights.

Recognizing this principle, Solomon Islands’ Planned Relocation Guidelines specify that planned relocations are last resort measures that can only be taken “after other measures to facilitate adequate adaptation have been exhausted,” and after an Integrated Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment of the community is undertaken.[138] The SOPs should center this last-resort principle and additional rights-respecting criteria for when to fund, or not to fund, a planned relocation as climate adaptation: for instance, that relocation can only take place if the affected community has given informed consent, and that the knowledge of local and Indigenous people, alongside Western scientific information, are adequately considered in determinations of whether, when and where to plan relocation.

International climate funds and other multilateral and bilateral donors should develop similar criteria to prevent their funds from being used for coercive relocations, and to ensure that whatever solution a community elects—relocating or adapting in place—is backed by adequate funding aligned with human rights.

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V. Obligations of the Solomon Islands’ Government and International Community

The 2022 Planned Relocation Guidelines incorporate multiple references to the need for relocation processes to protect people’s rights, and recognize that voluntary, planned and coordinated relocation may be necessary for people to “enjoy their rights under customary, national and international law, fulfilment of which is necessary for relocation to be durable.”[139] The Guidelines also note that the government “bears primary responsibility under international law to respect, promote, and fulfil the human rights of Solomon Islanders. This includes the obligation to take preventative as well as remedial action to uphold such rights and to assist those whose rights have been violated.”[140]

Solomon Islands derives its human rights obligations from customary international law, as well as a number of international human rights treaties to which it is party, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),[141]  the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),[142] the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),[143] and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).[144] Solomon Islands’ obligations under international climate instruments such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)[145] and Paris Agreement should be informed by its obligations under international human rights law and vice versa.[146]

While the full plethora of Solomon Islands’ obligations under international human rights law should be taken into account during planned relocations, a select few are examined in further detail below.

Solomon Islands’ Obligations

Facilitating Rights-Respecting Climate Adaptation

Like all governments, Solomon Islands has international human rights obligations to address climate change, including by adopting and implementing robust and rights-respecting climate adaptation policies that are consistent with the best available science. As a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Solomon Islands has undertaken to facilitate adequate adaptation for its people, and, in the process, has acknowledged the need to “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights … the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities … and people in vulnerable situations.”[147]

States’ existing human rights obligations require them to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of those harmed by climate change, including all their economic, social and cultural rights, such as the rights to food, housing, and health. This includes obligations to dedicate the maximum available resources toward the progressive realization of economic, social, and cultural rights.[148] With respect to climate change, specifically, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which monitors compliance with the ICESCR, has warned states that “a failure to prevent foreseeable human rights harm caused by climate change, or a failure to mobilize the maximum available resources in an effort to do so, could constitute a breach” of their human rights obligations.[149] The Committee stressed states’ human rights obligations under the ICESCR should guide them in their design and implementation of measures to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.[150]

In the context of adaptation, an element of fulfilling these obligations is acting to reduce the risk of exposure to environmental harms that pose a real risk, in the reasonably foreseeable future, to the enjoyment of a life with dignity. The more knowledge a state has about a harm’s likelihood and severity, the stronger its obligation to intervene.[151] Recent decisions of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), which oversees states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[152] underscore the need for states to act before a risk becomes imminent and certain.[153] While not a party to the ICCPR, the Solomon Islands’ government has the same legal responsibilities to address flood-related harms to residents’ homes and private and family lives that communities like Walande have already experienced, and to minimize exposure to projected future harm to communities caused by sea level rise.[154] This legal obligation requires consideration of infrastructural and other forms of adaptation in place, both for communities that have not yet relocated and those, like Walande, which have relocated but are still exposed to climate hazards.

However, where a community can no longer adapt in place to increasingly acute climate hazards, Solomon Islands may need to consider planned relocation to move them out of harm’s way in order to fulfill its obligations. As noted in International Guidance on Protecting People from Disasters and Environmental Change through Planned Relocation (2015 Guidance), states’ obligations to “prevent and reduce disaster risk and exposure to it, and to address the negative impacts of environmental change, including climate change ... may require Planned Relocation in order to protect persons or groups of persons.”[155]

In the context of climate-related planned relocations, mobilizing adequate resources means not just making more funding available to communities who request support to relocate, but also ensuring that the nature and amount of that funding fulfills members’ rights during and after relocation. As emphasized in the Solomon Islands’ Planned Relocation Guidelines and international guidance on planned relocations, any planned relocation should at minimum restore, or ideally improve, the climate resiliency and standard of living of relocating people and their host communities.[156]

Planned relocation carries its own risks and requires policies grounded in dignity and human rights principles. While the Solomon Islands’ government should support rights-respecting planned relocation where requested, as was the case in Walande, it should under no circumstances forcibly relocate communities who want to adapt in place.

Various international guidance and tools exist to support national governments to interpret how relevant rights may be protected in planned relocations that are last-resort, necessary measures. These include the 2015 Guidance from UNHCR, Brookings and Georgetown,[157] and a 2017 Toolbox on Planning Relocations to Protect People from Disasters and Environmental Change, which provides checklists of further specific questions to consider in operationalizing these rights-based principles.[158] The 2024 Report by the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Internally Displaced Persons—the first time a UN special procedure has recognized the human rights issues arising in the unique contexts of community-wide planned relocations—reiterates states’ obligations to uphold human rights during relocation processes.[159] Furthermore, while not directly focused on community-wide relocation, the UN’s 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement,[160] the Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement,[161] and the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States[162] contain provisions essential to framing governance of planned relocation in the Solomon Islands’ context.

Upholding Indigenous Community Rights

For Indigenous communities who are facing acute climate hazards, like Walande, Solomon Islands has obligations to protect individual rights as well as collective rights to self-determination in relocation decision-making, culture, and land, underscoring the importance of centering community leadership in the planned relocation process. Indigenous peoples make up the majority of the Solomon Islands’ population,[163] but Solomon Islands has not yet endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)[164] or ratified the ILO Indigenous and Tribal People’s Convention, 1989 (No. 169), which contains important provisions for ensuring protection of land rights, livelihoods, and health services, all of which are implicated by planned relocations.[165] Notwithstanding, Indigenous peoples’ rights are grounded in customary international law and human rights treaties that are legally binding on the Solomon Islands’ government, such as the ICESCR, and must be respected.[166] In line with such human rights standards, it is essential that Solomon Islands ensure its climate change adaptation policies do not further harm Indigenous peoples, and that Indigenous communities are informed, consulted, and core participants in decision-making around climate-related planned relocations and other adaptation strategies.[167]

Protecting Customary Land Rights

Additionally, as it negotiates land disputes that will continue to arise as Solomon Islander communities adapt to climate change, the Solomon Islands’ government should respect and protect Solomon Islanders’ customary land rights enshrined in domestic and international law. The Land Titles Act of 1969 recognizes occupation of land by virtue of customary tenure and protects Solomon Islanders’ right to conduct land transactions that are valid under customary tenure systems.[168] The Constitution affirms the unique, significant importance of land for Solomon Islanders. It stipulates that only Solomon Islanders or other individuals granted permission by Parliament can hold a perpetual interest in land.[169] Several human rights instruments protect individuals and communities from arbitrary interference with their property and land. CESCR has emphasized that protections to land rights apply whether or not individuals hold formal title, and “[n]otwithstanding the type of tenure.”[170] Thus, climate-exposed communities in Solomon Islands who relocate to land to which they have customary claims should have those claims respected. The government should also take steps to support relocating communities to negotiate, seek consent, and compensate local communities to acquire customary land for climate adaptation.

Protecting Women’s Rights

Even as Solomon Islands safeguards customary land rights, it should uphold the rights to equality and non-discrimination and ensure that women in Malaita and other groups who may be marginalized by discriminatory traditional norms around customary land use and control, are given full voice and autonomy in decision-making related to land governance, climate adaptation, and marriage. CEDAW, to which Solomon Islands has been a party since 2002, requires states to work towards eliminating harmful traditional beliefs, values, stereotypes, and practices.[171] They should not invoke “traditional values” to justify violations of human rights.[172] Several human rights instruments affirm the right to marriage based on “full and free consent” of the spouses.[173] This means the Solomon Islands’ government should ensure that women’s rights are protected within the legal framework, as well as customary and traditional laws in the nation’s plural legal system.  

High-Income States’ Obligations to Facilitate Rights-Respecting Adaptation in Solomon Islands

The Paris Agreement requires that “developing” countries receive “continuous and enhanced international support” to implement their mitigation and adaptation obligations, including through financial assistance from “developed” countries.[174] This reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), which acknowledges that responsibility among countries is unequally distributed due to their differing contributions to the causes of climate change and their varying economic capacities, a principle also embedded in the UNFCCC.[175]

Human rights instruments bolster this legal obligation and provide guidance on the nature of support that high-income countries should provide. The ICESCR confers positive duties on states to fulfil the “progressive realization of rights” both “individually and through international assistance and cooperation.’”[176] States, particularly high-income ones, have committed to “cooperate to mobilize the maximum of available resources for the universal fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights” and “provide international assistance to contribute to the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights in other States.”[177] These commitments are increasingly significant as climate change weakens the capacity of Solomon Islands and other climate-exposed states to adapt to climate change and fulfill their obligations under the ICESCR.[178]

Solomon Islands has already recognized that planned relocation will have to be a last-resort, preventative adaptation strategy for many communities.[179] Consistent with obligations to the Paris Agreement and ICESCR, high-income states should provide low-income countries like Solomon Islands and communities like Walande with adaptation assistance by scaling up financial and technical support for autonomous, community-led, human rights-respecting planned relocation.[180]
 

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Erica Bower, climate displacement researcher, and Charlotte Finegold, legal fellow, from the Environment and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

Ruth Maetala, Travis Maetala, and Margaret Sandy from Dignity Pasifik provided essential partnership and support during fieldwork and graciously shared their feedback on earlier drafts. 

This report was edited by Maria Laura Canineu, deputy director, and Richard Pearshouse, director, in the Environment and Human Rights Division. Sari Bashi, program director, and Aisling Reidy, senior legal advisor, provided program and legal review. Specialist review was provided by Nadia Hardman, researcher and advocate in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division; Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu, senior researcher in the Women’s Rights Division; Sylvain Aubry, deputy director in the Economic Justice and Rights Division; and Daniela Gavshon, Australia director in the Asia Division. Léo Martine, Carolina Alvarez, and Sam Dubberley analyzed satellite imagery, and Brian Root assisted with quantitative analysis. The report was prepared for publication by Travis Carr, publications officer. Hellen Huang, senior associate in the Environment and Human Rights Division, provided invaluable support throughout the process. 

Most importantly, the authors acknowledge the experts, activists and leaders from Walande and other communities that continue to face the impacts of climate change across Solomon Islands. Their willingness to share the lived realities of planned relocation not only contribute to greater understanding of this complex issue but also serve as a powerful reminder of what community leadership in the face of the climate crisis looks like.