Forests of change

Exploring nature-based solutions in Vanuatu

By Nakau

August 2^nd, 2022

The people of Vanuatu have a long-held connection to incredible forest ecosystems of big old trees, birds, animals and insects. For centuries the rainforest has provided them with homes, food, medicine, cultural identity and protection from extreme weather.

But like many Indigenous communities around the world, customary landowners in Vanuatu are caught between protecting their valuable forests and earning money to survive.

From the mid-1800s to the 1980s, forests in Vanuatu were heavily logged. Cutting commercial round logs for export is now illegal in the country and yet many forests remain degraded and clearing forests for cattle, coconut plantations, crops and large-scale agriculture is ongoing.

Protecting Pacific rainforests is one of the most important defences against the impacts of climate change, and it's a core reason why Nakau is working with local partners in Vanuatu to explore forest carbon as a nature-based solution in a way that allows customary landowners to combine traditional knowledge with ecosystem protection so they can continue to put nature and community first.

This work is part of Climate Resilient by Nature, supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and WWF-Australia in partnership with Live & Learn.

Nakau and Live & Learn Vanuatu have been talking to Indigenous landowners and exploring new sites for locally owned carbon projects in communities already working closely with Live & Learn Vanuatu.

Among the sites is Penoru — home to around 150 people and a full day’s journey from Lugonville, the main town on Santo Island. In 2011, they became the first group in West Santo to establish a 3,192 hectare community conservation area to self-manage their forest use and ensure parts were left undisturbed.

Like most rural ni-Vanuatu communities, “the Penoru community have a strong connection with their natural environment, especially their community conservation area” says Rexly Bune, Forest Carbon Officer with Live & Learn Vanuatu.

“The community depend on their forests for fruits, nuts, firewood, building materials — and to hunt for food,” he says.

“They use the forest for medicine too. Because Penoru is so remote, when someone is unwell they often go to a healer for a remedy that comes from the forest.”

But land use in Penoru has evolved to include cash crops like kava, cocoa and copra. And while their self-managed conservation area model works to some degree, the pressures of survival have meant farmers have started degrading forest that should be protected to make way for kava cash crops.

Climate change and conservation

Part of the problem comes down to the fact community conservation areas don’t have a way of compensating landowners for the cost of not farming within the boundaries of protected forest.

When faced with increasing economic challenges — rising fuel prices and transport to access local markets, communication needs and general cost of living — even small-scale farmers feel under pressure to meet these demands, sometimes by encroaching on their conservation area.

In doing so they are eroding their most valuable resource and unique biodiversity, and ultimately making their communities more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Pacific forests are one of the big defences against the impacts of climate change in this region.

To understand how Penoru could continue to protect their forest , the Live & Learn team needed to understand where the community sat in terms of income, land use and climate change knowledge. They ran Penoru's first climate change training session, along with focus group discussions and land-use planning workshops to help design a project that works best for them.

"This training helped the community think about ways to deal with the different changes happening in the community," said Penoru resident Wartutu Molisa.

"Ni-Vanuatu people live and are anchored to living with the soil so I know this will benefit the community in the near future.

"There is a need for more workshops like this to happen, as climate change cannot be stopped and with these trainings and workshops it will help the people in the community adapt to these changes."

Finding a nature-based solution

To support a move away from land-clearing, forest communities need an alternative that provides levels of income that can compete with what they’d receive through clearing or logging a rainforest for crops and timber.

These alternatives also need to be nature-based solutions that stand the test of time and contribute to a community-led narrative around the importance of healthy ecosystems. Protecting and restoring forests is inseparable from the need to support the people who own them, depend on them, or make their homes within them.

Protecting and restoring forests is inseparable from the need to support the people who depend on them.

Committed to forest protection

For many Pacific communities, forest carbon projects are an excellent solution because they provide a financial alternative to destructive land-clearing or logging. We've seen the success of this kind of work in Loru, also on Santo Island, and in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

Yet not all communities fit clearly into a forest carbon solution package, despite their forests being severely degraded. And in some cases, a forest carbon project is simply not the answer.

This was the case with Penoru. Although their forests are depleting, it is not of the scale that fits with the rigorous criteria for a viable carbon project, and it was found a climate resilience project with Live & Learn was the best way to support their conservation efforts for now.

But this also highlights one of the challenges in the nature-based solutions approach: how do communities not eligible for carbon projects receive the support they need to develop, or even survive, while protecting these valuable ecosystems?

Nakau has worked with a number of communities who own and manage high-conservation forest — intact forest that should be protected — but who are not eligible for a carbon project because the threat to the forest is not considered severe enough. These forests are still threatened but the local Indigenous landowners are being left out of the current carbon finance frameworks.

At Nakau, we believe deeply in the integrity of carbon projects as a nature-based solution for many forest communities. But we need to find solutions for other communities who care for biodiverse-rich forests too.

Each context across the Pacific region will be different, and projects will vary depending on location, the community and the governance systems we must work within.

But in all projects, we meet the community where they’re at and work out — together — how their project can work best for them to protect and restore rainforests, and strengthen community resilience to climate change.

Climate Resilient by Nature

This story is featured on the Climate Resilient by Nature knowledge hub — a community of knowledge exchange to help make nature-based solutions work for people and nature across the Indo-Pacific.

Nakau and Live & Learn Environmental Education are working in partnership to restore and protect critical ecosystems, and to build sustainable livelihoods and community resilience to climate change through sustainable carbon finance. This work is supported by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and WWF-Australia through Climate Resilient by Nature — a new initiative advancing equitable nature-based solutions to climate change.