Protecting Fiji’s natural environment cannot be left to government agencies alone, Environment permanent secretary Dr Sivendra Michael told resource owners at the National Resource Owners Committee workshop in Nadi this week, urging communities to take the lead in stewardship as development accelerates across the country.
Addressing representatives gathered under the NROC banner, Dr Michael said laws and regulations are necessary but not sufficient. “Laws and regulations are important,” he said. “But they are only effective and they are supported by responsible stewardship at the community level.” He warned that failure to pair legal frameworks with active local guardianship risks undermining both environmental assets and long-term community wellbeing.
Dr Michael highlighted the interconnected role of forests and watersheds in sustaining rivers and agriculture, describing the natural environment as “one of our greatest national assets.” He said environmental development must be balanced with responsibility so that communities can benefit from economic opportunities without being pushed to the front lines of economic instability or suffering the loss of cultural identity.
The National Resource Owners Committee (NROC) is a statutory platform established under the Environment Management Act 2005. It brings together representatives of resource-owning communities from Fiji’s 14 provinces to advise the National Environment Council on environmental issues affecting their natural resources. The workshop in Nadi this week served as a forum for those representatives to discuss how community-level action can complement regulatory measures.
Organisers said the gathering aimed to strengthen links between the legal framework and the practical roles of resource owners, emphasising local decision-making in areas such as forest management, watershed protection and sustainable use of land and waterways. Dr Michael’s intervention framed resource owners not as passive beneficiaries of policy but as active partners whose stewardship is essential to ensure development is both sustainable and culturally respectful.
The NROC mechanism places community voices directly into the advisory structure for national environmental governance, a model that government officials have increasingly promoted as the country grapples with competing land uses and climate pressures. While no new statutory changes were announced at the workshop, the event reiterated the Government’s position that effective environmental management requires coordinated action from lawmakers, regulators and the resource-owning communities who manage Fiji’s landscapes.
The committee’s recommendations will be forwarded to the National Environment Council, where they can inform national planning and enforcement priorities. For resource owners in Nadi and beyond, the message from this week’s workshop was clear: protecting Fiji’s natural capital will depend as much on local stewardship as on national policy.
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