Vanuatu: Families Find Climate-Smart Ways To Grow Crops 18 Months On From Cyclone Devastation
Tropical Cyclone Lola was one of the most powerful off-season storms to strike the Pacific when it made landfall in October 2023 with wind speeds of up to 215 km/h, destroying homes, schools and plantations, claiming the lives of at least four people [2] and affecting about 91,000 people [1].
Recovery efforts were made significantly more challenging when Vanuatu's capital Port Vila was then hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in December last year, claiming 14 lives and destroying critical infrastructure.
Madleen, 11, said when the cyclone hit, her family's crops were destroyed, leaving them short of food.
"It destroyed the food crops. When we came outside, we saw the crops were destroyed. The banana tree was just bearing fruit and it was destroyed. And we didn't have enough food. We were eating rice, but we were almost running short. We were not eating well, we ate just enough. I felt bad."
After the cyclone, a shortage of nutritious food put children at risk of hunger as well as diseases like diarrhea, with typically an increase in the number of children hospitalised for diarrhea following cyclones, Save the Children said.
Vanuatu is already one of the most climate disaster-prone countries in the world, and scientists say tropical cyclones will become more extreme as the climate crisis worsens. This will disproportionately impact children due to food shortages, disruption to education and psychosocial trauma associated with experiencing disasters.
Save the Children, alongside Vanuatu's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, Fisheries, and Biosecurity (MALFFB) and local partners, is supporting Madleen and her family through the Tropical Cyclone Lola Recovery Programme, which is helping improve food security and resilience in communities impacted by the cyclone.
As a part of the Recovery Programme, over 1,100 households have received climate-resistant [3] seeds from a seedbank. These seeds, for growing watermelon, papaya, Chinese cabbage, tomato, capsicum and cucumber, are proven to perform in Vanuatu's changing climate, with tolerance to high rainfall, drought, pests and disease. Farmers are encouraged to preserve the seeds from crops and sell them back to the seed bank.
The programme is also training communities in other climate-smart agricultural techniques such as growing smaller fruit trees that are robust enough to withstand strong cyclone winds.
Save the Children has also built a collapsible nursery for plants in Madleen's community that can be taken down when a cyclone is predicted, so saplings and trees can be stored, protected and replanted after it passes.
Save the Children Vanuatu Country Director, Polly Banks, said:
"In just 18 months, people in Vanuatu have been deeply shaken by a devastating cyclone and a powerful earthquake.
"Children have borne the brunt of this, with food taken off their plates, crops destroyed, homes and schools damaged and diseases on the rise. As the climate crisis accelerates, we must work with communities to strengthen their resilience, so children and their families are better equipped to face whatever comes next.
"We're working in partnership with the Government of Vanuatu and local partners to help communities build the skills and resources they need to support themselves when future cyclones and disasters strike."
Save the Children has been working in in Vanuatu for more than 40 years to make sure children are learning, protected from harm, and grow up healthy and strong.
Notes:
This project was also supported by the New Zealand Government's Disaster Response Partnership programme.
Multimedia content, including video interviews and b-roll can be found here: https://www.contenthubsavethechildren.org/Share/807tf4t4e61e20g1d77to4w5gh6fqxh2
[1] National Disaster Management Office Vanuatu: Tropical Cyclone Lola: Internationally Deployed Assets (As of 2 November 2023) | OCHA
[2] Cyclone Lola deaths caused by inaccessibility to urgent medical care
[3] Open-pollinated seeds (OP seeds) produce plants that can reproduce true to type, meaning farmers can save seeds from their harvest and plant them in the next season with similar results. OP varieties used and recommended by the Vanuatu Agriculture Research and Technical Centre are often locally adapted, meaning they've been trialed and selected for their performance in Vanuatu's climate - including tolerance to high rainfall, drought, pests and diseases. These seeds have genetic diversity, allowing plants to better adapt to changing weather patterns.
About Save the Children NZ:
Save the Children works in 120 countries across the world. The organisation responds to emergencies and works with children and their communities to ensure they survive, learn and are protected.
Save the Children NZ currently supports international programmes in Fiji, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Laos, Nepal, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Areas of work include child protection, education and literacy, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation, and alleviating child poverty.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
20 hours ago
- RNZ News
Doctors in Gaza are treating children who may never recover from malnutrition
By ABC News Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek, Chérine Yazbeck and ABC staff in Gaza Yazan, a malnourished 2-year-old Palestinian boy, sit with his brothers at their family's damaged home in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. Photo: AFP / OMAR AL-QATTAA CONTENT WARNING: This story contains images of sick children that may be distressing. In clinics across Gaza, starving children are getting treatment, but they probably can't be saved. They lie on hospital beds, skeletal, wasted, many barely making a sound. Medical workers say that's what scares them most. "They're so exhausted, they're so sick, they're no longer able to cry," said Rachel Cummings, the humanitarian director for Save the Children in Gaza, describing a visit to one of the organisation's clinics last week. "It was nearly silent." Many of those children who can still speak are saying they want to die. Doctors say many of the children in specialised malnutrition treatment centres may not recover. (ABC News) Photo: ABC News "We have many children now in our child protection services saying that they wish to die [because] in heaven, in paradise, there is food, there is water," Cummings said. The horrifying truth, according to doctors in Gaza, is that many will soon get their wish. "All of the children who are currently malnourished will die," said Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani, the medical director of the healthcare organisation Glia, who is working in Gaza at the moment. "That is, unless there is an absolutely rapid and consistent reversal of what is happening. "However, let's be very realistic. Anybody who is malnourished right now will die." The number of malnutrition deaths in Gaza could be vastly under-reported, said Dr Loubani, who spoke at a recent press conference alongside multiple aid workers, including Cummings. They don't include children with pre-existing medical conditions, even if those conditions are also exacerbated by the war, he said. "The figures are very, very conservative," he said. "The directive that we receive in the emergency [ward] is that we do not report any death that has a substantial - even primary - malnutrition component if there is any other comorbidity. "That is to say, the only deaths that are marked as malnutrition deaths are the ones where there is really well and truly nothing else going on but the malnutrition." He believes the official malnutrition death numbers could be just 10 percent of the reality. Six-month-old Jouri Abu Hajar lies in the nutrition ward at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, central Gaza. Photo: AFP / MOIZ SALHI The medical term "malnutrition" masks the harshness of the situation. What's occurring in Gaza now - say doctors, aid workers and the people themselves - is starvation. In the Patient Friends Hospital, which hosts the main specialised malnutrition treatment centre in Gaza City, doctors can't do much to help. "Although a nutritional plan is attempted, there are no adequate supplies - there's simply nothing available to nourish the children," said Dr Fawaz Al Husseini, a paediatrician specialising in malnutrition. "In normal circumstances, infants might consume butter and milk at home. But here, even hospitalised children with severe malnutrition gain little weight due to the limited food available. "What little aid enters Gaza is grossly insufficient; it doesn't even begin to meet the children's needs." Even for moderately malnourished Gazan children, the prospects are grim. The use of a simple, yet specialised, measuring device called a MUAC (Mid-Upper Arm Circumference) tape determines whether a child is healthy (green), moderately malnourished (orange) or suffering from acute malnutrition (red). The orange and red cases are given a paste from peanut, sugar and milk powder called "Plumpy'Nut" - a Nutella-inspired health supplement designed to treat malnutrition. Children being treated at the Patient Friends Hospital, a specialist malnutrition treatment centre in Gaza.(ABC News) Photo: ABC News But it's not enough to save them. "The treatment for moderate, the orange, is inadequate because there are no complementary foods. You can't survive on Plumpy'Nut alone," Cummings said. "Children are just getting sicker and sicker, even though they're in a treatment program for malnutrition. "This is why we see this downward trajectory of child outcomes and that's why my team were so upset… because they know they're sending the children home [and] they will bounce back to the clinic in a worse state." Najah, a 35-year-old Palestinian mother, sits next to her malnourished 11-months-old daughter Sila as they await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP Israel blocked all food from entering Gaza from 2 March to 21 May, saying it was trying to pressure the militant group Hamas to accept its ceasefire terms. It also tried to replace the comprehensive and extensive UN-led aid distribution system with a newly formed American contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which had never before delivered humanitarian relief. Israel argued these changes were to stop Hamas diverting aid, something the UN and international relief agencies denied was occurring and for which a US government analysis found no evidence. The result of Israel's policy was widespread deprivation and desperation, culminating in an urgent declaration by the UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification group that most of Gaza had crossed famine thresholds. Hundreds of people were killed - likely by Israeli tank and gunfire - trying to get food from the limited aid points set up by the private contractor, which, by its own numbers, has never distributed enough food to come close to feeding Gaza's population. The few aid trucks that came through have been swarmed by desperate people, as seen in recent satellite vision. It was only when faced with global condemnation and pressure from its closest ally, the United States, that Israel allowed more trucks into Gaza. Over the past week, the UN said Israel also granted an increased number of requests from its agencies to pick up aid already sitting under Israeli military guard inside the strip. Israel also announced "tactical pauses" - basically agreeing not to bomb or attack certain areas with ground troops - so drivers can take goods to stricken populations. It allowed several countries to parachute food into Gaza by plane, a practice condemned by many aid agencies as ineffective, dangerous and expensive. The United Nations said those measures have made little difference to the overall situation, with most of the trucks that did bring aid into the strip this week being looted. This picture taken from Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip shows parachutes of humanitarian aid dropping over the besieged Palestinian territory on 26 March 26, 2024. Photo: JACK GUEZJACK GUEZ / AFP Palestinians seeking aid allege Israeli soldiers continue to shoot at and kill them and vulnerable people continue to miss out. Aid workers say the situation has devolved into a "survival of the fittest" and is failing to deliver food to people like Mohassen Shaaban, who is nursing her one-month-old daughter Rahaf in a tent in a camp in Gaza. "They keep promising aid but we haven't seen anything," she told the ABC. Because most of the increased aid over the past week has been looted before making it to the agencies' warehouses, there has been no distribution to people like her. "We adults have nothing to eat - no food at all. So how can I feed her [baby Rahaf]? I can't find anything for her or for us," she said. "The situation is terrible for us - imagine what it's like for the children." Shaaban said she often boiled mint leaves in water to give to her daughter, in an attempt to stop her crying. "She needs milk. She needs a clean place to live. We all need milk and a clean, safe space," she said. "We need food - not just for the children, but for ourselves too, so we can breastfeed them. There are no nutrients. "This situation is driving me crazy. It's unbearable not being able to find anything to feed her." Six-month-old Jouri Abu Hajar lies in the nutrition ward at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on 22 July, 2025, suffering chronic illness and severe malnutrition. Photo: Moiz Salhi / Middle East Images via AFP Even if Gaza's malnourished children survive this cruel phase in the war, they will be forever marked by it. "Child malnutrition causes cognitive impairment, memory loss, and inflammation; impacting the child's developmental potential," said Fawaz Al Husseini, the paediatric malnutrition specialist. "It affects walking, memory, and vision - it impacts the entire body. In some cases, it even affects the kidneys; some children suffer kidney failure due to malnutrition." Many adults in Gaza are malnourished too, but the impact on children is worse. The developmental damage is irreversible, said Rob Williams, the chief executive of the War Child Alliance. "The process of development stops, the process of building a brain, of creating neurons that will establish cognitive ability, will stop," he said. "If you're a child at a vulnerable age for brain development… if that development stops, that is not reversible. "The trucks coming in now will do nothing to restore the injury that's been done to the brains and the physical development of children who have been acutely malnourished. "It's also true to say that hundreds of thousands of children have permanent damage - permanent physical and cognitive damage - from a deliberate policy of restricting the supply of food in Gaza." The UN and other agencies say only a ceasefire and the unrestricted opening of Gaza's crossings to aid and commercial goods will solve the hunger crisis. "It's not just about how many trucks get to the barrier, it's how effectively they get to the population, and especially the vulnerable ones who can't fight for food as the trucks enter and who can't risk their lives going to the GHF," Williams said. "The question that policymakers seem to be asking themselves is not 'How do you stop mass starvation in Gaza?' - the question they seem to be asking is 'How do we do something that will make it look like we're doing something?' "We are at the point in Gaza where anything that doesn't include a complete ceasefire, a complete opening of those walls, a complete opening of the perfectly competent aid system that was there before … anything less than is policymakers condemning tens of thousands of people to death." - ABC
NZ Herald
4 days ago
- NZ Herald
What are microplastics doing to our brains? UN talks will debate the issue next week
The most prominent study looking at microplastics in brains was published in the journal Nature Medicine in February. The scientists tested brain tissue from 28 people who died in 2016 and 24 who died last year in New Mexico, the United States, finding that the amount of microplastics in the samples increased over time. The study made headlines around the world when the lead researcher, US toxicologist Matthew Campen, told the media that they detected the equivalent of a plastic spoon's worth of microplastics in the brains. Campen also told Nature that he estimated the researchers could isolate around 10 grammes of plastic from a donated human brain - comparing that amount to an unused crayon. Speculation 'far beyond the evidence' But other researchers have since urged caution about the small study. 'While this is an interesting finding, it should be interpreted cautiously pending independent verification,' toxicologist Theodore Henry of Scotland's Heriot-Watt University told AFP. 'Currently, the speculation about the potential effects of plastic particles on health go far beyond the evidence,' he added. Oliver Jones, a chemistry professor at Australia's RMIT University, told AFP there was 'not enough data to make firm conclusions on the occurrence of microplastics in New Mexico, let alone globally'. He also found it 'rather unlikely' that brains could contain more microplastics than has been found in raw sewage - as the researchers had estimated. Jones pointed out the people in the study were perfectly healthy before they died, and that the researchers acknowledged there was not enough data to show that the microplastics caused harm. 'If (and it is a big if in my view) there are microplastics in our brains, there is as yet no evidence of harm,' Jones added. The study also contained duplicated images, the neuroscience news website the Transmitter has reported, though experts said this did not affect its main findings. 'Cannot wait for complete data' Most of the research into the effects microplastics have on health has been observational, which means it cannot establish cause and effect. One such study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, found that microplastics building up in blood vessels was linked to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in patients with a disease that clogs arteries. There have also been experiments carried out on mice, including a study in Science Advances in January which detected microplastics in their brains. The Chinese researchers said that microplastics can cause rare blood clots in the brains of mice by obstructing cells - while emphasising that the small mammals are very different to humans. A review by the World Health Organisation in 2022 found that the 'evidence is insufficient to determine risks to human health' from microplastics. However, many health experts have cited the precautionary principle, saying the potential threat microplastics could pose requires action. A report on the health risks of microplastics by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health published this week ahead of the treaty talks said that 'policy decisions cannot wait for complete data'. 'By acting now to limit exposure, improve risk assessment methodologies, and prioritise vulnerable populations, we can address this pressing issue before it escalates into a broader public health crisis,' it added. The amount of plastic the world produces has doubled since 2000 - and is expected to triple from current rates by 2060. -Agence France-Presse
Otago Daily Times
6 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Shanghai relocates 280,000 amid storm
Shanghai has relocated more than 280,000 people, halted hundreds of flights and ferry services and imposed speed limits on roads and railways as a tropical storm whipped eastern China with gales and heavy rain. Co-May's landfall in the port city of Zhoushan in Zhejiang province in the early hours of Wednesday was soon followed by warnings of a tsunami set off by a powerful earthquake off Russia's far east, raising concerns of larger-than-expected storm surges along the Chinese coast. Authorities lifted the tsunami warnings for Shanghai and Zhoushan later in the day. While the winds from Co-May were weaker than those generated by typhoons, the Chinese financial hub and other cities in the Yangtze River delta have taken no chances. At least 640 flights could be cancelled at Shanghai's two main airports on Wednesday, including 410 at Pudong and 230 at Hongqiao, authorities said. All ferry services in Shanghai had been cancelled since the morning, and drivers were told to drive under 60km/h on highways, local media reported. Rainfall of up to 100mm - about a month's worth - is expected within a six-hour period in the city, said municipal authorities, warning about potential waterlogging around the city centre. While some parks and the zoo have closed, Shanghai's Disneyland and Legoland remained open. But some rides and performances would be suspended at Legoland due to weather conditions, the park said. Airports at nearby cities Ningbo, Wenzhou and Hangzhou also saw flight cancellations and diversions. As of Wednesday morning, more than 75% of Wednesday's flights at Zhoushan had been cancelled. Some train services in the region were temporarily suspended with others operated under restricted speeds, state media said. Shanghai is rarely subject to direct hits from strong typhoons that generally make landfall further south in China. The most significant typhoon in recent years that landed directly in Shanghai was Bebinca last year, the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China's financial capital since 1949. Co-May made landfall in Zhoushan in the early hours of Wednesday with maximum sustained wind speeds near its centre of 83km/h. Forecasters expect the storm to make another landfall closer to Shanghai later in the day. The storm coincided with a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, about 4000km from Shanghai. Before noon on Wednesday, China's National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center said the tsunami was expected to have "disastrous impacts" on some parts of China's coast, including Shanghai and Zhoushan. However, Shanghai's municipal earthquake agency later issued a statement discounting potentially "disastrous impacts". Although nearby coastal regions could see water levels rise by up to 1.8 metres in the evening, tidal waves around the city would not exceed warning levels, Shanghai's marine forecasting centre said, according to state media reports.
