Vanuatu Communities Growing Climate Resilience

Koroi
Hawkins, RNZ Pacific Editor
Christina
Persico, RNZ Pacific Bulletin
Editor

Communities in Vanuatu are learning to grow
climate resilient crops, 18 months after Cyclone Lola
devastated the country.

The category 5 storm
struck in October 2023, generating wind speeds of up to
215 kilometres per hour, which destroyed homes, schools,
plantations, and left at least four people dead.

It
was all the worse for following twin
cyclones Judy and Kevin earlier that year.

Save
the Children Vanuatu country director Polly Banks said they
have been working alongside Vanuatu’s Ministry of
Agriculture and local partners, supporting families through
the Tropical Cyclone Lola Recovery Programme.

“It
really affected backyard gardening and the communities
across the areas affected – their ability to pursue an
income and also their own nutritional needs,” she
said.

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She
said the programme looked at the impact of the cyclone on
backyard gardening and on people’s economic reliance on what
they grow in their gardens, and developed a recovery plan to
respond.

“We trained community members and also
provided them with the equipment to establish cyclone
resilient nurseries.

“So for example, nurseries that
can be put up and then pulled down when a harsh weather
event – including cyclones but even heavy rainfall – is
arriving.

“There was a focus on these climate
resilient nurseries, but also through that partnership with
the Department of Agriculture, there was also a much
stronger focus than we’ve had before on teaching community
members climate smart agricultural techniques.”

Banks
said these techniques included open pollinating seed and
learning skills such as grassing; and another part of the
project was introducing more variety into people’s
diets.

She said out of the project has also come the
first seed bank on Epi Island.

“That seed bank now has
a ready supply of seeds, and the community are adding to
that regularly, and they’re taking those seeds from really
climate-resilient crops, so that they have a cyclone secure
storage facility,” she said.

“The next time a cyclone
happens – and we know that they’re going to become more
ferocious and more frequent – the community are ready to
replant the moment that the cyclone passes.

“But in
setting the seed bank up as well, the community have been
taught how to select the most productive seeds, the seeds
that show the most promise; how to dry them out; how to
preserve them.”

Banks said they are also working with
the Department of Agriculture in the delivery of a
community-based climate resilience project, which is funded
by the Green Climate Fund.

Rolled out across 282
communities across the country, a key focus of it is the
creation of more climate-resilient backyard gardening, food
preservation and climate resilient nurseries.

“We’re
also setting up early warning systems through the provision
of internet to really remote communities so that they have
better access to more knowledge about when a big storm or a
cyclone is approaching and what steps to take.

“But
that particular project is still just a drop in the ocean in
terms of the adaptation needs that communities
have.”

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