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Vanuatu

International Waters Project

Strengthening the Management of Vanuatu's Precious Coastal Resources

What is the Vanuatu IWP?

The Vanuatu International Waters Project (IWP) is working with the Crab Bay community on Malekula Island to find practical, low-cost, ways to improve the management of their coastal fisheries resources. The IWP is managed by the Vanuatu Environment Unit in collaboration with the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

Crab Bay was chosen as the pilot site for the Vanuatu IWP because local chiefs had already established a ‘no entry, no take’ tabu area, in an effort to halt the obvious decline in their resources.

What is the problem?

Woman from Crab Bay selling crabs at the Malampa Market

Seventy per cent of Vanuatu’s population lives in coastal communities where subsistence, or artisanal fisheries, forms a fundamental part of daily life. In Crab Bay, on Malekula Island, the land crab is one of the main sources of protein and cash for local villagers. As the area’s name suggests land crabs were once said to be so plentiful that they would literally crawl over you as you slept.

In just the last 20 years population growth in Crab Bay, and the growing demand for cash, has put much greater pressure on the land crab and other important coastal resources. The crab collectors are mostly women and many are now forced to harvest at night using coconut baits and traps. They say that in recent times it has become much harder to find enough to feed the family and earn some extra money at the market.

Three years ago bundles of 50 crabs would fetch $US1 on market day—today, 10 crabs will earn the women $US2. But now the women and girls must go out for almost an entire day to collect enough crabs.

Arresting this decline in resources has been hampered by a lack of basic ecological information and the lack of clear and enforceable rules to help communities govern their management.

Until recently most of Vanuatu’s policies have also been focused on commercial species rather than subsistence resources. Like most of Pacific Island countries the resources in Vanuatu, including the land and sea, are owned by their communities. Enforcement is centralized with national agencies but the effectiveness of this top-down approach has been limited by a severe lack of human and financial resources.

The 2002 Environmental Management and Conservation Act was intended to help devolve greater power of enforcement to the communities and give them greater responsibilities to develop their own resource management plans and rules. The Environmental Management and Conservation Act provides for communities or landowners to formulate and determine their own resource management plans, penalties and enforcement.

Preparing crabs for selling at the Malampa Market

In 2000 the Crab Bay Community Chiefs set a tabu (no entry and no take zone) on the reef and the nearshore mangrove vegetation to arrest the decline in crabs and other coastal resources. However the new local rules were not clearly explained to all members of the community and this subsequently led to an increase of poaching activities in the Tabu area.

The IWP started to use a series of participatory processes to encourage the whole community to fully participate in all resource management decisions.

In May 2004 thirty local facilitators were trained by the IWP to work together with the rest of the Crab Bay community to develop a better understanding of the root causes of their resource management problems. These local facilitators have now helped to run meetings with elders, youths, and women, to discuss resource management issues, to build greater understanding of their resources, and to motivate them to participate in management decisions that will have a direct impact on their livelihoods.

The IWP is now working together with the Malampa Provincial Authority and the Crab Bay community to:

What is the objective of the Vanuatu IWP?

The IWP is working with stakeholders to: