Changing Forestry Regimes in Vanuatu: Is Sustainable Management Possible?

The patterns of management of forest ecosystems in Vanuatu have been important for the lives and livelihood of local people from prehistoric times to the present. Through their regulation of the local climate, including water runoff and soil erosion, the forests make viable the local ecosystems that have sustained and shaped the human societies in these islands up to the present day. In addition, several islands of the archipelago are of ecological importance for the ecosystem of Oceania as a whole (Dahl 1986), although the archipelago’s relative geological youth, isolation, and small land areas have meant that the forests here are not as extensive or biologically diverse as those of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It is possible, therefore, that some lessons of international relevance regarding the sustainable management of tropical forest ecosystems may be derived from a detailed consideration of the Vanuatu situation. In this paper we attempt to stimulate better forest management in Vanuatu, and to be relevant to its neighboring countries in this endeavor, through a description of the development of regimes of forest ecosystem management in the country and a discussion of possible paths toward sustainable forest use. Before proceeding in this analysis it is important to consider the concept of sustainability. Many definitions of the term have been offered (Pearce, Markandya, and Barbier 1989); however, that of Costanza and Patten is both recent and straightforward: “a sustainable system is one which survives or persists” (1995, 193). Sustainability may be regarded as a general principle guiding resource management, but the ability to apply the notion to a variety of systems at a number of levels, and the existence of multiple resources and stakeholders, precludes the possibility of devel