Rose Ongalibang shows off the pinkish-purple powder in a small bag. “It’s taro flour,” explains the genial retiree at her home on Palau’s largest island, Babeldaob.
With its distinctive heart-shaped leaves, taro is traditionally cultivated by Palauan women in plots of land around the shores of this tiny Pacific country. The root crops provide a source of starch and have historically served as a symbol of wealth and an object of ceremonial exchange. It is also a key ingredient in Palau’s plans to make its tourism industry more sustainable, more environmentally friendly and a more level playing field for women and men.
The slow food community, which Rose and a group of her female neighbours started last year, is an example of how Palau’s Sustainable Tourism Value Chain Programme is being put into action with FAO support. For the community members, it’s a chance to refocus on taro cultivation traditions, while also finding new, innovative uses for the product.
Traditionally, Palauans have eaten taro plainly boiled, served with fish caught in the ocean that surrounds them. However, in a recent workshop, Rose says, “We made pasta, noodles, pasta sauce, cookies, bread and brownies,” using the taro flour and learned how best to package the products. “The potential is really big,” she says. Meanwhile, Rose and her fellow group members are also working to bring back tourism to an ancient village and its taro gardens, which had been abandoned.
Tourism is the most significant driver of Palau’s economy, although arrivals were slashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Micronesian nation is determined to build back better with this multi-faceted project. Among the elements supported by FAO are a tourism value chain assessment focusing on the involvement of women, a database of heritage foods and processing practices, an inventory of local agroecological and cultural diversity and training workshops for producers aimed at improving nutrition.
This sustainable tourism value chain programme is supported by the FAO Mountain Partnership, as well as the sub-programme, Empowering women in food systems and strengthening the local capacities and resilience of SIDS in the agrifood sector, which is funded by several resource partners under FAO’s Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism.
With Sustainable Travel International and Slow Food International as the other implementing partners, a key part of the programme is a carbon calculator, supporting Palau’s goal of turning itself into the world’s first carbon neutral tourism destination country. The calculator will help visitors work out the carbon footprint of their trip and make a financial contribution towards offsetting it locally through designated carbon sequestration sites and supporting sustainable food production.
Lukes Isechal, Acting Director of the Bureau of Marine Resources, says, “We already have a network of protected areas, particularly Ngermeduu Bay, which is a large estuary lined by mangroves. I think that is the best suited potential carbon sequestration site.”