Vanua
The AI lifecycle is materially bound to land. Minerals, water, energy, and physical space are drawn into every stage of building and running AI systems, right from chip fabrication to cooling data centers. A significant share of this extraction occurs in the Global South, with cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium from South America's "lithium triangle," and rare earth and other critical minerals mined across Africa and Latin America, often under exploitative labor and environmental conditions that have drawn sustained criticism. At the same time, the AI development this resource base supports remains the province of the most powerful states and corporations. There is a persistent asymmetry in as the capital, compute ownership, and intellectual property in AI are concentrated among a small number of powerful firms and states while the physical extraction that makes the technology possible is disproportionately borne by communities with far less power over the terms of that extraction.
Vanua, from the Fijian language, gives us a framework to address these power asymmetries.
Understanding Vanua
In the Fijian language, vanua in its simplest translation, means “land.” However, this translation is radically incomplete. For the iTaukei people, it symbolizes the concept of interconnectivity of community and the environment, where nature is perceived as a part of the self. Vanua is understood to encompass the rich interconnectedness of culture, leadership, knowledge systems, relationships, values, land, and spiritualities, as articulated by the Fijian Vanua Research Framework. Vanua is physical, social, cultural spiritual, and epistemological. The concept is known by different terms across the south Pacific region, such as whenua, fenua, fonua, enua, and aba.
Each vanua has a chief who holds responsibility over land, water, resources, and people within these spaces. This is not the same as ownership as it is practiced in the sense specific to Western property, but rather, is a practice of stewardship. The chief is a steward and is accountable to the present community and its ancestors, rather than a proprietor with rights that overrides the wellbeing of the community. Vanua is the underpinning foundation for values that can shape governance, namely respect, reciprocity, humility, gerontocracy (governance by elders), collective responsibility, charity, safety, spirituality, humor, and service. These principles are not merely abstract ideas, but emerge from the specific character of the land, the ancestors, and the relationships that constitute vanua itself.
What Vanua Unsettles in AI Governance
The relationship between AI and land is one of the least scrutinized dimensions of AI governance. Data centers consume land and extraordinary quantities of freshwater for cooling. Rare earth minerals required for AI hardware are mined from territories, many of which are Indigenous, with devastating ecological consequences. Undersea cables and satellite systems extend the physical footprint of AI across oceanic territories. Pacific communities, including those for whom vanua is a living governance framework, are among those most directly affected by these physical infrastructures, and by the climate consequences of AI’s energy consumption. Yet, AI governance frameworks treat land as a logistical variable rather than as a relational entity with its own integrity and its own claims.
Vanua reminds us that this framing is wrong. Land is not mere infrastructure or a resource to be optimized. It is the condition of possibility for community life, cultural continuity, spiritual relationship, and the transmission of knowledge across generations. Governance can and does reproduce colonial divisions by treating land through technical criteria that override or sideline relational considerations. AI governance is also risking going down the same path, as evidenced by the application of technical frameworks to a phenomenon that fundamentally needs relational understanding.
A governance framework informed by Vanua would not reduce consent from affected communities to a regulatory formality but rather consider it a relational obligation. It would call for impact assessments that include ecological, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of harm alongside material ones. It would recognize that communities organized around Vanua do not experience their relationship to land as a set of interests to be balanced against other interests, but rather that they experience it as constitutive of who they are, which means that harm to Vanua is harm to personhood itself.
References
Griswold, D. J. (2025). The value and vanua of soil: bureaucratic practices, social life, and the colonial legacy of soil conservation in Fiji. Ecology and Society, 30(4).
Jekope Ramala, M., & Ruwhiu, D. (2024). Vakumuni vuku ni vanua (gathering the wisdom of the land): An Indigenous fieldwork research methodology in Fiji. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 65(3), 448-454.
Nabobo-Baba, U. (2008). Decolonising framings in Pacific research: Indigenous Fijian Vanua research framework as an organic response. AlterNative: an international journal of indigenous peoples, 4(2), 140-154.
SPREP. (2024). Vanuatu and Fiji showcase leadership in use of Traditional Knowledge. https://www.sprep.org/news/vanuatu-and-fiji-showcase-leadership-in-use-of-traditional-knowledge
Tuwere, I.S. (2002). Vanua: Towards a Fijian Theology of Place. Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
Wyrta. (2022). Vanua: The Fijian Concept of Land. https://wyrta.com/vanua-the-fijian-concept-of-land/
Yee, M., McNamara, K. E., Piggott-McKellar, A. E., & McMichael, C. (2022). The role of Vanua in climate-related voluntary immobility in Fiji. Frontiers in Climate 4, 1034765.
This article draws from the wisdom and work of the Fijian people. While educating ourselves on Indigenous worldviews is important, we understand that our actions can also contribute to and enable appropriation. As part of our ongoing attempts at practicing accountability, we invite readers to consider donating to Indigenous groups, collectives, organizations, or initiatives to support their lives and work.
