The Drawa community on Vanua Levu were one of the first Pacific communities to use the Nakau Methodology to protect their forest.
Like many Indigenous peoples across the Pacific, Drawa customary landowners were caught between conservation and earning money to survive. Logging coupes had been mapped and they were starting to clear for timber when the community made a last-ditch effort to save their forest.
Eight mataqali (clans) worked together to form the Drawa Block Forest Community Cooperative. Forest carbon credits are now a significant income source and have allowed them to care for critical forest ecosystems, strengthen their community and grow alternative enterprises like rainforest honey products.
As it has done for generations, the Drawa forest can continue to protect villages from cyclones, floods and droughts, and provide clean water for the Drawa people and other communities who rely on streams that flow from the rainforests.
Since becoming verified by Plan Vivo, the Drawa communities have used the income from credit sales for water and sanitation facilities and other building projects across five villages. They’ve set up honey production and agro-forestry enterprises, and established women and youth groups.
The Drawa Block Forest Community Cooperative is home to the globally endangered Barred tree skink (Emoia trossula), the Vanua Levu slender tree skink (Emoia mokosariniveikau) and the remarkable Fiji ground frog (Cornufer vitiana).
The Drawa rainforests are set on the Wailevu-Deketi ighlands, and are a haven for 385 unique plant species — 47% of which are only found in Fiji — and 22 of Fiji’s native birds. The area is listed as an official Important Bird Area for Fiji.
In 2015, the Drawa project won the SPREP-SPC Award for Excellence in Implementing Island Ecosystem Management Principles. In 2020, it won the 2020 International Energy Globe Award for Fiji.
