Vanuatu

Vanuatu is at a critical juncture in its development pathway: the country needs to dynamise and transform its rural economy by building on its small-scale and diversified farming system, and leveraging traditional agro-ecological approaches. Expanding on the NGER, this study has outlined upgrading trajectories in the cocoa and coconut sectors that amplify the competitive strengths of small-holder agriculture, leverage agro-ecological practices and place emphasis on women’s roles and knowledge. These trajectories combine social welfare objectives (food security and nutrition, and social inclusiveness, including gender equality), environmental goals (protection of biodiversity and climate-change resilience), and economic objectives (increased income). They cater to both domestic and export market outlets. They show how trade can drive transformational systemic changes at the local and national level towards achieving inclusive sustainable development, beyond aggregate welfare gains.

The goal of this report is to assess the social inclusiveness and pro-poor sustainability of efforts to upgrade, expand and diversify the cocoa and coconut sectors in Vanuatu. Specifically, the analysis screens trade upgrading and diversification policies in the two sectors for their potential to either benefit or negatively impact the goals and targets embedded in the country’s NSDP. Called “Vanuatu 2030: The People’s Plan”, it is the country’s highest-level policy framework. It provides an inescapable normative benchmark for assessing the legitimacy of trade policy options. The Plan charts a holistic development path that strikes a balance between the social, environmental and economic pillars of sustainable development. Tailoring the 2030 Agenda to Vanuatu’s context, the Plan re-assesses material wealth objectives through Melanesian values of respect, harmony, unity and forgiveness, and brings to the forefront of policy discourse intangible values and communal assets.

Since the vast majority of Vanuatu’s inhabitants live and work in rural areas, rural development is the main driver of poverty reduction and will be essential to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is anticipated that raising rural incomes to the level of urban incomes will help reverse the current pattern of rural-urban migration that is fuelling unsustainable urbanisation in Vanuatu.

This study is part of a series of UNCTAD publications that focus on upgrading and diversifying specific agricultural sectors of rural economies in developing countries, with a view to raising living standards among small-scale farmers in a context of sustainable development, female empowerment and food security.

UNCTAD’s National Green Economy review (NGER) for Vanuatu has identified coconut and cocoa as dynamic sectors in which the country has a clear comparative advantage. According to the NGER, the two sectors offer significant opportunities for downstream processing and increased export value through product differentiation, including organic certification. The impacts on sustainability of upgrading trajectories in cocoa and coconut are assessed in chapter 4. To inform the analysis, it is important first to consider key aspects of the domestic production and marketing chain. Indeed, technical details about farming structures, marketing channels and processing techniques are of major importance in assessing social inclusiveness, food security and environmental impacts. Detailed assessments of Vanuatu’s cocoa and coconut chains have been carried out elsewhere (AECOM Services Pty Ltd. and PHARMA, 2016; Pacific Agribusiness Research & Development Initiative, 2011; Pacific Agribusiness Research & Development Initiative, 2012; UNCTAD, 2014a; UNCTAD, 2016). Suffice it here to recall some of the main features of cocoa and coconut production, processing and marketing that have a significant influence on the analysis in the following chapters.

Reply to the United Nations National Accounts Questionnaire from the Vanuatu National Statistical Office, Port Vila. The estimates are published in the "National Accounts of Vanuatu Annual Report".