Transcript
RESCCUE is a Pacific Community initiative taking place in Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Vanuatu
Vanuatu's pilot site is vast, covering 180 square kilometres of land and 50 square kilometres of coastal seas on northern Efate, supporting 8000 people.
The Vanuatu programme operator, a senior environmental consultant from WSP Opus, Rowan Dixon says it's all about community-led resilience to climate change.
"In north Efate, where the site is in Vanuatu, that was really through working with those key partners there. That really came out to see that it was about ocean health, ocean reef. Their dependence on the reef. Sixty percent of their protein comes from the marine environment. And also their dependence on terrestrial resources."
Dr Dixon says RESCCUE has been working alongside the local community with international partners including OceansWatch, Landcare and C2O to help villagers come up with adaptive strategies to help deal with climatic changes.
He says it includes building on existing traditions of fishing bans as well as improved monitoring, management and enforcement.
In late 2017 RESCCUE and the lead local agency Live and Learn became involved with the government project to ban single-use plastic shopping bags, polystyrene takeaway boxes and plastic straws.
"Particularly as the challenges that climate change brings to these coastal communities is in a similar sort of global complex challenge to the way that plastic pollution brings challenges to these coastal communities, so they parallel quite well."
The project's targets - to better manage waste and recycling, to improve village health and to protect livelihoods, including tourism - could complement government's own goals.
Live and Learn Vanuatu's local projects manager Glarinda Andre says they had been creating climate-resilient food gardens.
"Then we moved into the marine space where communities were trained on how to do monitorings and strengthen their conservation areas or set up new conservation areas, and that's when our Ministry of Foreign Affairs started to lead the activities, the ban, on single use plastic in Vanuatu."
According to Ms Andre, Live and Learn has been working with the grassroots, educating people about the impending plastic ban, and helping them adapt.
She says population pressures in urban areas have created new demands for cloth and paper bags.
Glarinda Andre says rural communities like those involved in the RESCCUE project are looking at ways to provide the capital Vila with traditional baskets.
"We've had a lot of coconuts and pandanus trees that were destroyed by Cyclone Pam so Vanuatu is just start to rebuilding its trees. It's going to be sort of challenging in that space as well where people will start to cut down those trees again to start weaving our traditional baskets to use."
Ms Andre has also worked with communities trialing up-cycling techniques including the manufacture of plastic 'bottle bricks'.
Innovations like this will be needed in order to accommodate the next stage of the government's plastic ban which could include single-use items like shampoo bottles.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Ralph Regenvanu says the issue for Vanuatu is that it's such a small-scale economy.
"Whether it's realistic to recycle these products into others is a question that will be determined but it's good that these pilots are being done so we can work out the economics of it. so it's fantastic that these organisations are actually taking the risk, taking the step to experiment so that we can see whether it is a viable option for Vanuatu."
Mr Regenvanu says a national audit is underway to help determine the next stages of the country's plastics ban.
The UN considers Vanuatu the world's most vulnerable nation to natural hazards like cyclone, tsunami, earthquake and volcanic eruption.
While the country can do little about these, it is taking a stand on the anthropogenic issues it faces like plastic pollution and climate change.
In the meantime the three-year RESCCUE project winds down at the end of this year, aiming to leave north Efate better equipped to safe-guard and sustain their resources for future generations.
