Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources

Vanuatu's Biodiversity

What is Biodiversity?

Mangroves - Their destruction contributes to a decline in biodiversity

The variety of plants and animals found in Vanuatu is called its biodiversity. The term biodiversity refers to all the different plants, animals and micro-organisms, their genetic variation, and the ecosystems they are part of.

Over thousands of years ago, our islands in Vanuatu have been colonized with so many different kinds of plants, birds and other animals that we can still see many today.

Especially in the past, our people have depended entirely upon these plants and animals for their food, medicine, transport and many other uses.

Today, with the fast growing of our population and the need to increase in agriculture and other economic development through the exploitation of these natural resources, it has resulted in the decline in the population of many of our plants and animal species.

Some of these species have become highly threatened because of their high demand and usage. Some of them have become endangered species and close to extinction. There are also some endemic species that need a lot of protection.

The destruction of forest, freshwater, mangrove and other types of ecosystems contribute a lot to the decline in the abundance and distribution of these species.

How rich is Vanuatu's Biodiversity?

Orchids - One of Vanuatu's Species exhibiting significant Biodiversity in Vanuatu

Biologically speaking, the biodiversity our islands are not that rich compared to our neighbouring countries like New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. This means these countries have a high level of biodiversity and endemism than what we have on our islands. Overall richness and endemism in Vanuatu range from low to moderate.

This is because geologically our islands in Vanuatu are younger and are smaller in size and are isolated from large landmasses.

In general larger and older islands support both a greater diversity of terrestrial ecosystems, plants and animals.

However both the sea separating islands and the rugged interiors separating catchments and lowland habitats are barriers to many species, providing conditions that have favoured relatively rapid subspeciation and speciation.

Frequent disturbance due to the passage of tropical cyclones or volcanic activity has also had a profound effect on the distribution and abundance of species, especially on smaller islands.

Consequently, there is a considerable distribution variation of species within and between islands, and Vanuatu's biodiversity is of particular interest for its on-going processes of immigration, range extension and contraction, and subspeciation.