Coastal villages throughout the Solomon Islands rely on selling fish for household incomes. Selling fish in Auki, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Australia, Apr 29 2026 (IPS)

It is an invisible contaminant that has been found in fisheries, an essential part of the food chain for many Pacific Islanders. Mercury, emitted from fossil fuel power generation and other industrial processes around the world, has now penetrated marine ecosystems in the Pacific Islands with detrimental consequences for people’s health and wellbeing.

But island states, supported by scientific expertise at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and funding by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest multilateral fund  for the environment, are implementing the action needed. The Mercury Free Pacific campaign is forging progress to protect islanders and their natural habitats from poisoning.

“Our communities face mercury risks from two main sources: what we eat, fish, and what we use in our homes and workplaces,” Emelipelesa Sam Panapa, Chemical Management Officer at the Department of Environment in the Polynesian atoll island nation of Tuvalu, told IPS. “Fish is the most widespread and challenging risk. It is not just food; it is central to our culture, livelihood and food security.”

The Mercury Free Pacific Campaign has brought together Pacific Island nations and the expertise of the SPREP and UNEP and been made possible with funding by the GEF. Credit: GEF

Mercury is a natural element in the Earth that has been released into the atmosphere for millennia through volcanic events and rock erosion. But human-generated, mostly industrial, processes have accelerated the build-up of mercury emissions. Metal processing facilities, cement works, the production of vinyl monomer and coal-fired power stations are the biggest contributors to the high levels of mercury in the atmosphere today.

From 2010 to 2015 alone, global anthropogenic mercury emissions rose by 20 percent, reports the UNEP. Coal-burning processes account for about 21 percent of all emissions. And this is projected to increase if a further 1,600 planned coal-driven power stations, on top of the existing 3,700 worldwide, are built. Already mercury in the atmosphere is about 450 percent above natural levels, reports UNEP.

After travelling long distances, mercury emissions then deposit in oceans. And toxicity begins when natural bacteria in aquatic environments mix with mercury, transforming it into Methylmercury, which is a neurotoxin. In the Pacific region, Methylmercury has contaminated beaches, coral reefs and fisheries, including swordfish, shark, tuna and mackerel, that are commonly consumed daily. Seafood is an important source of protein for up to 90 percent of Pacific Islanders and contributes to cash-based livelihoods for about 50 percent, reports the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Today mercury is named one of the top ten chemicals of concern to public health by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the danger is especially acute in women and children. It can, in higher doses, inflict damage on cardiovascular organs, kidneys and the nervous systems of pregnant women and subsequently affect organ development of the foetus.

A fisherman on the coast of Funafuti, Tuvalu, throwing a weighted net out into the seawater, a traditional form of fishing. Credit: Rodney Dekker / Climate Visuals

The results of a medical study conducted by the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) confirmed health concerns.  Testing for traces of mercury in 757 women, aged 18-44 years, in the developing island states of the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific Oceans, including the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga and Marshall Islands, revealed that 58 percent possessed a level in their bodies that exceeded the safe threshold of 1ppm Hg. Researchers concluded the most likely cause was the high consumption of contaminated fish. In comparison, women who consumed lower amounts of fish and seafood recorded the lowest levels of mercury.

However, islanders also encounter toxicity in their households. Mercury is used in the production of common imported consumer products, such as fluorescent light tubes, electrical switches, dental amalgam fillings and skin lightening cosmetics. But it is when these products reach the end of their lives and are discarded that mercury is at risk of lingering indefinitely in the environment.

“The core of the problem is that mercury-added products are not being separated from municipal solid waste, and there are no local facilities for the environmentally sound disposal of mercury waste,” Soseala Tinilau, SPREP’s Hazardous Waste Management Advisor, told IPS. Also, “medical waste incineration sites are identified as potential sources of mercury emissions to the air.” And in some locations, raw sewerage flows have contributed mercury waste due to affected products being washed down drains into waterways and the sea.

A challenge is that waste management systems in many Pacific Island countries are constrained by lack of capacity, technology, resources and infrastructure. “There are no local facilities for the environmentally sound disposal of mercury waste. Therefore, a system for packing, exporting and disposing of this waste in an approved facility abroad is a critical need,” Tinilau specified.

Fisheries, susceptible to mercury contamination, are a major source of food and protein for Pacific Islanders. Fish market, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Several years ago, numerous Pacific Island states, including Kiribati, Palau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, joined the Minamata Convention. The first global agreement to reform the ways in which mercury is used, phase it out in industries and develop better waste management practices, among other measures, came into effect in 2017.

Now governments in the region are drawing further on the power of multilateral collaboration in the Mercury Free Pacific initiative. The expansive mandate of the GEF-funded project includes conducting national surveys of mercury contamination, educating local communities about the risks, reviewing exposure to mercury-added consumer products, reforming waste management practices and assisting governments to develop relevant legislation.

The GEF is funding US$12.6 billion in environmental projects currently underway globally, which are expected to generate a further US$80.5 billion in co-financing. And it has a long view of its commitment to the Mercury Free Pacific project through its GEF Islands program, with goals outlined until at least 2030.

Anil Bruce Sookdeo, the GEF’s coordinator for Chemicals and Waste, elaborated that in the Pacific the GEF has provided US$1.5 million for gathering mapping data, its analysis and developing action and remedial plans in eleven Pacific Island nations, including the Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

A further US$2 million is allocated to supporting national responses, such as devising effective legislation, community awareness programs and improving waste management processes. The campaign “represents a long-term regional objective, rather than a time-based project and requires sustained commitment and coordinated action by Pacific countries, regional institutions and partners,” he emphasised.

GEF funding has empowered Tuvalu, a country comprising nine coral islands and 11,800 people in the South Pacific, to make strides in its whole-of-society response to the issue.  The government has been able to strengthen its capacity and expertise, organise media awareness campaigns and oversee consultation with industries, communities and civil society organisations.

“For the first time, we have a national estimate of where mercury is coming from…we are beginning to understand the risks to our people and we have a roadmap for future action,” Panapa said in outlining the benefits of the Mercury Free Pacific initiative. At the same time, “these efforts represent the beginning of a longer journey to build community understanding and change behaviours related to mercury-added products, waste disposal and dietary choices.”

But a mitigation goal at the top of the list is to prevent mercury from reaching the islands. “Making marine life safe from mercury contamination is not about eliminating mercury already present in the ocean, but about preventing further contamination and managing the risk of exposure,” Tinilau said.

This means, among other measures, restricting the importation of mercury-added consumer products and galvanising global action to halt mercury emissions. Global consensus on phasing out coal-fired power stations and reforming industrial processes would be a start.

Pacific Island countries are demonstrating the political will and action with “regional coherence, national ownership and sustained momentum toward reducing mercury risks to human health, the environment and food systems in the Pacific,” emphasised Sookdeo from the GEF. Now, big emitters need to heed the urgency of reducing emissions at their source.

Notes: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

Cyclone damage in Vanuatu. Credit: UNICEF/ReliefWeb

By Tanka Dhakal
THE HAGUE, Jul 30 2025 (IPS)

Legal minds in international law are trying to interpret the scope and impact of the landmark advisory opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where it said that states have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment.

The court ruling says that the states have a responsibility to cooperate internationally to prevent the impact of climate change. It didn’t directly link climate change and the health crisis but recognized the health aspect through the “right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.” Organizations advocating for the health-related actions in the climate change discussion are saying the court opinion affirmed “climate crisis as health crisis.”

Yamide Dagnet, Senior Vice President, International The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), noted the advisory opinion made three things clear.

• All countries have an obligation to address climate change under international and customary laws, beyond their commitments under the Paris Agreement.
•  It provides legal leverage to seek reparations from major emitters, including from the fossil fuel industry.
• Small islands will keep their statehood if their land disappears due to sea level rise—as illustrated by the Rising Nation Initiative, Global Centre for Climate Mobility—thus boosting their efforts to preserve their sovereignty, rights, and cultural heritage with dignity.

Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director at the Global Climate and Health Alliance said the court has delivered a historic affirmation that the climate crisis is a health crisis-and failure to act is a failure to protect life

“This ruling confirms that governments and corporations have a legal duty to prevent further harm, uphold the right to health, and safeguard future generations,” she said in a statement. “From deadly heat and toxic air to disease and displacement, the Court’s message is clear-human health is not collateral damage.”

The ICJ issued its ruling on July 23 in response to a United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution led by Vanuatu, the small island nation in the Pacific, which knocked on the ICJ’s door asking for an advisory opinion on the obligation of the states to address climate change and its legal consequences.

Following a long hearing last December, the ICJ delivered its first opinion on climate change. “The case was unlike any that have previously come before the court,” President of the International Court of Justice Judge Yuji Iwasawa said while reading the court’s unanimous advisory opinion. “This case was not simply a legal problem but concerned an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet.”

Pivotal moment for climate and health justice

While addressing planetary health, the court laid out the case for the impact of human-induced climate change and its impact on growing health concerns. In its ruling the court took note of participants discussing the existence of a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

During the hearing of the case in December Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus testified to the court and said climate change is fundamentally a health crisis. “The climate crisis is among the most significant health challenges facing humanity today,” he said during his testimony to the court.

Experts believe that health workers and advocates now have powerful legal backing to demand bold, science-based climate action rooted in justice. They are still reviewing the court’s opinion to make a more nuanced analysis and said it marks a pivotal moment for climate and health justice. Shweta Narayan, Campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said the ruling affirms the urgency of comprehensive, rights-based action that addresses both immediate health harms and the root causes of the crisis.

“This represents a major step forward in reframing the climate crisis as fundamentally a health crisis-and in mobilizing the legal, scientific, and political tools needed to respond,” she adds.

“This ruling strengthens the moral mandate to place health at the center of climate negotiations, including in adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance frameworks.”

The court used the human rights approach to address the health aspect of climate change in its ruling. In a rapid legal analysis, Vanuatu, who led the campaign for the opinion, also welcomed the ruling.

“The opinion integrates international human rights law, identifying the rights to life, health, an adequate standard of living, and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as directly threatened by climate change,” the Vanuatu Climate Justice Program said in a statement. “It affirms that environmental protection is a precondition for their enjoyment.”

Dagnet added that it demonstrated the power of activism.

“The students of Vanuatu dared to dream big and challenge the status quo, and it paid off with what could end up being one of the most important milestones in the global climate fight. I am thrilled at the landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision to validate some of the most ambitious climate priorities championed by vulnerable states over the last 50 years.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

International Court of Justice at the announcement of its advisory opinion on climate change. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
THE HAGUE & JOHANNESBURG, Jul 23 2025 (IPS)

The case was “unlike any that have previously come before the court,” President of the International Court of Justice Judge Yuji Iwasawa said while reading the court’s unanimous advisory opinion outlining the legal obligations of United Nations member states with regard to climate change. This case was not simply a “legal problem” but “concerned an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet,” Iwasawa said.

“A complete solution to this daunting and self-inflicted problem requires the contribution of all fields of human knowledge, whether law, science, economics or any other; above all, a lasting and satisfactory solution requires human will and wisdom at the individual social and political levels to change our habits, comforts, and current way of life to secure a future for ourselves and those who are yet to come,” the opinion read.

The opinion was welcomed by Ralph Regenvanu, Minister of Climate Change Adaptation, Meteorology & Geo-Hazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Management for the Republic of Vanuatu.

“Today’s ruling is a landmark opinion that confirms what we, vulnerable nations have been saying, and we’ve known for so long, that states do have legal obligations to act on climate change, and these obligations are guaranteed by international law. They’re guaranteed by human rights law, and they’re grounded in the duty to protect our environment, which we heard the court referred to so much,” Regenvanu said.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, legal counsel for Vanuatu’s ICJ case and international lawyer at Blue Ocean Law, hailed the opinion, saying it even held the United States, which recently under President Donald Trump recently withdrew from the Paris Agreement, as it bound all states within the United Nations.

Wewerinke-Singh said the opinion meant that the “era where producers can freely produce and can argue that their climate policies are a matter of discretion—they’re free to decide on the climate policies—that era is really over. We have entered an era of accountability, in which states can be held to account for their current emissions if they’re excessive but also for what they have failed to do in the past.”

The detailed advisory opinion dealt with obligations of states under various climate conventions and treaties and humanitarian law.

The court concluded that in terms of the climate agreements, state parties

• To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have an obligation to adopt measures with a view to contributing to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change.
• Have additional obligations to take the lead in combating climate change by limiting their greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing their greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs.
• To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, have a duty to cooperate with each other in order to achieve the underlying objective of the convention.
• To the Kyoto Protocol must comply with applicable provisions of the protocol.
• To the Paris Agreement have an obligation to act with due diligence in taking measures in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities capable of making an adequate contribution to achieving the temperature goal set out in the agreement.
• To the Paris Agreement have an obligation to prepare, communicate and maintain successive and progressive, nationally determined contributions, which, when taken together, are capable of achieving the temperature goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
• State parties to the Paris agreement have an obligation to pursue measures which are capable of achieving the objectives set out in their successive nationally determined contributions.
• State parties to the Paris agreement have obligations of adaptation and cooperation, including through technology and financial transfers, which must be performed in good faith.

In addition, the court was of the opinion that customary international law sets forth obligations for states to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

These obligations include the following:

• States have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence and to use all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.
• States have a duty to cooperate with each other in good faith to prevent significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment, which requires sustained and continuous forms of cooperation by states when taking measures to prevent such harm.
• State parties to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the ozone layer and to the protocol and to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete ozone layer and its Kigali amendment, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa, have obligations under these treaties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
• State parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea have an obligation to adopt measures to protect and preserve the marine environment, including from the adverse effects of climate change, and to cooperate in good faith.

However, the court did not end there; it was of the opinion that states have obligations under international human rights law and are required to take “measures to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Debris left after Cyclone Winston in 2016. At least 44 people died, and any villages were completely destroyed. Credit: Vlad Sokhin / Climate Visuals

By Tanka Dhakal
THE HAGUE, Dec 5 2024 (IPS)

At The Hague, the United Nation’s highest court heard Fiji, a small island nation, lay out its arguments on the threat posed by climate change and the legal obligations, especially those of developed nations.

On Wednesday, December 4, 2024, Fiji argued that the failure to act on climate change is a violation of international law and that nations have a duty to prevent harm, protect human rights, and secure a livable future for all.

Luke Daunivalu, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN in Geneva, laid out the background of suffering caused by sea level rise and worsening hazards on people who bear the brunt of climate impacts.

“Fiji stands before here, not only for our people but also for future generations and ecosystems,” Daunivalu said.

“Our people in climate vulnerable countries are unfairly and unjustly footing the bill for a crisis they did not create. They look to this court for clarity, for decisiveness, and for justice.”

Daunivalu was addressing the International Court of Justice (ICJ). At the request of Vanuatu, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of UN member states in preventing climate change and ensuring the protection of the environment for present and future generations. While its advisory opinion will not be enforceable, the court will advise on the legal consequences for member states who have caused significant harm, particularly to small island developing states.

Graham Leung, Fiji’s Attorney General, argued that international law imposes clear obligations on states to address climate change.

“We are not here to create new laws, but to ensure compliance with existing international laws.”

Citing the European Court of Human Rights precedent-setting judgment in April this year, which held that Switzerland has a responsibility under the European Convention for Human Rights (ECHR) to combat climate change effectively to protect the human rights of their citizens, Leung said, “States can be held individually accountable for their contributions to climate change. Similarly, it was affirmed that states failing to meet the obligations bear responsibility for their actions.”

U.S. Opposed Creation of New Legal Obligations

While Fiji was demanding more action from the nations who are largely responsible for the human-caused climate change impacts, countries like the United States argued against the creation of new legal obligations or determined reparations and stressed the importance of due diligence in addressing transboundary harm.

Margaret Taylor, an attorney at the Department of State who represented the U.S., said her country “recognizes the climate crisis as one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced.

However, climate change was an issue for the entire planet.

“It is global in its causes, resulting from a wide variety of human activities worldwide that emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, including super pollutants such as methane. Such activities include not only the burning of fossil fuels for energy production but also agriculture, deforestation, and industrial processes.”

Taylor emphasized that there was already a framework for climate action initiated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement and asked the court to preserve and promote the centrality of the UN climate change regime.

The U.S. argued advisory proceeding is not the means to litigate past violations or determine reparations but rather to guide future conduct.

“I want to underscore that there is no basis to apply any bifurcated or other categorical differentiation of duties among states, such as between those characterized as developed and those sometimes characterized as developing. There is simply no legal foundation for such an approach,” Taylor said.

She repeatedly brought up the concept of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, reflecting the principle that obligations should be interpreted according to national circumstances.

The U.S. also emphasized its commitment to addressing the climate crisis, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero not later than 2050. She focused on the Paris Agreement’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the UNFCCC framework highlighted as central to international cooperation.

Russia Says 1.5°C is Not Binding

At the ICJ, Russia also supported the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, emphasizing national differentiation in climate efforts and the non-binding nature of the 1.5°C temperature goal. Like the US, Russia also underscored the need for international cooperation and the role of human rights in climate action.

Representing Russia, Maxim Musikhin, Director of the Foreign Ministry Legal Department, said, “There is no basis to consider the States are obligated to adopt measures to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C for similar reasons; the transition from fossil fuels is not a legal obligation but rather a political appeal to states.”

Russia argued that the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is discussed in the climate change framework, but it has not crystallized in customary international law.

But Spain, who addressed the ICJ before the U.S. and Russia, argued the need for a human rights-based approach to climate change, highlighting the link between environmental degradation and human rights violations. It highlighted the environmental crisis as a global social crisis with a direct impact on the protection and enjoyment of human rights.

Vanuatu’s Disappointment

After the ICJ’s proceeding on Wednesday, Vanuatu expressed its disappointment. Ralph Regenvanu, Special Envoy for Climate Change and Environment for the Republic of Vanuatu, stressed that destruction of the climate system is unlawful, and big polluters must be held accountable.

“We are obviously disappointed by the statements made by the governments of Australia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China during the ICJ proceedings. These nations, some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, have pointed to existing treaties and commitments that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions.”

Regenvanu said in a statement, “Let me be clear: these treaties are essential, but they cannot be a veil for inaction or a substitute for legal accountability.”

At the court, frontline counties are pushing for clarification of the legal obligations of nations responsible for anthropogenic climate change. On Wednesday, Fiji urged the court to declare the failure to act on climate change a violation of international law and affirmed that states have a duty to prevent harm, protect human rights, and secure a livable future for all.

Leung urged the court, “Let this be the moment when the cries of the vulnerable are heard.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Most vendor tables are empty in the large fresh produce market in Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila, due to the widespread devastation of food gardens and crops by Cyclones Judy and Kevin in early March. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Vanuatu , Apr 4 2023 (IPS)

One month after the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu was hit by two Category 4 cyclones within three days, food scarcity and prices are rising in the country following widespread devastation of the agriculture sector.

In the worst affected provinces of Shefa and Tafea, the “scale of damage ranges from 90 percent to 100 percent of crops, such as root crops, fruit and forest trees, vegetables, coffee, coconut and small livestock,” Antoine Ravo, Director of Vanuatu’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development told IPS.

Vanuatu is an archipelago nation of more than 80 islands located east of Australia and southeast of Papua New Guinea. More than 80 percent of the population of more than 300,000 people were impacted by Cyclones Judy and Kevin, which unleashed gale-force winds, torrential rain and flooding across the nation on the 1 March and 3 March. Properties and homes were destroyed, power and water services cut, seawalls damaged and roads and bridges blocked.

In the aftermath, many households turned to their existing stores of food and any fresh produce that could be salvaged from their food gardens. But these have rapidly depleted.

In the large undercover fresh produce market in the centre of the capital, Port Vila, about 75-80 percent of market tables, which are usually heaving with abundant displays of root crops, vegetables and fruits, are now empty. Many of the regular vendors have seen their household harvests decimated by wind and flooding.

Susan, who lives in the rural community of Rentapao not far from Port Vila on Efate Island, commutes

Regular market vendor, Susan, lost much of her garden produce during the two cyclone disasters and is selling dry packaged food, such as banana chips, instead. Central Market, Port Vila, Vanuatu. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

daily to the market. “The cyclones destroyed our crops and our homes. We lost a lot of root crops and bananas. Today, I only have half the amount of produce I usually sell,” Susan told IPS. But, faced with the crisis, she quickly diversified and, alongside a small pile of green vegetables, the greater part of her market table is laden with packets of dried food, such as banana and manioc or cassava chips.

Agriculture is the main source of people’s income and food in Vanuatu, with 78 percent and 86 percent of households in the country relying on their own growing of vegetables and root crops, respectively, for food security and livelihoods.

But, as families grapple with increasing food scarcity, they have also been hit by a steep rise in prices for basic staples that are the core of their daily consumption. A cucumber, which sold for about 30 vatu (US$0.25) prior to the disasters, is now priced from 200 vatu (US$1.69), while pineapples and green coconuts, which could be bought for 50 vatu (US$0.42) each, also sell for 200 vatu (US$1.69).

Leias Cullwick, Executive Director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, said that, in the wake of the cyclones, children were experiencing deprivation and anxiety. “Water is the number one concern [for families] and, also, food. And children, when they want water and food, and their mother has none to give, become traumatised,” she told IPS.

Lack of clean water and contamination by the storms of water sources, such as rivers and streams, in peri-urban and rural areas is also causing illnesses in children, such as dehydration and diarrhoea. Meanwhile, the current wet season in Vanuatu is increasing the risks of mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria and dengue fever, Cullwick added.

It will take months for some households to regain their crop yields. “Root crops have been damaged, and these are not crops that you plant today and harvest tomorrow. It takes three months, it takes six months, it will take a while for communities to get their harvests going, so it’s a concern,” Soneel Ram, Communications Manager for the Pacific Country Cluster Delegation from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told IPS in Port Vila. Although, he added that access to food at this time is easier in Pacific cities and towns.

“In urban areas, the main difference is access to supermarkets. People can readily access supermarkets and get food off the shelf. For rural communities, they rely on subsistence farming as a source of food. Now they have to look for extra funds to buy food,” Ram said. In response, the government is organising the distribution of dry food rations to affected communities, along with seeds, planting materials and farming tools.

The Pacific Island nation faces a very high risk of climate and other natural disasters. Every year islanders prepare for cyclones during the wet season from November to April. And being situated on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, it is also prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that Vanuatu will experience increasingly extreme climate events, such as hotter temperatures and more severe tropical storms, droughts and floods, in the future. And, on current trends, global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as early as 2030, reports the IPCC.

The impacts of Cyclones Judy and Kevin in the country follow damages wrought by other cyclones in recent years, including Cyclone Pam in 2015, which is estimated to have driven 4,000 more people into poverty, and Cyclone Harold in 2020. And the impacts of the pandemic on the country’s economy and local incomes, especially from agriculture and tourism, since early 2020. Agriculture and tourism are the main industries in Vanuatu, and agriculture, forestry and fisheries account for 15 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The most important cash crops are copra, cocoa and kava, with copra alone accounting for more than 35 percent of the Pacific nation’s exports. Now the environmental havoc and the sudden decline in international tourist arrivals following the cyclones threaten to hinder the building of recovery in the country.

The government reports that this month’s disasters will leave the country with a recovery bill of USD 50 million. And it predicts that the rescue of the agricultural sector will take years.

“It will take three months for immediate recovery of short-term food production, and six to nine months for mid-term crops, such as cassava, taro, yam and bananas. But it will take three to five years for coconut, coffee, pepper, vanilla and cocoa,” Ravo said.

With climate losses predicted to continue accumulating in the coming decades, the Vanuatu Government remains determined to pursue its ‘ICJ Initiative’, now supported by 133 other nations worldwide. The initiative aims to investigate through the International Court of Justice how international law can be used to protect vulnerable countries from climate change impacts to the environment and human rights.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A tourist handicraft market in Port Vila, capital of Vanuatu, prior to the pandemic. The price for Pacific countries maintaining strict border closures to protect their small highly vulnerable populations is the decimation of the tourism industry. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Feb 18 2021 (IPS)

While Pacific Island countries have, so far, been spared a catastrophic spread of COVID-19, their economies have been devastated by the effects of border closures, internal lockdowns and the demise of international tourism and trade. With the global pandemic far from over, Pacific Islanders are looking to their local and regional economies to drive resilience and recovery.

In Fiji, the pandemic has led to one in three people losing their jobs. In Vanuatu, in the southwest Pacific, the combined economic losses of COVID-19 and Tropical Cyclone Harold, which descended on the Melanesian nation in April last year, are predicted to reach 68.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Meanwhile, extreme poverty across the region could rise to 40 percent, forecasts the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University.

“The development and support of existing and new domestic industries and the private sector is critical to help affected families get through the economic downturn and to maintain income,” Mia Rimon, Regional Manager for Melanesia at the regional development organisation, Pacific Community, in Vanuatu told IPS.

The Pacific Islands region, with a total of 27,215 reported cases of coronavirus, as of Feb. 18, represents a fraction of the more than 100 million cases worldwide. However, the price for countries in the region of maintaining strict border closures to protect their small highly vulnerable populations is the decimation of the tourism industry.  The sector is of huge importance to island countries, such as Vanuatu, where it accounts for 46 percent of GDP, and in Fiji 39 percent of GDP. Between April and September last year, the pandemic caused monthly tourist arrivals in the Pacific Islands to plummet by 99-100 percent.

Trade in the region has also been hit. During the first half of 2020, exports from Tonga dropped by 28.3 percent and from Tuvalu by 71 percent.

Pacific Island governments have, accordingly, seen a decline in revenues. Most governments introduced stimulus packages to support households and businesses during the worst of the crisis, but, in the current economic climate, these costs will be unsustainable over a long or indefinite period.

With the prospect of a ‘travel bubble’ between Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Island countries unlikely to occur soon, the region will struggle to grow by 1.3 percent this year, forecasts the Asian Development Bank. But output levels in highly exposed Pacific Island countries are unlikely to recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2022 or beyond, reports the World Bank.

Pacific leaders are now looking to the economic potential within the region. At a virtual meeting in August last year, Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers concluded that the crisis offered ‘the opportunity to assert a regional economy that supports Pacific priorities and to consider investments, policies and partnerships required to secure the region’s economic resilience and the wellbeing of its people now and into the future.’

Dr Neelesh Gounder of the School of Accounting, Finance and Economics at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, told IPS that the private sector will be important to recovery, but added that “governments will need to support the private sector with policies and incentives that will reduce the cost of doing business and provide incentives for expansion and growth.”

Some local entrepreneurs are already manoeuvring to gain new skills and adapt their enterprises for a local, rather than international market.

Workers at South Pacific Mozuku cleaning seaweed in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. Photo credit: South Pacific Mozuku

In the Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga, a local business, South Pacific Mozuku (SPM), specialised in a luxury range of cosmetics and skincare products incorporating a seaweed, known as ‘Mozuku’, which grows in the waters around Tonga. It was a perfect fit for the international tourist market. Before the pandemic, Tonga received up to 5,000 cruise ship visitors per day. The business also exported raw seaweed to international buyers, mostly in Japan. But then the pandemic hit, tourist visitors evaporated and the export market declined.

“We lost 60 percent of our orders during lockdown in March and April 2020,” Managing Director, Masa Kawaguchi, told IPS. After a strategic rethink, he is now pivoting the business to make fresh food products, still using ‘Mozuku’ seaweed, which possesses nutritious and anti-oxidising properties, as an ingredient. They are now sold through local supermarkets and distributors.

It is a sector of natural strength and expertise in the region. “Almost all Pacific people are coastal people and have their lives entwined with the sea. Significant livelihood opportunities are marine-based. Hence, it is important to continue upskilling to meet changing demands and resources,” Avinash Singh, the Pacific Community’s Aquaculture Officer, told IPS.

SPM, which employs 25 local Tongans, is delivering further benefits to local communities. Its partnership with the Tonga Youth Employment Entrepreneurship (TYEE) scheme has led to local youths being involved in promoting public awareness of ‘Mozuku’ seaweed as a health food and organising tasting events in shops and restaurants in the capital, Nuku’alofa. And ‘Mozuku’ is now on the menu for patients, doctors and nurses at the Vaiola Hospital, also situated in the capital.

Further west in Vanuatu, youths, women and islanders with disabilities are being mobilized in a new income generating initiative, called the 300 Coconut Bag Project, in the main city of Port Vila.

“The impacts of COVID-19 on the lives of Ni-Vanuatu is really sad as people get laid off from their jobs, young people who are recruited in tourism sectors and other trades have to go back home due to limited hours of operation as there are no more tourists,” Project Manager, Sethy Melenamu, told IPS.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports that ‘the pandemic is inflicting a triple shock on young people: destroying their employment, disrupting education and training and placing major obstacles in the way of those seeking to enter the labour market.’ These issues are of importance in the Pacific Islands, which is experiencing a youth bulge. Currently half the region’s population of about 11.9 million are aged under 23 years.

The making of recycled and reusable coconut bags is generating employment and incomes for youths, women and disabled people affected by the pandemic in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Photo credit: 300 Coconut Bag Project

In Port Vila, about 30 young people are being employed to collect discarded waste plastic, which is then crafted and sewn by local women and disabled people into large reusable carry bags. Each bag, which is designed to hold six heavy coconuts, features an inner lining of recycled plastic and an outer layer of aesthetically woven pandanus leaves.

It is envisaged that, following production, the bags, which are being promoted as waterproof, reversible and fashionable, will be on sale in March in local fresh produce markets, retail shops and online.

The project, which is supported by the Pacific Community in partnership with the Vanuatu Office for Ocean and Maritime Affairs, intends to outlive the pandemic.

“The project is long-term; there will be more prototypes of products to be tested and modified. Also, the beneficiaries will see it as an alternative source of income for the vulnerable. I would like to make it a sustainable social enterprise in the future,” Melenamu said.

The distinctive fashionable and sustainable coconut carry bags will be sold at public venues in Port Vila, such as fresh produce markets, Vanuatu. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Coastal fisheries provide vital food security and household incomes throughout the Pacific Islands. The fish market, Auki, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Oct 13 2020 (IPS)

Coastal fisheries in the Pacific Islands have become a food and livelihood lifeline to many people who have lost jobs, especially in urban centres and tourism, following COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures. Now governments and development organisations are trying to meet the crisis-driven survival needs of here and now, while also considering the long-term consequences on near shore marine resources and habitats.

“In Vanuatu, we don’t have any cases of COVID-19. But around us the world is in lockdown and the incomes indigenous people usually get from tourism have all gone, they have completely come to a halt,” Leias Cullwick, Executive Director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women in Port Vila, told IPS.  Tourism accounts for an estimated 40 percent of Vanuatu’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“But we still have our own land to plant crops and we can get fish from the sea,” she continued.

Subsistence and small-scale commercial fisheries in coastal areas are a crucial source of nutrition and incomes to communities throughout the Pacific Islands. Fifty percent of coastal households in the region gain a primary or secondary income from fishing, while 89 percent of households generally consume seafood on a weekly basis, according to the regional development organisation, the Pacific Community (SPC).

The COVID-19 induced economic downturn has only increased the importance of traditional livelihoods and sources of food. At a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency in August, the Director General, Dr. Manu Tupou-Roosen emphasised that “it is crucial for fisheries to continue operating at this time, providing much needed income to support the economic recovery, as well as to enhance contribution to the food security of our people”.

However, the increased movement of urban residents back to rural villages and to their extended family networks has, in some areas, had consequences. Dr Andrew Smith, Deputy Director (Coastal Fisheries) at the SPC in Noumea, New Caledonia, told IPS of some of the impacts, .

“What we have been seeing are cases where people who are not familiar with the areas, or not familiar with fishing methods, are either harvesting protected species or under-sized species or the wrong species. There have been reports of fishers going into marine managed areas or into other people’s traditional fishing zones,” he said, adding that: “There is also, in some cases, increased conflicts occurring because people are fishing in the wrong places and catching the wrong fish, both from a national fisheries perspective and the laws, but also from traditional cultural perspectives.”

In surveys conducted in 43 rural villages in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu prior to July by WorldFish, national fisheries agencies in the Pacific Islands and the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, 46 percent and 55 percent of people respectively claimed that there was a shortage of food in communities.

Neither Pacific Island country has recorded any COVID-19 cases to date. However, restrictions on large gatherings and border closures across the region, to prevent any spread of the virus, have diminished shipping and trade. Vanuatu, for example, is under an extended State of Emergency until the 31 December and the government promotes social distancing and enhanced hygiene practices. 

“When COVID-19 first emerged, our country went into stopping main markets, they were stopped for a couple of months. It has now been lifted. People can go out fishing, but it is very difficult for people to sell fish because people are on lower incomes,” Cullwick said.

Coastal fishing, in the zone between the shore and outer reefs, includes species, such as finfish, trochus, lobsters and crabs. The vast majority of the coastal catch is for subsistence. In Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, subsistence fishing makes up 71 percent and 75 percent respectively of the total coastal catch each year. And there is evidence this year that greater hardship has led to increased fishing for food.

This is an additional pressure on coastal resources in the Pacific, which are already being affected by climate change, greater exploitation due to growing populations and the environmental degradation of marine habitats by factors, including pollution, urbanisation and natural disasters.

“The region is a little bit more used to dealing with tropical cyclones, that are always devastating, but are disasters that happen relatively frequently, but they are usually more localised, and the initial impact shorter. Whereas COVID-19 has had an immediate impact, but will have a very long term effect across the region, more of a slow burn disaster, and then you’ve got climate change, which is impacting now, but it is an even slower burn. So you’ve got these multiple stressors on both the resources and the habitats,” Smith told IPS.

According to the development organisation, which is consulting extensively with national governments throughout the region on responding to the present crisis, but a major challenge is achieving a balance between meeting short-term survival needs and managing the long-term repercussions.

One strategy to address immediate food security is encouraging more households to take up aquaculture and establish fish farms.  The Vanuatu Government is supporting this initiative by providing free tilapia fingerlings and feed to families who have taken the first step in building a fish pond.  This is a way of both boosting nutrition and alleviating further over-fishing near to shore. The Pacific Community is also assisting countries to set up near shore fish aggregating devices, which are easily accessible by local fishers.

One positive outcome is that the COVID-19 crisis has driven more discussion at the national and regional levels about the key role of community-based fisheries management. Smith says that there is “clear recognition by the heads of fisheries, as well as at the ministerial level, of how important having effectively managed community-based fisheries are.”

The cornerstone of this approach is increasing the capacity of coastal communities to manage their fishing practices and take the lead on ensuring the future of their marine resources, supported by governments and development organisations. It’s an important element of the 2015 Noumea Strategy, also known as ‘A New Song for Coastal Fisheries,’ a regional vision of sustainably managing fisheries for the future.

ActionAid Vanuatu conducted COVID 19 awareness and TC Harold early warning preparedness for islanders. Cyclone TC Harold made landfall on the South Pacific island nation this month. Courtesy: ActionAid Vanuatu

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Apr 20 2020 (IPS)

Sitting atop a banyan tree branch, Fiona Robyn had a cell phone tightly clasped in her fist raised high to get a signal. She was impatiently waiting for the SMS weather alert from the Women’s Wetem Weta (Women’s Weather Watch (WWW)) hub in Port Vila as cyclone TC Harold raged towards the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean on Apr. 5.

No sooner had she received the message, Robyn, a WWW leader in Eton on the eastern coast of Efate island in Vanuatu, immediately swung into action. She began mobilising other women and youth to help widows, the physically challenged and older people secure their roofs, store food and clean water, secure documents in air tight containers, and move those in unsafe houses to the local school serving as an evacuation centre.

When natural disasters strike, women are the first responders for their families and communities. The WWW programme is giving women in remote areas access to appropriate timely information, and building their capacity and confidence to communicate complex scientific weather and climate information from the Meteorological Department in simple “disaster ready” warnings to prepare for cyclones, floods, droughts and volcanic eruptions.

“Women in my community are taking lead in disaster preparedness, emergency and humanitarian crises situations. Our husbands are beginning to acknowledge this transformation,” Robyn told IPS. She is one of about 60 WWW leaders aged between 18 and 33 years, who are working on the frontline in Erromango and Tanna islands in Shefa province, and in Efate island in Tafea province of Vanuatu, which is recognised as one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change and disasters in the world.

In 2015, Cyclone Pam had seriously harmed the livelihoods of over 40,000 households and resulted in economic damages accounting for 64 percent of the country’s GDP. This month, TC Harold made landfall at Category 5 causing wide scale damage to infrastructure and vegetable and food gardens.

Global women’s rights organisation, ActionAid is collaborating with Shifting the Power Coalition (StPC), a regional alliance of 13 women-led civil society organisations from six Pacific Forum member countries, WWW, Women I Tok Tok Tugeta (WITTT), a coalition of women leader groups, and the National Disaster Management System in supporting local women through training, network building and research to ensure women’s rights and needs are addressed in climate change and humanitarian disaster response.

“Some of our women are dealing with six crises currently – COVID 19, drought, scarcity of potable water, and volcanic ash, acid rain and sulphur gas as we have several active volcanoes,” ActionAid Vanuatu’s country programme manager, Flora Vano told IPS from the WWW hub in the country’s capital, Port Vila.

The hub is a message bank, where information received from the Meteorological Department and women leaders is stored and shared.

“It is a two-way communication process which is enabling women to become leaders in disaster planning and adaptation. For example, women leaders will message the hub that a cyclone is approaching and we don’t have water supply. We relay this information to the Department of Water so they can help the community.

“Similarly, women will message about crops being damaged by a pest. We convey this information to the Department of Agriculture, who in turn informs us of what the community needs to do or they will send officials on the ground to ensure food security,” Vano said.

The messaging service, a combination of SMS and in-person for remote areas, has reached 77,000 people or nearly a quarter of Vanuatu’s population.

“Each woman leader looks after three to four villages and in each village, the women convene their own sister circles. They communicate weather alerts in local languages so women can understand and take requisite action. For example, if there is a gale force wind warning, we explain that this level of wind speed means it can move a thatched roof house or if there is a mango or coconut tree near the house, there is high probability of it falling and damaging the house,” Vano added.

When natural disasters strike, women are the first responders for their families and communities. ActionAid Vanuatu conducted COVID 19 awareness and TC Harold early warning preparedness for islanders. Courtesy: ActionAid Vanuatu

WWW, which is recognised as the gender best practice by the World Meteorological Organisation, is an inter-operable information and communication system that was adapted for Vanuatu by Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, technical adviser of StPC, based on the Fiji Women’s Weather Watch.  Bhagwan-Rolls developed the system with and for rural women so that they could access meteorological information to enhance disaster preparedness, and have their own channels of communication to share reports to ensure local and national disaster response is inclusive and accountable to women of all diversities. 

StPC focuses on strengthening the collective power, influence and leadership of Pacific women in responding to disasters and climate change. It shows how local information becomes not just national, but also regional and it has given women the opportunity to participate in national and international forums and influence the agenda on disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation.

“The new Pacific Young Women Responding to Climate Change programme supported by the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership, which we are rolling out shortly, is engaging with young women and looking at demystifying climate science and information in a way that it not only boosts disaster preparedness plans, but also how information from meteorological/weather office can be used to improve planning of health programmes, food security and women’s leadership in new livelihood initiatives offering economic alternatives,” Bhagwan-Rolls told IPS.

“It will build the capacity of young women while utilising the traditional, indigenous knowledge of older women and marrying it with science to use climate service information a lot better. In Pacific Island countries, the traditional village development planning committees tend to be led by men. Through collaboration of the StPC, women leaders are learning how to engage with traditional leaders, and faith leaders because our church community is very strong,” Bhagwan-Rolls added.

Vanuatu, like most Pacific Island countries, except Tonga and Palau, has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), but gender inequalities exist.

“In most countries in the Global South, women are at the frontlines of the global climate emergency. It is critical to involve women in decision making on climate action. Supporting women to take leadership positions in emergencies not only ensures that women’s immediate needs are addressed, it also has a lasting positive impact on gender equality, particularly in countries like Vanuatu where women have no voice in the National Parliament,” says Carol Angir, ActionAid Australia’s programme manager for Women’s Rights and Emergencies.

Members of the 2018 and 2019 G7 Gender Equality Advisory Councils, including Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, are urgently calling on G7 member states to take into account the gendered dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis and to prevent the deterioration of gender equality and women’s rights worldwide.

In a letter, they are urging governments to take special measures to support healthcare and social workers, create additional emergency shelter spaces, ensure immediate removal of abusers from homes, keep all girls engaged in learning, guarantee access to sexual and reproductive health services, and provide free menstrual and modern contraception products for girls and women.

Excerpt:

Port Vila's informal settlements, characterised by vulnerable housing, were destroyed by Cyclone Pam, which hit Vanuatu on Mar. 13, 2015. Credit: International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Apr 13 2015 (IPS)

Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam, which swept through the South Pacific Island state of Vanuatu in mid-March, has deepened hardships faced by people living in the informal settlements of the capital, Port Vila. Winds of up to 340 kph and torrential rain shattered precarious homes, cut off fragile public services and flooded communities with unsealed roads, poor drainage and sanitation.

“Eighty percent of my community has been affected by the cyclone,” Joel, a Port Vila resident, told IPS, describing that his house was damaged by gale force winds. “We have enough food, but the quality of the water has been very bad.”

“Most of the displaced in urban and peri-urban areas have been highly devastated and are vulnerable to future shocks. The scale of devastation to homes and infrastructure is huge." -- Peter Korisa, operations manager at Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office
Other city residents saw their homes completely destroyed. In the last week, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) found 50 people still sheltering in a shed-like structure in the informal settlements a month after the cyclone. They are in need of food, water and sanitation as they wait for assistance to rebuild their homes.

Vanuatu is an archipelago of more than 80 islands and an estimated 265,000 people located northeast of Australia. Sixty-three percent of the population, or close to 166,000 people, were affected by Cyclone Pam, which counted a death toll of 11 and is thought to be the worst natural disaster in the country’s history.

The main urban centre of Port Vila, situated on the southwest coast of Efate Island, is very exposed to severe weather and sea surges. An estimated 30-40 percent of its 44,000 residents live in informal settlements, such as Freswota and Seaside. Here, sub-standard housing, inadequate basic services and overcrowding all contribute to a poverty rate of 18 percent in Port Vila, in contrast to 10 percent in rural areas.

In the wake of Cyclone Pam, Peter Korisa, operations manager at Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office, said, “Most of the displaced in urban and peri-urban areas have been highly devastated and are vulnerable to future shocks. The scale of devastation to homes and infrastructure is huge. Bridges and roads have also been damaged and that will definitely be a high cost in the recovery effort.”

Frido Herinckx, head of the International Red Cross support team in Vanuatu, told IPS that he had witnessed serious damage in the urban settlements. “During the first week after the cyclone there were 43 evacuation centres in Port Vila supporting 4,000-5,000 people,” he said.

United Nations Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said this past Friday that only 36 percent of the U.N.’s ‘flash appeal’ for 30 million dollars has so far been pledged. He called attention to the fact that 111,000 people have no access to safe drinking water, and warned that the destruction of 90 percent of the country’s crops spelled danger for those who rely on agriculture for a livelihood.

While most people live in rural areas, urbanisation, driven by people seeking jobs and services, is happening at a rapid rate of four percent in Vanuatu, exceeding the state’s capacity to scale up urban planning. One quarter of the national population is now urban and that is predicted to increase to 53 percent by 2050.

Situated on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ and in a tropical climate zone south of the equator, with a cyclone season from November to April, the developing island state is vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones and tsunamis.

It has been hit by at least 20 damaging cyclones in the past 25 years and only one year has passed since Cyclone Lusi impacted 20,000 people across northern and central provinces, destroying villages and crops, in 2014. According to the United Nations, Vanuatu has the most exposed population to natural disasters in the world, at 63.6 percent.

The vulnerability of the urban population is heightened by the makeshift state of 27 percent of houses in the capital. Constructing a strong, resilient house is too expensive and financial credit is unaffordable for many residents who live on low wages.

In the Freswota settlement area, home to 7,000-8,000 people, Chief Kalanga Sawia explained, “The government’s objective is to provide housing for the people, but they can only provide the land. The government doesn’t have the financial resources to build houses as well.”

Therefore, people have turned to building improvised dwellings as best they can with salvaged or cheaply bought materials, such as timber, corrugated iron, tin and fabric.

While power, water and communication services were all crippled by the disaster, Herinckx said, “[B]asic services are now back to the state they were before the cyclone, which is not optimal.”

Residents of the Freswota 2 sub-settlement, for instance, usually have access to a water supply, but only half have electricity. Across the country, only 28 percent of people have access to electricity and 64 percent to sanitation.

Recognising the threat disasters pose to lives, development efforts and the economy, the Vanuatu Government has worked to strengthen the nation’s disaster preparedness.

Nine years ago, it became the first Pacific Island country to integrate disaster risk management into national planning and, in 2013, a new state-of-the-art disaster warning centre capable of monitoring volcanic, seismic, and tsunami activity, operating 24/7, opened in Port Vila.

As Cyclone Pam approached, new technology was used to issue warnings and advice to people via text messages, reaching more than 80 percent of the population.

However, as one of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Vanuatu has minimal capacity to cope with the relentless destructive toll of catastrophes year upon year. Korisa, of the National Disaster Management Office, claims that post-disaster recovery in Port Vila’s settlements will be very slow and hindered by land tenure issues, finance and resource constraints.

Currently the Red Cross is helping people in the settlements to build back better after the cyclone “by advising people on simple methods of building homes so they are more stress resistant,” Herinckx said.

But looking to the future, Korisa emphasised that more investment is needed in urban disaster risk reduction measures.

“For instance, the building code needs to be applied and enforced in all dwellings, including private, commercial and public buildings, and land use planning policy needs to be improved and implemented.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

View of the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in Sendau, Japan. Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale told delegates he was attending because the Pacific island, hit by Cyclone Pam in early March, “wants to see a strong new framework on disaster risk reduction which will support us in tackling the drivers of disaster risk such as climate change". Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/IPS

By Jamshed Baruah
SENDAI, Japan , Mar 16 2015 (IPS)

Cyclone Pam has not only caused unprecedented damages to the Pacific island of Vanuatu but also lent urgency to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s plea that disaster risk reduction is in “everybody’s interest”.

“Sustainability starts in Sendai,” Ban declared at the opening of the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR), the largest-ever high-level meeting on the theme, which kicked off on Mar. 14 in Sendai, the centre of Japan’s Tohoku region, which bore the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

The conference is expected to conclude with the adoption on Mar. 18, when WCDRR is scheduled to close, of a new agreement on disaster risk reduction, which will provide guidance on how to reduce mortality and economic losses from disasters.“Disaster risk reduction advances progress on sustainable development and climate change [which] is intensifying the risks for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in small island developing states and coastal areas” – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

“This is the first stop on our journey to a new future to put our people of the world and this world onto a sustainable path,” Ban told government leaders and civil society representatives from around the world.

“Disaster risk reduction advances progress on sustainable development and climate change,” Ban said, adding that “climate change is intensifying the risks for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in small island developing states and coastal areas.”

Experts consider climate change as the cause for the increasingly unpredictable pattern of cyclonic activity affecting Vanuatu in recent years.

“I speak to you today with a heart that is so heavy,” said Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale addressing the opening session, visibly fighting back his tears. “I stand to ask you to give a lending hand in responding to this calamity that has struck us.”

This is indeed a major calamity for the Pacific island nation. Every year it loses six percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to disasters. “This cyclone is a huge setback for the country’s development. It will have severe impacts for all sectors of economic activity including tourism, agriculture and manufacturing,” said Lonsdale.

“The country is already threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels, in addition to five active volcanos and earthquakes. This is why I am attending this conference and why Vanuatu wants to see a strong new framework on disaster risk reduction which will support us in tackling the drivers of disaster risk such as climate change.”

As Vanuata reeled under the impact of the cyclone, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of japan pledged four billion dollars in disaster prevention aid, mainly for developing countries.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched an initiative on Mar. 15 to scale up community and civic action on resilience, the so-called ‘One Billion Coalition for Resilience’.

The IFRC has committed itself to mobilising its network of 189 national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and 17 million volunteers around the world to increase different services that link disaster preparedness, emergency response and longer term recovery needs of local communities.

The Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, commended the IFRC’s efforts to galvanise actions toward making communities more resilient.

“We need to scale up our collective efforts to make sure that hazards don’t become disasters, and we will only be able to achieve this by building alliances at every level,” she said. ”Only in partnership can we contribute to transforming the lives of the most vulnerable people and support their efforts in building stronger communities.”

Apparently realising the need of the hour, top insurers from around the world have called on governments to step up global efforts to build resilience against natural disasters, highlighting that average economic losses from disasters in the last decade have amounted to around 190 billion dollars annually, while average insured losses were at about 60 billion dollars.

A ‘United for Disaster Resilience Statement’ was released Mar. 14 by top insurance companies, members of the UNEP Finance Initiatives’ Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI), the largest collaborative initiative between the United Nations and the insurance industry. PSI is backed by insurers representing about 15 percent of the world’s premium volume and nine trillion dollars in assets under its management.

The statement urges governments to adopt the U.N. Post-2015 Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, emphasising that the insurance industry is well placed to understand the economic and social impact of disasters given that its core business is to understand, manage and carry risk.

Lauding the initiative, Achim Steiner, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “The vision and initiative demonstrated by the insurance industry – from the launch of the landmark Principles for Sustainable Insurance at the Rio+20 conference to the strong, united commitments made here in Sendai – provide inspiration and a way forward.”

Another PSI initiative launched in Sendai called on individual insurance organisations to help implement the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction by making voluntary, specific, measurable and time-bound commitments.

The voluntary commitments will follow the global framework afforded by the four Principles for Sustainable Insurance, and will show concrete actions that build disaster resilience, and promote economic, social and environmental sustainability.

These commitments will be aggregated and promoted en route to a major UNEP and insurance industry event in May this year, which will be hosted by the global reinsurer, Swiss Re.

The commitments will also be promoted by the PSI at the Global Insurance Forum of the International Insurance Society in New York in June. The forum will include a dedicated day at the U.N. headquarters for insurance industry leaders and U.N. officials to address sustainable development challenges and opportunities, from climate change and disaster risk, to financial inclusion and ageing populations.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Customary land remains a vital source of food security, cash incomes and social wellbeing in Pacific Island countries, such as Vanuatu, where formal employment is only 20 percent. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

Stemming widespread corruption in the leasing of customary land to investors is the aim of bold land reform, introduced this year in the Southwest Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, which puts the rights of traditional landowners above the discretionary powers of politicians.

Less than one hour from the capital, Port Vila, is the village of Mangaliliu, one of many across this sprawling nation of 82 islands and more than 247,000 people where livelihoods centre on agriculture and fishing.

Here, villagers are battling the loss of their traditional land due to a lease negotiated without their consent.

“We thought the tourism business or selling our land would give us work and employ a lot of our people, but now we realise we made a mistake." -- Mangaliliu’s Chief Mormor
“Somebody from another village leased one piece of our land to an investor. I tried to stop him. When he started bulldozing the land, I went with my people and took palm leaves, which we use as a sign of [something that is] taboo [forbidden]. We hung them all along the road and the case is now in court,” Mangaliliu’s Chief Mormor recounted.

Pristine coastlines and sea views on the country’s main island of Efate have attracted foreign investors interested in property and tourism development and now an estimated 56.5 percent of coastal land on the island has been leased for periods up to 75 years.

More than 80 percent of land in Vanuatu is customary, with ownership held by extended families, who are custodians for the next generation. Rights of use for farming or commercial enterprises are decided by group consensus, as are proposals on leasing to other parties. The importance of land to the culture, identity, food security and social wellbeing of Pacific Islanders is reflected in most national laws, which only allow the lease – not sale – of customary land.

Yet today with the penetration of the cash economy land has also become a source of windfalls to villagers and politicians alike.

“People have learned that if they sell [lease] one piece of land they can buy a car, satellite dish or speedboat,” Mormor said. “It can take many years to save this sort of money, so it is just like a miracle if you sell land.”

However under group custodianship conflict can quickly arise if, for example, “I have a brother who sells a piece of land and doesn’t ask permission of me or my sister, or my children, or my sister’s children,” he added.

In the past, the lands minister could personally decide on disputed leases. The World Bank’s Justice for the Poor programme reports that 21.4 percent of all new leases since the country’s independence in 1980 have been signed under this provision. Last year alleged improper land dealings accounted for almost two-thirds of lawsuits against the government.

Now, the ambitions of land reform by indigenous leader Ralph Regenvanu, who was appointed lands minister in 2013, have become a reality.

In December last year new laws were passed making it mandatory that all members of customary landowner groups give their prior informed consent to any leases over their land. Potential investors must apply to a land management planning committee for approval to conduct negotiations with custom owners. Two customary institutions, Nakamals and Custom Area Land Tribunals, will decide the outcome of disputes, rather than the courts.

According to Regenvanu, investor confidence will increase because now when “you get a lease you can be assured that it was gained lawfully.” But he also believes that the economic and social security which land provides to his people will be strengthened.

Steve Namali of the Vanuatu National Council of Chiefs in Port Vila commented that, while consultation on the reforms had not been conducted nationwide, he believed they would help address the fraudulence of land deals in the past.

With adult literacy in the province estimated at 27.6 percent, the greater thoroughness of the approval process should also improve local awareness of the ramifications of entering into land agreements. For example, reclaiming land on a lease expiry often requires compensation to the lessee for developments, even though many villagers do not have the financial means to reimburse an investor the value of a tourist resort or luxury home.

Local communities often “don’t understand what is going to happen in the long term” and that most likely “at the end of a lease, it [land] will never come back to traditional tenure,” Joel Simo of the Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance (MILDA), a regional civil society landowner solidarity network, said in Port Vila.

“There is now a process in place that has to be followed and it will stop individuals going and doing their own thing,” he said. “It has been a good change for Vanuatu, especially because of this land boom and people selling land left, right and centre.”

International investors from Australia, Europe and Asia have largely driven growth in the real estate market, along with the nation’s tax haven status. In 2012, foreign direct investment (FDI) amounted to 37.7 million dollars or 4.8 percent of GDP, but Mormor claims local people have seen few benefits.

“We thought the tourism business or selling our land would give us work and employ a lot of our people, but now we realise we made a mistake,” he said.

Despite average GDP growth of four percent over the past decade, with a high of 8.5 percent in 2006, an estimated 40 percent of people have incomes below the poverty line.

“I think people want development, but what type of development and in whose interests?” Simo queried. He believes protecting indigenous landownership makes sense when the traditional economy, which includes subsistence and smallholder agriculture, is the biggest employer in Melanesia.

In comparison, “many [formal sector] jobs available involve cheap labour and that only gets people into more poverty,” he said. Formal employment in Vanuatu is only 20 percent and the average local wage is 316 dollars per month. So, he continued, “If you don’t have a job, you fall back to the land,” which is the only safety net.

Mormor now wants to retain his land for community-driven projects, such as fish farming and coconut oil production. He is happy that the new laws will help protect the land for his children, but also admits the more thorough land registration and approval process, if he engages with development partners, will take much longer than in the past.

“I could be dead when these projects start,” he laughs.

While Vanuatu’s new laws are popular, it remains to be seen how well they work, and if they eliminate political cronyism.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Progress on gender equality in the Pacific Islands is gaining momentum following a pledge by political leaders. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Aug 13 2014 (IPS)

A pledge by political leaders two years ago to accelerate efforts toward closing the gender gap in the Pacific Islands has been boosted with the announcement that three women will take the helm of the regional intergovernmental organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, headquartered in Suva, Fiji.

At this year’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit in Palau, former Papua New Guinean diplomat and World Bank official, Dame Meg Taylor, was named the new secretary-general, taking over this year from the outgoing Tuiloma Neroni Slade. Taylor, who will hold the post for three years, joins two female deputy secretaries-generals, Cristelle Pratt and Andie Fong Toy.

The appointment is a significant breakthrough for women in the upper echelons of governance. According to Pratt, the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration made at the 2012 leaders’ summit in the Cook Islands has galvanised leadership action on the issue.

“A positive change has been the indirect creation of a peer review process on gender at the highest level,” Pratt told IPS, adding that gender equality is “slowly gaining traction at the central policy making level”, as high up as the prime minister’s office in some Forum countries.

Raising the status of women in the Pacific Islands is an immense challenge, given that the region has the lowest level of female political representation in the world at three percent, compared to the global average of 20 percent.

Furthermore, violence against women is endemic and they are poorly represented in formal employment. Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a gender inequality index of 0.617 and Tonga 0.462, in contrast to the most gender equal nation of Norway at 0.065.

The declaration is a sign of greater recognition by the male political elite of the critical role women have to play in achieving better human development outcomes across the region.

National leaders have committed to reforms, such as adopting enabling measures for women’s participation in governance and decision-making at all levels, improving their access to employment and better pay, and supporting female entrepreneurs with financial services and training. They have also promised to deliver improved legislative protection against gender-based violence and support services to women who have suffered abuse.

“What is significant about the declaration is that leaders have taken it on board as a priority and I believe our leader took it seriously and followed it through with a law change in Samoa,” Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, Samoa’s minister of justice and veteran female parliamentarian, told IPS.

Last year a law was passed in Samoa reserving 10 percent, or five of a total of 49 seats in parliament for women.

“It is a significant step in that it provides a ‘floor’ as opposed to a ‘ceiling’ and there will never be less than five women in any future parliament,” she continued. “It is important that women are in parliament to be seen and heard and to serve as evidence that it can be done.”

Women’s low political representation ranges from two percent in the Solomon Islands to 8.7 percent in Kiribati, with no female political representation at all in the Federated States of Micronesia and Vanuatu, with populations of 103,000 and 247,000 respectively.

Contributing factors include entrenched expectations of a woman’s place in the domestic sphere, low endorsement from political parties and the greater difficulties women have in accessing funding and resources for election campaigning.

There has been incremental progress in other countries with last year witnessing the first female elected into the parliament of Nauru -the smallest state in the South Pacific – in three decades, and three women winning seats in the Cook Islands national election this July.

Women’s participation in local level governance received a boost in Tuvalu after the government passed a law requiring female representation in local councils. Blandine Boulekone, president of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, noted that women gained five of a total of 17 seats in the Municipal Elections held in the capital, Port Vila, in January.

Gender parity in education, necessary for improving women’s status in all areas of life, has, according to national statistics, been achieved in most Pacific Island states, except PNG, Tonga and Solomon Islands, with girls outperforming boys at the secondary level in Samoa and Fiji.

Nevertheless, the Pacific Islands Forum reported last year that “higher education for young women does not necessarily lead to better employment outcomes due to gender barriers in labour markets”, with most countries reporting less than 50 percent of women in non-agricultural waged jobs.

Last year Samoa passed legislation against sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, while similar draft legislation is being developed in Kiribati, Vanuatu and Tonga.

Pratt also claims there has been good progress with “the enactment of domestic violence legislation in Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati and Solomon Islands.” Last year domestic violence also became a criminal offence in PNG following the passing of the Family Protection Bill.

Sixty to 75 percent of women in the region experience family and intimate partner violence. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by early marriage, the practice of ‘bride price’, low levels of financial independence and women’s inadequate access to justice systems.

However, Shamima Ali, coordinator of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre, commented, “As practitioners on the ground, we can say that while all these policies and legislations look great on paper, the implementation is another matter.”

“One also needs to invest financially to ensure new legislation and policies are effective.”

Fiji has had a domestic violence decree since 2009, but Ali said, “While most magistrates and judges deal well and follow the new decrees, there are many who still display traditional entrenched views regarding rape and domestic violence and often injustice is meted out to survivors, particularly for ‘sex crimes’.”

Law enforcement is a great challenge, too, especially in rural communities.

“Women, girls and children in rural and maritime areas have little recourse to justice for crimes of violence committed against them due to lack of police presence and resources in these areas,” she said.

Pratt agrees that the road to real change in the lives of ordinary Pacific women is a long one.

“The declaration is still new and there is a need for more awareness, advocacy and accountability toward meeting the goals,” she emphasised.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Pacific Island nations say empowering women is the key to addressing population growth across the region. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Jul 10 2014 (IPS)

Populations of many Melanesian countries in the southwest Pacific Islands region are expected to double in a generation, threatening regional and national efforts to improve low economic and human development indicators.

Arnold Bani, executive director of the Vanuatu Family Health Association in the capital, Port Vila, believes that if reproductive health issues are not addressed in the next 10-15 years the result “will be a disaster for the country.”

Vanuatu, an archipelago of 82 islands located west of Fiji, has a population of 247,262 growing at 2.4 percent, compared to a global average of 1.1 percent. Similarly, the growth rate of Papua New Guinea’s population of seven million is 2.1 percent, as it is in the neighbouring Solomon Islands, home to 550,000 people.

“Mostly the extended family provides people’s basic needs and care...So if a woman makes a decision about family planning alone there will be a fight in the family.” -- Helen, a resident of Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila
As the international community prepares to mark World Population Day on Jul. 11, experts here say an important factor will be empowering women in decisions about family planning and, with a high rate of teenage pregnancies in the region, bringing about behaviour changes in the younger generation.

The task is not easy, given strong cultural and social pressures to have large families.

“Mostly the extended family provides people’s basic needs and care,” Helen (not her real name), a mother in Port Vila, where the contraceptive prevalence is 38 percent, told IPS.

“So if a woman makes a decision about family planning alone there will be a fight in the family.”

There are practical reasons for having numerous children, explained Alec Ekeroma, president of the Pacific Society for Reproductive Health in Auckland, New Zealand.

“Large families are akin to an insurance policy for family survival,” he told IPS. “More children will assist with rural subsistence livelihoods, more children means some will survive past infancy, while care for parents is seen as a duty of the children, especially in countries where there are no social services.”

But Helen said that providing for the needs of large families is a struggle in a country where the average monthly income is around 300 dollars.

The nation’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has decreased since the 1960s from seven to four, while in Papua New Guinea it is 3.8 and in the Solomon Islands 4.1, in contrast to a TFR of 2.1, which indicates a stable population.

Regional experts believe that contraceptive use, which ranges from 35 percent in Papua New Guinea to 22 percent in Kiribati, well below the global average for less developed countries of 56 percent, must be improved.

A report published by Reproductive Health journal last year claims that increasing contraceptive prevalence in Vanuatu to 65 percent by 2025 would create a sustainable population, reduce high risk births by 54 percent, adolescent births by 46 percent and the average number of unintended pregnancies by 68 percent from 76 to 12 per 1,000 women.

Greater contraceptive use and smaller families could also save women’s lives. There are an estimated 110 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Vanuatu, increasing to 120 in Tonga, 130 in Kiribati and an estimated 733 in Papua New Guinea.

But delivering reproductive health services to predominantly widely scattered rural island populations is a challenge given the limited infrastructure, transport services and skilled health care workers in provincial areas.

Low education and the influence of traditional health healers in rural communities are also factors,Rufina Latu of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Vanuatu added. Even when family planning is available, use can be inhibited by misconceptions, such as fear of side effects or fertility decline, religious opposition and illiteracy. A survey by the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) in Vanuatu’s main Shefa province estimates literacy is as low as 27 percent.

Leias Cullwick, executive director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, said that a major concern for women is gender inequality and the norm of husbands determining the size of families. Fear of widely prevalent gender violence also impacts women’s behaviour.

“Health services data indicate that many women prefer contraception with long-acting depo-provera injections, so that their husbands would not know,” Latu added, claiming that it is not uncommon for husbands to hold the myth that their wives are having affairs if they are using contraception.

Gender inequality is also a factor in Vanuatu’s high adolescent fertility with 66 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years. Across the Pacific Islands, one quarter of girls in this age group enter motherhood.

The Vanuatu Ministry of Health confirmed there were national strategies to improve services to adolescents. An estimated one third of urban youth lack basic knowledge about reproductive health and many are reluctant to access reproductive health services, leading to high-risk behaviour.

Engaging young people is an urgent priority given the negative impacts of pregnancies on young girls’ lives, such as low educational attainment, poverty and maternal mortality. The risk of death for mothers aged below 15 years in low and middle-income countries is double that of more mature women, reports the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Efforts to increase understanding of population issues must include the whole community, Bani advocated, with chiefs and community leaders better informed about family planning to play a role in wider social acceptance.

Latu emphasised that population and reproductive health education for everyone needs to start in early childhood and “family life education should become a compulsory part of school curriculums at all levels.”

“A more enabling environment for women’s empowerment to develop can be better achieved if men and spouses are also engaged” in the task of social change, she added.

Cullwick suggested that male nurses in Vanuatu be trained in male-to-male advocacy about gender equality and family planning.

“With the high rate of illiteracy you cannot print and distribute leaflets, you need a man to talk to others, to generate a dialogue and make them understand what women go through,” she explained.

(END)

Excerpt:

In Port Vila, capital of the southwest Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, low incomes and lack of housing has resulted in many of the 8,000 residents of the Freswota area building their own homes from corrugated iron and salvaged materials. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Jul 9 2014 (IPS)

While the United Nations claims to have met the Millennium Development Goal target of improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers well ahead of the 2020 deadline, the fact remains that millions around the world continue to live in informal, overcrowded and unsanitary housing conditions.

In the scenic western Pacific Islands, urban poverty is becoming a huge problem for resource-strapped governments, as internal migration spawns massive settlements, and communities jostle one another for scarce resources like water.

On paper, various governments’ commitments and promises suggest a blueprint for action but for the slum dwellers of the Pacific, each new day dawns in wretchedly cramped rooms, narrow alleyways and interminable lines for communal bathrooms.

While many of these informal settlements are lively and diverse places – playing host to government workers, students and market vendors – they remain a stark expression of the inequality that continues to plague developing countries as the sun sets on the U.N.’s ambitious poverty-reduction plan.

The Rainbow Disability Theatre Group performs its play ‘The Child from Seaview’ at the Wan Smolbag Theatre in Vanuatu. Credit: Wan Smolbag

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Jun 16 2014 (IPS)

In the Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, 23 actors with disabilities, from youth to senior citizens, who have battled physical and social barriers all their lives, are now empowering themselves and others through socially engaged theatre.

Plays inspired by their personal experiences are impacting audiences in schools, urban communities and rural villages across this nation of 82 islands, home to more than 247,000 people, located west of Fiji.

“I am blind and the first time I [started] acting I was very frightened, but every day I went to the theatre I gained confidence and now I can do anything in front of a crowd,” Alista Douglas, a young woman and member of the Rainbow Disability Theatre Group, told IPS in the capital, Port Vila.

“At first, when we got off the bus or the truck, people just watched us like they had never seen people with disabilities...But after we did the play, they didn’t see our disabilities anymore." -- Sergio Moses, a member of the Rainbow Disability Theatre Group
Since 2010, when actor Willie Sablan founded the group, it has produced plays and radio dramas about the challenges, dreams and successes of those living with disabilities.

“It was my dream to be an actor,” Sablan reminisced. “I was the only disabled person in my local youth drama club when I spoke to local scriptwriter Jo Dorras about my vision to start a theatre group for disabled people.”

Dorras works with the Wan Smolbag Theatre, a Pacific Islands-based development theatre organisation that uses the performing arts to generate awareness and public discussion about issues facing Pacific societies, such as corruption, domestic violence, AIDS and environmental sustainability. Human rights topics are also addressed through tales of individual experience.

At the converted warehouses in Port Vila, where the theatre is based, members of the Rainbow Group spoke of their recent play, ‘Ae Blong Hem I Blaen Nomo’ (He is Blind). The production, which is performed in the local Bislama language, recounts the life of a blind man – from the prejudices he faced at school and in his village to his adult years when he was brought back from the brink of suicide by the realisation that he could lead a full and meaningful life.

The play has had 50-60 performances in communities on the main island of Efate, where Port Vila is situated. Last year, the group took the production to rural areas and toured 30 villages on the island of Tanna, part of Vanuatu’s southernmost Tafea Province.

“At first, when we got off the bus or the truck, people just watched us like they had never seen people with disabilities,” youth actor Sergio Moses recounted. “But after we did the play, they didn’t see our disabilities anymore. They came and shook our hands and congratulated us on the play. They were amazed.”

Ellison Bovu, executive director of the Vanuatu Society for Disabled People (VSDP), which advocates for social integration, told IPS that one of the obstacles they were addressing was that many people in the community, including families and educational institutions, do not believe that disabled people have the ability to achieve much in life or perform well in school.

Challenging social perceptions is one of the Rainbow Theatre Group’s key aims and every performance is accompanied by a workshop with the audience, which encourages a two-way dialogue for the audience to learn more about disability rights.

“We have each actor talk about one of their achievements in life, such as running or wheelchair tennis, and we also go into schools, encourage discussion and answer children’s questions,” explained Francis Rurunavira, the group’s coordinator.

An estimated 17 percent of Pacific Islanders and 12 percent of people in Vanuatu have some form of disability. According to Sam Kaiapam, disability rights officer at the ministry of justice and community services, more accurate statistics will be available by the end of July when a report of the first disability survey in the country is completed.

The survey is part of the Vanuatu Government’s commitment to the recognition and rights of disabled people in all areas of life.

The year after ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008, Vanuatu established a National Disability Policy and Action Plan, followed by a National Inclusive Education Policy in 2011. A multi-stakeholder National Disability Committee, coordinated through committees set up in the country’s six provinces, has been active since 2012.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that Pacific Island communities tend to be overly protective of children with special needs, and families can view public and school environments as unsafe or containing too many physical barriers to mobility.

For VSDP, which works with the government to implement policies regarding disability, identifying children with special needs at a young age and improving their access to education is vital to tackling the high levels of unemployment and poverty that can impact them in adulthood. Less than 10 percent of children with disabilities in the Asia Pacific region attend school, resulting in a regional unemployment rate for people with physical disabilities of 50 to 90 percent.

The Rainbow Theatre Group is playing a crucial role in bringing more special-needs children into education.

Rachael Tarbo, one of the group’s caregivers, observed that “as a result of the group going out and performing in villages, more children with needs have been identified in rural areas and some have now been registered to go to early education classes.”

Since 2006, VSDP has hosted an early childhood activity programme, which prepares children for kindergarten.

In December last year, the theatre group was one of six organisations and individuals honoured at the Pacific Human Rights Awards organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Suva, Fiji.

The biennial awards celebrate outstanding initiatives to protect and promote human rights in the Pacific Islands.

For the group’s members, the award signified the important recognition that they “don’t just talk”, but actually make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities.

(END)

Chief Maki Massing stands outside his modest dwelling built of cement and corrugated iron in an informal housing settlement in Freswota, outside of Port Villa. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Jun 10 2014 (IPS)

Rapid migration to cities and towns, driven by scarce public services and jobs in rural areas, is producing a profound social shift in Pacific Island countries, where agrarian life has dominated for generations. But the urban dream remains elusive as a severe lack of housing forces many into sprawling, poorly-serviced informal settlements.

In the southwest Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, which has a population of 247,262, the urban growth rate is four percent, the second highest in the region after the Solomon Islands.

On the outskirts of the capital, Port Vila, with a population of 44,000, is Freswota, comprising six areas known as Freswota 1-6, which are home to an estimated 8,000 people.

Chief Maki Massing, originally from west Ambrym Island in the nation’s northern provinces, is a widower with six children who has lived in Freswota 4 for 30 years.

"If you don’t find work, you must go back to your island, because Port Vila is a very expensive town." -- Chief Maki Massing, community leader in Freswota
As the late afternoon sun fades, light bulbs strung across the front yard of his compound illuminate the house Massing built of cement and corrugated iron. Colourful lengths of fabric curtain the doorways. Early evening bustle fills the nearby street as he tells me why he left his rural village of Lalinda.

“My children came to Port Vila for school,” he explained. “As my income in the village from growing copra was not very good, I came here to find work so I can pay the school fees.”

Massing is fortunate to have landed a job in the formal sector. After working in a bank for 15 years, he joined the state ministry of health, where he has been employed since 1992.

The circumstances of most people in Freswota vary from permanent employment to informal labour (with people taking jobs as market vendors selling fresh produce) to unemployment, but they share one commonality: low incomes and poor living conditions.

Frank William at the Port Vila Municipality Council told IPS that land in the capital has not yet been zoned for specific development uses, such as residential or commercial, which has hindered urban planning progress. “Some public housing is available for people who come to Port Vila to work,” he said, “but people on low incomes are still unable to afford them.”

The average cost of a basic decent house lies somewhere in the range of 31,600-52,700 dollars, which is out of reach for many local residents living on the minimum monthly wage of roughly 316 dollars. The National Housing Corporation, which is under-resourced, sells land without housing development to residents in Freswota 3-6.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports that 16.8 percent of government workers and 17.1 percent of private sector employees in Port Vila live below the poverty line.

“For me, it’s too expensive because I must also pay for water, electricity, transport and school fees,” Massing said. Even with a government job, he has to earn extra money by renting out two small rooms in his house.

Throughout the Pacific Islands the scale of rural to urban migration dramatically outpaces job growth, availability of land and state capacity to expand housing and public services.

Thirty-five percent of all Pacific Islanders, in a region with a population of 10 million, now live in towns and cities. In Vanuatu, 25 percent of the national population are urban residents and this is predicted to rise to 38 percent by 2030.

Lack of decent housing is worsening urban poverty, with 24 percent of all metropolitan residents in the Pacific Islands inhabiting slums. In Port Vila, one-third of children are impacted by poverty, which is 20 percent higher than the national average, reports the Pacific Islands Forum.

Leias Cullwick, executive director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, claims that a low minimum wage and high cost of living in Port Vila are tipping families into severe hardship.

“Eighty percent of people in urban areas cannot even afford one decent meal per day. In the hospitals, 70 percent of the women giving birth cannot afford enough healthy food, so [their] babies are going to be malnourished,” she said.

People’s lives are also affected by lack of basic services. Massing claims that water, electricity and roads are urgently needed in Freswota 4.

“For the first five years here, I had to go down to the river every afternoon to wash and collect water to bring back to the house,” he said.

Traditional community leaders, such as Massing, are taking initiatives to address social and development issues in urban settlements.

“I talked to the government on behalf of my people and they then provided some water and electricity in this area,” he continued.

And while he understands the desires that drive people to Port Vila from rural areas, Massing believes that the city is not the best option for everyone.

“I bring everybody together here and talk to them and say you must work to stay here. If you don’t find work, you must go back to your island, because Port Vila is a very expensive town,” he said, emphasising the need to prevent destitution and crime.

According to the Pacific Islands Forum, state institutions need to take measures to improve urban planning and reform the housing market in the interests of those in most need.

Many Port Vila residents, including Massing and Cullwick, are also concerned about the misuse of public funds allocated to improving infrastructure and services. The Vanuatu Corruption Commission, established last year, has a mandate to address political and administrative mismanagement.

Proposing a bottom-up approach, Cullwick said traditional housing in villages could be better utilised for those marginalised in towns. She believes adapting traditional dwelling designs and using readily available natural building materials, such as thatch and bamboo, could reduce the cost of constructing a safe and healthy house.

In the meantime, Vanuatu has joined the UN-Habitat’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP), which aims to improve urban living conditions and progress toward Millennium Development Goal 7 – bettering the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. Urban profiles, part of Phase 1, are currently being drafted ahead of the next phases of planning and implementation.

(END)

Cigarettes are a popular buy from vendors selling imported goods here in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Aug 19 2013 (IPS)

Governments in the Western Pacific Islands, believed to be home to a third of the world’s smokers, have begun a long battle with the growing crisis of non-communicable diseases. Such diseases currently account for 75 percent of the region’s fatalities.

Kiribati and the Marshall Islands have the highest rates of diabetes in the world at 25.7 percent and 22.2 percent respectively. Fiji carries the greatest burden of non-communicable diseases (NCD)-related deaths in the region at 501 per 100,000 in the population.

Major factors include heavy tobacco and alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition. These are exacerbated by rapid urbanisation, and spreading consumerism.
In 2011 Pacific Island leaders declared NCDs to be at the centre of a health and development exigency with long-term impacts including lower economic productivity, loss of household income and unsustainable health costs.

The limited capacity of health services to cope with escalating financial and service delivery demands is of growing concern. Most national health expenditure, up to 90 percent in Vanuatu and 87 percent in Samoa, is already met by governments, and there is limited potential to increase budgets further.

“I don’t think any country can cope with the burden of NCDs, not even high-income countries,” Dr Wendy Snowdon of the Pacific Research Centre for the Prevention of Obesity and Non-communicable Diseases at the Fiji School of Medicine told IPS.

“NCDs are expensive to treat, and while countries in the region are increasing their investment in treating NCDs, the only viable solution is effective promotion [of prevention] which could reduce the burden.”

Challenging entrenched lifestyle habits and controlling access to tobacco are imperative to reducing the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes and cancer, and addressing cardiovascular disease, which is the greatest killer of all.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) cites tobacco as the second highest risk factor in NCD-related deaths, 80 percent of which occur in low- and middle-income countries.

The prevalence of smoking in men ranges from 74 percent in Kiribati and 60 percent in Papua New Guinea to 55 percent in Tuvalu and 47 percent in the Cook Islands. Female smoking rates, while on the increase, are lower at 43 percent in Kiribati, 41 percent in the Cook Islands and 27 percent in Papua New Guinea.

Stephanie Erick of Tala Pasifika, a New Zealand heart service aimed at empowering Pacific peoples in tobacco control, told IPS: “Smoking practices over the years have embedded themselves in [Pacific] cultural practices, for example, with kava drinking. Socially it has become a part of gift giving [of duty free cigarette packs] from overseas travellers coming into Pacific Island countries.”

A report last year by the United States-based health foundation Legacy and the Pacific Partnership for Tobacco Free Islands (PPFTI) highlighted the very young age at which dependence starts. Twenty-five percent of high school students in the Northern Mariana Islands are smokers. In the Marshall Islands, almost 90 percent of smokers start in adolescence, and two-thirds are daily consumers by18 years.

The socio-economic repercussions for this generation as it ages will be serious in a region striving, with mixed progress, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The connection between NCDs and disability, such as stroke paralysis, amputations and blindness, is already taking its toll. In Fiji, diabetes is the main cause of amputations and the second main factor in adult blindness.

A report by the University of Sydney, Australia, blames smoking for the burden of lung cancer in 39-47 percent of men in the Pacific Islands and predicts this will increase to 70-84 percent within the next two decades.

Pacific Island leaders, fully cognizant of the implications for the region’s future, developed crisis response strategies during an NCD Forum last year focussed on tobacco control and building capacity in primary health care services. Their goal is 25 percent reduction in NCD-related fatalities in people aged 30-70 years by 2025.

However, there are significant challenges to implementation, with many health service providers constrained by low funding and resources.

Prevention through ‘whole of society’ and ‘whole of government’ approaches is being advocated by health ministers as the most likely to reverse the present scenario.

A critical step has been ratification of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) by all Pacific Island member states and territories. The framework is supported by the MPOWER strategy which promotes tobacco price and tax increases, tobacco advertising bans, regulation of tobacco use in public spaces and cessation services.

Jeanie McKenzie, NCD adviser on tobacco and alcohol at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Noumea, New Caledonia, told IPS that the FCTC was an important catalyst to the emergence of tobacco policies in the region.

“SPC has been undertaking tobacco enforcement workshops in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands and Palau, and these reflect the fact that there is legislation in place in these countries,” she said. “Countries in the Pacific are also increasing the tax on tobacco, with many increases at or above 20 percent.”

This year the sale of single cigarettes and smoking in public places became illegal in the Solomon Islands. Fiji also introduced new requirements that graphic health warnings cover 60 percent of cigarette packages.

“Increasing the price of tobacco affects price-sensitive [social groups], usually youth and women, and acts as a disincentive,” McKenzie explained. “Laws that prevent the sale of small cigarette packs and the illegal breaking open of a pack and selling of single cigarettes also assist in dealing with the problem of young people being able to access cigarettes for a smaller financial outlay.”

WHO claims that every 10 percent increase in the retail price of tobacco induces a drop in consumption in low- and medium-income countries by up to 8 percent.

The coral atoll nation of Niue, located northeast of New Zealand, with a population of 1,611, has emerged as an early success story. Last month it announced that sustained tobacco control and health support measures had led to a massive drop in the smoking rate in men from approximately 58 percent in recent decades to 15.8 percent, and in women from 17 percent to 7.6 percent. This places the island state well ahead of its 2021 objective of less than 25 percent for men and 13 percent for women.

School children in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jul 7 2013 (IPS)

Many Pacific Island nations are celebrating the success of rising school enrolment rates, with 14 members of the 16-member Pacific Island Forum on target to meet Millennium Development Goal 2: achieving universal primary education by 2015.

But a closer look inside the classroom, and in communities surrounding these schools, reveals a shockingly low literacy rate.

Two organisations – the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) and Papua New Guinean Education Advocacy Network (PEAN) – teamed up to assess the impact of formal education on people between the ages of 15 and 60 years in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea, a southwest Pacific Island nation of just over seven million people.

“There is very little exposure to books in the home and in schools, and many children do chores to supplement family income after school, so they have no time to read." -- Lice Taufaga, lecturer at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
Their findings suggest that so-called strides in education have not yielded much concrete success: the literacy rate in the national languages of English and Tok Pisin was just 23 percent, with many students unable to read or write after completing primary education.

Similar findings have been reported in Melanesian countries throughout the southwest Pacific region:  in 2011, ASPBAE surveyed 1,475 people aged over 15 years in the Shefa Province of the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, and discovered that while 85 percent declared they could read and write a simple letter in the official languages of Bislama, French or English, individual testing confirmed that only 27.6 percent were literate.

Vanuatu boasts a primary enrolment rate of 88 percent, and although 90 percent of respondents had experienced some formal education, only 40 percent completed primary school.

In the Solomon Islands, an archipelago nation located southeast of Papua New Guinea, the government has claimed remarkable recovery from a five-year-long civil war (1998-2003), with primary school enrolment at 91 percent. However, poor school facilities in rural areas and disinterest in formal learning have been cited as contributing factors to a critically low literacy rate of 17 percent.

While 97.7 percent of the 2,200 people surveyed by ASPBAE in the capital, Honiara, and in Malaita Province agreed that it was important for children to attend school, 53.8 percent of females and 37.6 percent of males, aged 15 to 19 years, were not in education.

“The issue of low literacy is prevalent mainly with those who are learning in a language other than their primary one,” Lice Taufaga, lecturer at the school of education at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, told IPS.  “Literacy is best learnt in one’s primary language, yet most learners in South Pacific countries are expected to achieve it in English, the language of business and administration.”

Taufaga added that there were also cultural challenges, as the solitary activity of reading was not always encouraged or supported in many communal-oriented Pacific societies.

“There is very little exposure to books in the home and in schools, and many children do chores to supplement family income after school, so they have no time to read,” she said.

The linguistic diversity of the region, which contains a population of 10 million and one fifth of the world’s languages – plus European languages introduced during the colonial era – makes literacy a complex issue.

In Melanesian countries, there are hundreds of commonly used local vernacular languages, many of which are only oral. These are used by 88 percent of the population in Vanuatu, while 60 percent claim to utilise the national languages of Bislama, English or French in everyday communication.

Yet low literacy also extends to national indigenous languages, with a World Bank study last year in the Polynesian South Pacific state of Tonga concluding that only three in 10 students who had engaged with three years of primary education were able to read fluently enough in either English or Tongan to comprehend content.

More than a decade ago Pacific educationalists began rethinking the legacy of introduced western curriculums and claiming a priority for Pacific languages and cultures within the education process.  However, the reality is that a bilingual approach remains, with English and French perceived as necessary for engaging in a global world.

“The long term impacts of low literacy levels in English and French are a key concern because much of the information about development is only available in English or French, hence a higher level of literacy in these languages will enhance transfer of technology, information and knowledge at all levels of society,” Rex Horoi, director of the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific told IPS, although he is supportive of translation into vernacular languages.

“It is critically important that Pacific people have direct access to information relevant for their sustainable livelihoods and improvement of life in the language they understand and communicate in…” Horoi emphasised.

Government budgets do not appear to be the main issue, although their allocation raises questions about the delivery of quality education.

According to the World Bank, 23.7 percent of Vanuatu’s government expenditure is allocated to education and this rises to 34 percent in the Solomon Islands, compared to approximately 16.1 percent in New Zealand and 13.5 percent in Australia.

However, up to 90 percent of Pacific Island education budgets are committed to teachers’ salaries, with little funds left to develop education systems, infrastructure and resources.

Inadequately qualified teachers are another issue, especially in light of evidence that only 29 percent of teachers in the Solomon Islands and 54 percent in Vanuatu are trained.

According to Taufaga, many “who are teaching English lack the proficiency to model or teach it well.”  She also pointed out that urban class sizes in the region can be as large as 40 to 50 students and most schools cannot afford suitable books for reading.

Remote students remain the most disadvantaged, with poor education facilities and lack of basic materials plaguing rural communities. In Papua New Guinea, similar to the neighbouring Solomon Islands, approximately 80 percent of schools do not have libraries.

“People keep talking about quality education,” a school graduate named Niniu Oligao told IPS in Honiara. “I believe in people reading books in order to be able to write in full sentences and be exposed to meaningful ideas.”

Oligao is so concerned about the repercussions of the absence of a library in the Takwa Community Primary and High School, an institution of 2,000 students based in the North Malaita Province, that he has taken it upon himself to build a collection of donated books. Though he has no funding, he hopes this initiative will form the beginnings of a library for students’ research.

Addressing poor literacy now is vital to improving students’ chances of completing secondary and tertiary qualifications and empowering Pacific Islanders to contribute to social and economic development, whether at the local, national or regional level.