Eco-concrete and grass tech take top awards at Pacific Innovation Forum

A type of sustainable concrete and grass systems for soil stabilisation were the big winners of the first Wave Makers Pacific Innovation Forum for Climate and Environment held in Vanuatu last week.

The event featured a pitching competition which saw Pacific entrepreneurs - the top ten out of 50 nominees - showcasing Pacific-led climate and environmental solutions.

Competition lead and V-Lab founder and president Marc Antone Morel said the idea of the forum was to look at the challenge of climate change and environmental degradation through a different lens.

"This forum was really about telling a positive story, a story of innovation, a story of people coming together with bold ideas and with a common vision, a common goal," Morel said.

Morel said the competition was a key element of the inaugural forum to highlight innovation as a cornerstone to any regional development effort.

"The decision was to engage as much as possible the private sector and offer the private sector a space to showcase their solution. This pitching competition basically brought together businesses, entrepreneurs from the region, and possibly, ideally, likely helped them to grow their business," Morel said.

The competition offered a cash prize winner of AU$10,000. The winner was ENVIROMESH representative and Envirocrete Pacific managing director in Vanuatu Fred Kalkaua, pitching an eco-concrete from Pacific waste.

"Steel and cement contribute [around] eight percent of [carbon emissions] into the atmosphere … so using waste in New Caledonia to do the GeoMix, which is a geopolymer mix, would replace the cement and recycle all the plastics, which we use as fiber that replaces the mesh wire into concrete," Kalkaua said.

Kalkaua said the prizemoney would help expand Envirocrete Pacific beyond Vanuatu.

"We have some plans in visiting Pacific [nations], like Tonga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands, and also probably travel to New Caledonia to see how much they would need, so we could bring in all the products available in Vanuatu and have it accessible and start to inform the people of the importance of the use of this product," he said.

He said the forum was a great opportunity for face to face networking for him and his team.

"I brought in 500 of my business cards there and also with my two partners. I have only 100 left," Kalkaua said.

The winner of People's Choice award was Robinson Vanoh from Papua New Guinea-based Eagle Vetiver Systems Ltd (EVSL).

EVSL use vetiver grass systems for soil stabilisation and erosion control to safeguard communities from climate driven disasters such as flooding and landslides.

"Winning the people's choice award tells me that the audience, or the very people living through these climate challenges, deeply connect with our vision, and their choice has truly inspired me to explore more ways to adapt, expand, and deliver this technology across the region," Vanoh said.

He said the forum showed him how the Pacific wants immediate solutions and not trails.

"Our communities are past the phase of needing proof-of-concept trials. What we need now is full-scale solutions deployed right now, and we are looking for partners who want to help us deliver on that scale," he said.

Morel said with the Vanuatu government's support to make the forum a biennial event and a showcase at COP30 in Turkey.

"It is our hope that through the forum and through the movement that was launched with the forum, we would see a more coordinated and integrated approach for business support in the region, with additional resources … to enable us to accompany the wave makers of today and discover the way makers of tomorrow."