Once the fear and the hype subside, the world’s attention moves on to the next disaster. We often forget to look back. Without the opportunity to reflect, we fail to understand how such events unfold.

Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu’s islands with unprecedented force. When the accounting was complete, an estimated 110,000 people on 22 islands were severely affected. Now, months later, reconstruction and recovery continue. The cost to the nation is still being calculated, and a policy response is being formulated.

Simply put, Vanuatu is paying the penalty for the sins of the developed world. It is well established that weather events become more severe as climate change advances. Although this country is one of the most vulnerable in the world to severe weather, no cyclone in recorded history has reached the intensity of Pam. Miraculously, few people died. But when all is said and done, the cost of cyclone Pam will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the lead-up to the global climate conference in Paris at the end of this year and in light of the World Summit Humanitarian Pacific consultations currently underway in Auckland, PiPP has undertaken an investigation of how developing countries can respond to such devastation, and how the developed world can shoulder its responsibilities in the years to come.

But before that can happen, it’s necessary to understand the nature of the event itself. We have therefore compiled a timeline of events before, during and after Pam made landfall in Vanuatu. It provides a comprehensive, blow-by-blow account of the disaster.

The timeline (which starts with a short video intro) can be found here.

This project is ongoing. As new information comes to light it will be added. If you have a link, a document, image or video you would like to see included, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pipp@pacificpolicy.org.

Even in the aftermath of cyclone Pam, which directly affected half the population and badly damaged dozens of their islands, Ni Vanuatu people still managed to smile and laugh. I confess that even after a decade living here, I found it astonishing that people would show such grace in the face of adversity.

In the badly affected Malapoa Waetwud neighbourhood, a man calmly described how he and his family would live off fallen fruit for a few days, then they’d dig up whatever hadn’t rotted in the ground; but after that, he wasn’t sure where the next meal was going to come from. On the southern island of Tanna, which was utterly devastated by 230 Kph winds, I sat with a group of mamas in the shade of the only remaining tree trunk in that part of the village, and we laughed and gently teased each other as we passed the time.

And it’s not that they were oblivious. On the contrary. Only half an hour earlier a village elder came up to me, looked me in the eye and spoke with brutal simplicity: ‘I nogat wan samting.’

‘There’s nothing left.’

It took me days—weeks to be honest—to understand how people could remain light-hearted in the face of the loss of everything of value in their lives.

The penny began to drop when I visited Cildo (pronounced SEEL-doe) and his parents in Erangorango, in the foothills overlooking Port Vila. Cildo is a sturdy, plain-spoken, twelve-year-old boy originally from Malekula. His family home had been utterly destroyed by a massive tree which fell at the height of the storm, injuring his father and barely missing Cildo and his mother. I interviewed him for UNICEF, as part of a series of videos taking stock of the effect of the storm on children in Vanuatu.

Cildo was remarkably matter-of-fact:

When the cyclone came we went inside and ate, then we all went into one room. Then a tree fell onto our house, and we all sat in the remaining corner until morning.

That’s it. Plain facts, delivered without inflection or stress. And when I took his photo standing in the ruins, he flashed the brightest smile.

It was only a couple of weeks later, as I was reviewing all the shots I’d taken in the days following the disaster, that I realised his secret: You don’t need a reason to be happy.

Transactionality and causality are so deeply ingrained in the western European psyche that it comes as a revelation that actually, happiness does not need to be pursued. It can be found wherever you happen to be standing.

The rootless and sometimes purposeless nature of consumer societies often stand in the way of such realisations. For my part, I spent the better part of my childhood coping with damage that never should have happened, and spent my young adulthood as a half-formed Angry Young Man. I was ruled by surges of anger, righteousness and cynicism, until circumstances finally forced me to conduct an existential stock-take.

By the time I arrived in Vanuatu in 2003, I was ready to learn. And before eighteen months had passed, I knew that this is a place where I could be happy. I could be happy, not because things are better here; in many ways they’re not. I could be happy because I no longer needed a reason.

Back in 2010, I wrote:

I’ve been stuck in cyclones, got malaria, dengue, been hospitalised from the after-effects of prolonged dehydration, had more parasites in more places than anyone really wants to know. I’ve been stung by things straight out of a Tim Burton movie. I’ve had death threats and constant, insanely unreasonable demands on my time and my pocketbook.

And yet, and yet in spite of it all, I was happy. Further back, in 2008, on the event of the perfectly preventable death of a little boy, I wrote about his funeral:

To an outsider, it’s wildly incongruous to watch the mourners as they approach the deceased’s house, chatting quietly, even laughing amongst themselves as if on some innocuous errand. The only clue about their destination is a cloth draped across one shoulder, to wipe the coming tears.

At the very instant they reach the gate, the wails begin. They are contrived, it’s true, but utterly heartfelt. The display of pain and sorrow at a funeral is more than most people of European descent have ever seen. To hear women moaning and weeping during the vigil and the burial is an uncanny and deeply moving experience. Though ritualised, the depth and sincerity of the emotion is starkly undeniable.

And then, as quickly as it begins, it is done. Life goes on, there’s food to be cooked, children to be tended to, and laundry to be done. The laughter, the scolding and the [conversation] start up again, as they always do.

Everyone in Vanuatu understands the place of things, and the need for everything to be in its place. Respect for public display and private observance of all of life’s events is universal. If someone smiles and jokes with his friends and colleagues just days after his first-born son has died… well, that’s as it should be. The funeral is over, and though there will be other opportunities to look back and mourn over the next hundred days, life goes on, whether one wants it to or not.

But it took a decade—and a cyclone of historical dimensions—for the lesson finally to land: People in Vanuatu are not happy because of anything. They are happy because the alternative doesn’t bear considering. Living as they do in a Least Developed Country with little or no modern technology in village life, with death and disaster around every corner, and people with whom you might or might not get along tucked up nice and cosy next to you (and you’re on an island, remember; they’re not going anywhere)… well, the least you can do is have a laugh now and then.

Vanuatu’s designation as the happiest place on earth was the result of research conducted by the New Economics Foundation, a UK-based think-tank. Their Happy Planet Index actually placed more emphasis on the happiness of the planet than its people. It is a measure of people’s well-being in proportion to environmental footprint. Vanuatu was included in the inaugural 2006 survey, but not in any subsequent studies.

Still, the title endures because it fits. And now, as we face the impact of the developing world’s environmental footprint in the form of rising ocean levels and storms of unprecedented severity, this ability to be happy in the face of adversity will no doubt serve us well.

But don’t for a minute let that lead developing countries to complacence. Just because we smile our way through the hardship doesn’t mean that life is easier here. It’s not easier at all; it’s just better.

And honestly, developed nations would do well to take a lesson from this. Disasters wrought by climate change are inevitable now. The damage is done. The storms will reach you too. You’d better learn to smile through adversity as well, because you might not have much else to smile about.

But there appears to be proper support in the pipeline in the form of long-term approaches, aimed at recovering and building more resilient forestry and fishery sectors. This article proposes some recommendations that could revive these two sectors.

A series of assessments by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) indicate that natural forests and small-scale plantings in agro-forestry systems were all affected. Based on the Vanuatu Resource Information System (VANRIS), the total commercial volume of timber that was damaged is estimated at some 50,000 cubic meters. These commercial volumes are from high value indigenous tropical hardwood tree species.

We need to support communities with a total of 10 medium-scale saw mills that will operate to extract timber from the logs which will be used to rebuild homes, with the excess to be supplied to the local markets to create employment and income-generation activities for the local population. DARD has offered to provide trainings to assist in facilitating markets for timber.

DARD has supported tree planting for some time. Most farm trees on the island have been planted on recommendation of the DARD. One of them is the Vanuatu Sandalwood. It is a high value tree species and has been earning a profitable income for growers. Other indigenous multipurpose tree species that have been planted include the Terminalia, the Copal gum, and the Basswood Whitewood.

But, as most of the trees were planted only recently by most farmers and were only moderately wind firm, assessments ndicate that some 80% of the trees were badly damaged, and need to be replanted. The recommendation is to establish a total of 20 nurseries with the capacity of producing a total of 50,000 seedlings annually. The 20 nurseries have been targeted to produce an estimated total of 1,000,000 million seedlings for the next three years.

A total of 20 demonstration plots of Agro-forestry will be established at each nursery site for farmers and annual field days for farmers to inspect the plantings. The agriculture sector on Tanna Island is blessed with a rich volcanic soil and the sector is slowly progressing and recovering.

There has been some support in the distribution of planting materials on the island, however the potential also remains to access other traditionally selected cultivars of root crops from northern Vanuatu (which wasn’t so affected by Pam) to hasten the replanting process.

Potato planting has also generated interest from Tanna farmers in the wake of cyclone Pam. This is an indication of good progress in ownership and the determination by local farmers and communities. The recommendation is to utilise the 20 Forestry Nursery location and with the support from DARD to deploy planting materials of the selected cultivars to supply to farmers and duplicate and deploy to farmers.

A long-time serving root crop specialist, Dr Vincent Lebot, has stated that ‘Vanuatu has no food security,’ pointing out that traditional societies in the past employed clever agro-forestry farming systems, and when this was lost, Vanuatu lost its resilience to natural disasters. In Tanna, food security is a challenge, particularly in terms of access to protein. While there is available livestock, the majority of people on the island can’t afford enough protein and beef. Protein sources need to be heavily invested on to provide for the population.

A study by the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on fisheries found that Vanuatu is rated as one of the lowest in the region in terms of accessing and consuming fish. A recent development in the fisheries sector is the promotion of fishpond farming of an introduced exotic species called Talapia. The only challenge with this farming technique is the availability of water, but the good news is the species does not need running water as it can easily survive in water with limited oxygen. Most farmers involved in fishpond farming for the Talapia species have been encouraged to use rainwater, as it is best for the species.

The recommendation here is to establish 10 central breeding centres for fishpond farming and to deploy some 100 fish farms so that interested farmers wanting to access the fish stock can purchase from here. The department of fisheries has conducted similar work in the northern region, which proved to be highly successful. Fishpond farming has only recently commenced on Tanna, but we hope to see the same results. Demand for protein and fish alone on Tanna is huge, so developing fishponds into a dependable sector and promoting the development of sustainable forestry will help develop local production capacity to meet post cyclone demands and ensure long-term sustainability.

A big thank you also to Rita Brien for initiating the campaign and for helping sort and organize all the donations we have received these past few weeks – Tankyu Rita!

The total amount raised is AUD 16,116 (including additional contribution by PiPP). We estimate that in total some 700 people have benefited from the assistance.

Here is a report on spending for the cyclone relief campaign.

PiPP is pleased to say that all its staff are safe and well. Our office was only lightly damaged. We now have power and internet back on and we will endeavour to keep our regional audience updated with this rolling situation as it unfolds. PiPP staff have been busy helping the recovery effort in many ways, from helping international media provide accurate coverage to assisting local charities and the Vanuatu government. We are working through the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO), which is co-ordinating the emergency response around the country.

It is too early to make a detailed analysis of the full impact of the cyclone and the various responses to it, but that will come. What we can say is that the community in Port Vila and beyond has shown remarkable resilience and rallied together in the face of this incredibly destructive storm. Also we can report remarkable efforts restoring essential infrastructure, including phone, power, roads, bridges and internet.

Special kudos to Pro Medical too; a local paramedic charity that does valuable first-response medical work. Pro Medical have made a big difference with their emergency response team, involved in clearing debris from around the airfield on day two, which allowed the arrival of aid flights to get on the ground quickly. Commercial flights have resumed.

Although the casualty rate is thankfully small, the reality is that tens of thousands of people have lost their homes and possessions, and many more are at significant risk as their food, water and medical supplies run out. There is an urgent need for basic humanitarian assistance to flow through to many of the islands, particularly in SHEFA and TAFEA provinces. There is concern about diseases such as dengue appearing, since there has been so much water on the ground following the cyclone.

Vanuatu has survived the initial impact, but now needs to survive the outcome of this unprecedented weather event. We are facing a situation in which tens of thousands of Ni Vanuatu on dozens of islands will require ongoing food, water and shelter assistance for not less than six months in order to avoid a humanitarian disaster.

As a UNICEF official put it, ‘We no longer have a medical emergency; we have moved on to a public health emergency.’

Another area of urgent need is to help kids get back to school. Many schools have been seriously damaged; lost roofs, spoiled water tanks and destroyed text books. It has been heartening to see many school kids themselves involved in the cleanup and keen to get back to learning. We believe special priority should be given to making sure school children can be back learning as soon as possible so their lives and ability to learn are not disrupted more than necessary.

Over the next week or so, PiPP will resume its operation and in the meantime we apologise for the interruption to our regular analysis and commentary.

This is a trying time for everyone here in Vanuatu but there is real determination to get back on our feet and make the best of it.

Our thoughts are with the many people who are struggling to get through this and rebuild their lives, but our island spirit is strong. With Vanuatu government leadership and a well-coordinated international aid response, the community can be supported to get through this disaster.