Cyclone Gita in 2018 caused damage equivalent to 38 percent of the country’s GDP, while initial assessments of last month’s volcanic eruption shows damages of around 3 percent of GDP in the agricultural sector alone.įor most small island nations, disaster management and recovery are not new issues. Since 2015, Tonga has weathered three extremely destructive category 5 cyclones (with other less powerful ones in between), a drought and an enormous volcanic eruption and tsunami. According to the 2021 World Risk Report, which includes 181 countries, this island nation of just over 106,000 people has the third-highest disaster risk worldwide, surpassed only by Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.* This is in part a result of being geographically remote and low-lying, and of its location in the seismologically active Pacific Ring of Fire. Like many other developing nations that are small islands, Tonga is prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and floods. In other words, how can the country’s infrastructure, communication systems and approach to development be redesigned to match the resilience of its people? The current effort to rebuild is a prime opportunity to set a new course towards a 21st-century reality that is safer, smarter, more robust and more investment-friendly for Tongans and the rest of the Pacific region. But I am worried about the resilience of the land and the infrastructure, as Tonga is under constant threat of natural disasters, and lacks much of the funding and resources to manage them effectively.Īs the nation recovers, I ask, what kind of future does Tonga envision for itself in 10 years? What about 20? Or 50? This vision is critical as we learn more about climate change and its role in the frequency and strength of natural disasters. As a Tongan expatriate, I can attest to the resilience of the people there. A few days later, amid heat and humidity, scores of people all over Tonga came out to clean up debris and ash, even sweeping airport runways clean so aircraft carrying disaster relief could land.īarely two weeks later the Tonga prime minister announced nationwide lockdown after the country recorded its first cases of community transmission of COVID-19. On January 15 the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano erupted in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga, generating ashfall and a tsunami that affected 84 percent of the country’s population.
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