Cyclones. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. Rising seas. For ni-Van women, disaster recovery is not an occasional crisis — it is a way of life. Here is what resilience actually looks like on the ground.
From the air, Vanuatu looks like paradise.
A chain of emerald islands scattered across the deep blue Pacific. White beaches. Palm trees leaning toward the sea. And during tourist season, on the most accessible islands, when the ocean stretches boundless and blue and a gentle breeze sends soft ripples across the water, that beauty is entirely real.
But beneath it lies a reality few visitors see.
Vanuatu is one of the most disaster-exposed countries on earth. For communities spread across dozens of islands, disasters are not rare events. They are part of life.
But beneath it lies a reality few visitors see.
Vanuatu is one of the most disaster-exposed countries on earth. For communities spread across dozens of islands, disasters are not rare events. They are part of life.
The Geography of Risk
Vanuatu sits within the South Pacific cyclone belt, where severe tropical storms form between November and April each year. The country regularly experiences Category 4 and Category 5 cyclones. It also lies within the Pacific Ring of Fire, making it vulnerable to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
These overlapping hazards mean disasters often compound each other — and recovery from one event may be interrupted by the next.
The scale is not theoretical. In recent years alone:
Cyclone Pam (2015) devastated the country, affecting around 90% of the population and damaging approximately 40% of health facilities.
Cyclone Harold (2020) struck during the COVID-19 pandemic, compounding an already stretched emergency response.
Cyclones Judy and Kevin (2023) hit within days of each other, leaving communities little time to recover between events.
Recovery rarely happens in isolation. Communities rebuild their basic shelters , salvage water systems (if that a) have one or b) can) and replant gardens — often knowing another disaster may arrive before their recovery can even be attempted.
When Gardens Are Survival
Food systems across the islands are deeply connected to the land. Families rely on subsistence gardens and fishing — growing cassava, taro, yam, bananas and breadfruit, and harvesting coconuts, often with limited access to other protein sources. These gardens are not supplementary — they are the primary food supply.
It takes patience to tend these crops. Women nurture them, care for them, and wait — knowing they will eventually feed those around them.
And then, with sudden force and destruction, a tropical cyclone can wipe it all out overnight.
The winds flatten the crops. Saltwater floods the soil. Fruit trees are stripped bare. Coconut palms are blown over. Research on cyclones and food security in Pacific Island countries confirms that disasters significantly disrupt food availability and access for months, years and even decades after major storms.
In most islands, when gardens are lost there is no alternative food supply nearby. Emergency response supplies are not provided and the nearest supplies may be on another island — hours away by boat, if transport is available, and if families have money for it. Many do not.
Replanting becomes one of the most urgent priorities after a cyclone. But it takes months for crops to grow back. In the meantime, hunger is not unusual.
Climate Change Is Intensifying the Risk
The Pacific region is experiencing increasingly intense weather events linked to climate change — stronger cyclones, more unpredictable storm seasons, and rising sea levels that threaten low-lying coastal communities.
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report confirms that climate change is increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones affecting Pacific Island nations. For a country like Vanuatu, which already faces extreme hazard exposure with limited infrastructure to absorb shocks, this creates a compounding challenge: more severe events, less time to recover, and greater pressure on already stretched communities.
The WorldRiskReport has consistently ranked Vanuatu among the world’s highest-risk countries for natural disasters — a product not only of its geographic exposure, but of the deep vulnerability that comes from limited infrastructure, dispersed communities, and constrained coping capacity.
Women at the Centre of Disaster Recovery
Despite the scale of these challenges, recovery across the remote islands is often led at the community level. And at the centre of that community-level response are women.
Research examining gender, climate change and disaster resilience in Vanuatu shows that women frequently lead efforts to restore food systems, organise community responses and support families after disasters. At the grassroots level, they hey coordinate recovery efforts between villages, rebuild gardens, care for children and elders, and maintain ‘coconut wireless’ person-to-person networks of communication across communities.
Much of this work happens quietly, outside of almost non-existent formal disaster response systems. It is not counted in official recovery assessments. It does not attract funding. But without it, communities would not recover.
And it is happening against a backdrop of almost no external support. In most of the islands, communities are largely left to fend for themselves after disasters. There are no food reserves to distribute. Aid, if any, reaches only a few accessible communities — with the majority of isolated communities, often the most vulnerable, receive the least.
Why Local Networks Matter
In a highly dispersed island nation, disaster recovery depending solely on external aid arriving after the fact, is not viable. To meet the need requires strong community networks, local leadership and reliable information sharing before, during and after events.
This is why Mitingar’s work focuses on strengthening connections between women across the islands — not as a peripheral activity, but as core social development, community resilience and disaster preparedness infrastructure.
Mitingar’s Sister Circles function as Community Climate Change Disaster Committees — a national government initiative. Each circle builds local capacity so that when a cyclone strikes, women are not starting from scratch. They have relationships, shared knowledge, and coordination systems already in place.
That kind of preparedness cannot be delivered by an outside organisation parachuting in after a disaster. It has to be built over time, from within communities, by people who will still be there regardless of the decisions made by governments and aid organisations.
Rebuild. Replant. Repeat.
To outsiders, disasters often appear as isolated events — a cyclone season, a recovery period, a return to normal.
In Vanuatu, the story is different.
Communities rebuild their basic shelters, source clean water and replant gardens — sometimes not knowing another cyclone may arrive before the next harvest. The escalating severity and frequency of major events is adding enormous pressure on women who are already carrying the primary load of food production, childcare and community recovery.
Resilience here is not a moment of heroism. It is the daily work of standing up again.
Rebuild. Replant. Repeat.
The women doing that work deserve to be seen, resourced, and heard in the policy spaces where decisions about their future are made. There is no point waiting for change coming from somewhere else. That’s why we are investing in Mitingar’s mission so that the women of Vanuatu are not left waiting while bigger wheels keep turning.
Sources
- WorldRiskReport 2021, preventionweb.net (Vanuatu #1 ranking)
- WorldRiskReport 2025: Focus Floods, weltrisikobericht.de
- IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Working Group II, ipcc.ch
- World Bank, Improving Lives and Building Resilience in Vanuatu (2024), worldbank.org
- UNDRR, Pacific Risk Profile, undrr.org
- APN-GCR, Tropical Cyclones and Food Security in Pacific Island Countries, apn-gcr.org
- Tandfonline: Gender, Climate Change and Disaster Resilience in Vanuatu (2023)
