DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.23803.1 ISSN: 2732-5121

The Ol Man Blong Vanuatu project a participatory interdisciplinary approach to understanding lifestyle transitions in Pacific Island Countries and Territories

Olivier Galy, Corinne Caillaud, Leslie Vandeputte, Pierre Metsan, Mengyu Li, Pierre-Yves Le Roux, Yuyao Zhu, David Battie, Benjamin Puget, Manfred Lenzen, David Raubenheimer
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Background Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) face rapid lifestyle change, accelerating nutrition transitions, rising non-communicable disease burdens, and intensifying climate impacts. Yet the lived experience of these overlapping transformations, especially in remote Indigenous communities, remains under-documented, and urban-rural contrasts are rarely examined within a single integrated design. Vanuatu, an archipelago of 83 islands in the South West Pacific, exemplifies these intersecting challenges. Marked differences between the rapidly modernising capital, Port Vila, and remote coastal communities such as Kerepua, on the west coast of Espiritu Santo, provide a valuable setting to examine lifestyle, physical activity, food system change, wellbeing, and post-growth pathways under climate, economic, and health pressures. Methods The Ol Man Blong Vanuatu project is a mixed-methods study examining three axes: (1) physical activity, food, and nutrition system transformation; (2) post-growth pathways; and (3) wellbeing and happiness in the context of climate change, economic growth, and disease adaptation. The project has three phases. Phase 1 is an 80 day traditional outrigger canoe expedition (~1,500 km) from New Caledonia to Vanuatu, including inter island ethnographic observation. Phase 2 involves 10 days of community engagement in Kerepua through semi structured interviews, photovoice, participatory workshops, and an ascent to the abandoned pre colonial village at the foot of Mount Tabwemasana, from which the present community originated ( Figure 3). Phase 3 replicates interviews and photovoice with coastal families in Port Vila to enable urban-rural comparison. Expected outcomes The project will document how Indigenous communities negotiate tensions between externally driven change and customary lifeways across the rural-urban continuum; characterise food-system transitions in remote and urban settings; explore community perspectives on well-being and climate adaptation; and compare how transitions vary with access to markets, services, and cash economies. It contributes to planetary health by foregrounding Indigenous voices and showing how place, livelihood, and culture shape Pacific transitions.

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