Vanuatu's growing youth population looks to its future.

Many any Pacific islands suffer from serious environmental problems: poor waste disposal strategies; contamination of our water; degradation of marine life and coastal areas, and the depletion of our mineral and forestry resources. Vanuatu is no exception.

So what are youth doing about it?

Vanuatu has an extremely youthful population--the average age is 17.5 years, and 50 per cent of our people are between the ages of 18 and 30 years. A large proportion of these youth live in the main urban centers of Luganville, and our capital city Port Vila, although the majority of our population, close to 80 per cent, live out their lives in rural areas.

There are many social problems experienced by youth here in Port Vila, due to increases within the last 10 years of urban drift as a result of vast economic and social changes, particularly in agricultural areas, that we have experienced since gaining independence from Britain and France in 1980. Unemployment, high elementary-school drop-out rates, crowding in settlement or squatter areas around the greater Port Vila area, are all problems our young people face. So the question is: Where do youth environmental concerns and issues come in?

Many youth living in urban areas such as Port Vila are of the opinion that though the environment might even be important, environmental threats don't really affect them. They are someone else's problem. In fact, when we discuss environmental issues in Vanuatu, there are often generalisations that these problems are rural (aelan), and don't concern those of us in the cities. Indeed, statistics show that 47 per cent of the youth who live in Vila were born here and have never been back to their home islands. And if there is a problem in town, such as poor waste disposal practices, people don't think of it as their problem, so much as one city council must deal with. Others think of environmental issues being an overseas problem with western countries polluting our air and seas. For the past year, I have been working with the Pacific Waste Awareness Evaluation Programme, a project of Foundation of the South Pacific, a regional non-governmental organization committed to supporting local efforts at community devel opment. We recently surveyed 50 youth between the ages of 15-30 years who represent a general cross-section of young people from Port Vila and come from varied socio-economic, cultural, and spiritual backgrounds. We asked them to comment on their concerns about the environment.

What we learned was that the majority surveyed believe that people are already aware of the environmental threats, and that they are simply too lazy, don't care, or do not have the education or knowledge to address the problems. It was also interesting to see that more than 50 per cent of those surveyed had taken part in at least one World Clean-Up Day Campaign. Perhaps one of the most important issues identified was that over 80 per cent of them believe there is a clear lack of involvement from government on environmental issues.

From the survey several strategies emerged. First we needed to focus on determining how best to educate our youth about the specific problems we are facing here in Vanuatu. What are the most effective ways of getting that knowledge out there? We also recognized that we needed to address the lack of youth involvement in national policy and decision-making. How could we get youth voices to be heard?

"Our youth are our future leaders." An over-used cliche? Possibly. But our hope for saving our environment and our island way of life does not lie with current political and economic policies. Youth need to take action and begin to shape their own future. The only thing we have to lose by not trying this would be our environment.

Juliette Hakwa is a research assistant for the Foundation of the South Pacific. She hopes to return to university soon to complete a specialisation in development studies.