ABSTRACT
This article examines the role of traditional knowledge, skills, and values in fostering resilience in Vanuatu, the world's most at-risk country from natural hazards. We study responses to severe Tropical Cyclone (TC) Harold, which devastated the nation's northern islands in April 2020 just as a state of emergency had been declared in response to COVID-19. This necessitated severe restrictions on the delivery of relief supplies and a ban on the arrival of overseas humanitarian workers, forcing remote communities to adopt local responses to the emergency and cope with food insecurity through traditional resilience strategies and values that promote resource-sharing and cooperation. We use a mixed methods approach to analyse the content, extent, and transmission of traditional knowledge in Vanuatu and link this to evidence of its usefulness during TC Harold. Quantitative data from field surveys with two groups of respondents are combined with reports on responses to TC Harold both nationally and along the remote western coast of Santo Island. We also review the extent of traditional knowledge in current educational curricula in Vanuatu. Results illustrate how traditional ecological knowledge and social capital played a key role in disaster response and recovery, but such knowledge is mainly held by older people, and its use by younger generations is declining. We conclude that with rising global temperatures predicted to generate more extreme weather events, and external funds for disaster relief likely to decline, there is a need to build greater adaptive capacity at the local level through the revival of centuries-old informal transmission pathways of knowledge and values. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)