Traditional resource knowledge and management practices underlie many of the biodiversity conservation initiatives of landholders and their communities in Vanuatu. For the Government and agencies like the Cultural Centre to assist in strengthening traditional knowledge and practices, in order to support sustainable management of resources, good information on this knowledge and these practices is required. While the Cultural Centre has a significant amount of data relating to traditional biodiversity knowledge, much of this information is not easily accessible for application toward policy, planning, education and community purposes.

To address this deficiency the Cultural Centre has entered into a sub-contract with the Vanuatu Environment Unit's "Landholders’ Conservation Initiatives" project to establish a database to improve access to such information. Under this sub-contract, the Cultural Centre will collate information about traditional biodiversity knowledge and practices on three targeted islands of Gaua, Santo and Tanna and put in place mechanisms that make appropriate knowledge accessible for policy, planning, educational and community needs. While the focus of this work will be the three islands targeted by the project, it will establish generic information management mechanisms and processes that are able to manage comparable information from other islands within Vanuatu.