A crop in decline
Richard Rojo, a subsistence farmer and fisher in Tasmate village on western Espiritu Santo, still tends taro pools the way his elders did: fed by rainforest hydrology, shaded by trees and dispersed rather than cleared into a single open plot. It is an increasingly rare practice. Vanuatu once held several hundred indigenous taro varieties; many are now disappearing as households plant fewer gardens than they used to, researchers say.
Vincent Lebot, a taro and root-crop researcher with the French agricultural research centre in Port Vila who has provided expert testimony to the International Court of Justice, says the shift has been dramatic. Households once planted five to eight taro gardens each in 1980; by around 2020, that figure had fallen to one or two. Two-thirds of crop production in Vanuatu has shifted toward cash crops such as kava, cocoa, coffee and vanilla, while more than half the country’s dietary energy is now purchased rather than grown.
Why cassava won, and why that is a risk
Part of the shift is practical. Cassava, introduced to Vanuatu in 1850, matures in about six months, against roughly nine for taro, and has become the staple crop of choice for many households. But cassava grows taller, making it more vulnerable to cyclone winds, and because taro is propagated from stem cuttings rather than seed, losing varieties also means losing genetic diversity that makes the crop more resistant to pests, disease and environmental stress.
Vanuatu’s exposure to that risk is severe. The country ranked 44th of 193 countries for disaster risk in the 2025 World Risk Report, and Cyclone Pam in 2015 damaged 96 percent of the country’s crops and livestock, leaving more than half the population needing immediate food aid. Cyclones Harold in 2020 and Judy and Kevin in 2023 caused further damage. Lebot’s ICJ testimony projected that climate-related changes could affect the food security of 80 percent of ni-Vanuatu.
A pool, cuttings, and a model for resilience
Rojo’s response has been incremental but concrete. His newest taro pool, roughly five metres by fifty, had yielded more than 40 bundles of taro by the end of 2025, earning him about $340 (at market in nearby Luganville) while also serving as a reservoir of planting material. Lebot argues that dispersed, tree-sheltered agroforestry pools like Rojo’s are inherently more resilient than large cleared plots, because a community that loses its own crop to a storm can restock from a neighbouring pool that was spared.
That is roughly what happened during a 2024 flood, when other villages sought cuttings from Rojo’s pool after losing their own. Joses Togase, project manager of the Sunset Santo Environmental Network, says the group now plans to distribute taro cuttings more widely across the western Santo coast, a region with no power grid, roads or wharves, building on the informal exchange that already took place.
A legal backdrop
The push to protect indigenous crop varieties runs alongside Vanuatu’s broader climate diplomacy. The country led a landmark case at the International Court of Justice in December 2024 seeking clarity on states’ climate obligations, and the court ruled in Vanuatu’s favour in July 2025. For villages like Tasmate, the ruling is a legal milestone; the taro pools are the more immediate insurance policy.
Related: Mexico City’s cempasúchil growers face a comparable choice between resilient heirloom varieties and shorter, hardier hybrids as climate volatility increases, while the Amazon’s Mura communities face a different kind of pressure on land-based livelihoods from a proposed potash mine.
