ABSTRACT
Tanna is a small island in Vanuatu, a nation of eighty-three islands in the South Pacific. There are, at present, no officially designated protected areas on the island. Nonetheless, there are spaces in which conservation takes place through making specific areas or resources tabu. Personal 252titles govern rights to land on Tanna. Land and more broadly ‘nature’ are inspirited, which makes difficult any establishment of government-sanctioned conservation or protected areas on the island. Indigenous approaches to governance and management under the umbrella of ‘kastom’ (tradition) follow an alternative path to environmental conservation—one that raises certain challenges as well as opportunities to rethink orthodox Western assumptions.
