Vanuatu

Vanuatu is an island located in the South Pacific Ocean made up mostly of jungles and villages within them. Here, one of the most essentials components of everyday life are the fish markets. In the past decade, however, foreign companies have been diminishing the population of fish at rates too fast for fish to be replenished. The coral reefs along the island’s coast are homes to numerous tropical fish. Since the arrival of foreign fishing companies to these waters, there has been a vast decline of the population of the underwater species living there. Catches declined with 90,000 tons in 1999 to 30,000 in 2001. With a 50% decline of tropical fish, there has also been a corresponding decline in other fish species, including ones that the Vanuatu people have depended on to survive. Islanders have been forced to live off of less nutritious, imported goods, which include mutton flaps, corned beef, turkey tails, and tinned fish. In addition, the nation’s economy depends heavily on tourism that draws people to the island for their tropical habited waters. The quick death of the tropical life, though, will not only lessen the amount of healthy food but also reduce the number of attractions.

Vanuatu’s people were the first to become refugees of climate change, in effect to global warming. About 100 residents were left no other choice than to move to higher grounds because of the rising sea levels that had destroyed their homes. Small Pacific islands of low coastal areas are under threat from storms, flooding, deadly mosquitoes, and diseases that have risen in levels, from skin diseases to malaria.

As a designer, places like the South Pacific island of Vanuatu should be visited to use design as a method to help solve problems. Such significant problems will take much effort and time to find solutions to. However, designers should use these drawbacks to a once-content nation to think about solutions, preventions, and cautions to design that could apply to the area in need of a helping hand or elsewhere where similar situations may exist.

Catherine