The Customary Land Management Office (CLMO) was formed in late 2013 in response to new legislation for determining the indigenous custom owners of the land in Vanuatu. The CLMO is solely responsible for indigenous custom owner determinations throughout the country, and these ownership determinations are sought by both custom owners and by prospective lessees who wish to negotiate leases over land. After five years of operation, a review of CLMO activities is timely. This policy outlook analyses CLMO activities over the last five years and outlines its plans for development moving forward. The CLMO has identified four key priorities: 1. Review of office resourcing and implementation of the Custom Land Management Act An examination of CLMO activities reveals substantial issues with office capacity. When a lease application is made over land for which a custom ownership group has not been determined, the CLMO determines the custom owner and refers the case onwards. On average over the last five years, each year the CLMO has been referred 73 lease requests for determination and processed 14.6 – this means that the CLMO is taking five times longer to process lease applications as it needs to. With 318 open cases, the CLMO has a current backlog of 21 years of work, and a new lease application can expect to spend over two years with CLMO before being referred onwards. A review of CLMO resourcing is urgently needed if ownership is to be determined in a timely manner. In addition, in 2015 a governmental review of the land ownership determination legislation made several recommendations to smooth the practical implementation of the legislation. It is recommended that the legislation be reviewed with a view to implementing these changes. 2. Implement a pilot project to explore a new approach to ownership determinations In addition, there are structural issues with this externally driven approach to custom ownership determination. If thirty leases are registered over one custom landowning area, this will trigger thirty separate determination processes with the same custom landowning group. Substantial resources could be saved by moving towards a proactive model for ownership determination in which determination processes are initiated over large areas of land. This is also likely to be a more peaceful process, as land ownership will be determined before particular parcels of land have been identified as lease sites (and therefore become particularly ii desirable). The CLMO has designed a pilot project to trial this model of determination and has been able to allocate a small amount of funds to it. However, additional support to develop and evaluate this new model is recommended. 3. Provide assistance to custom owners negotiating lease terms Further, the CLMO has identified a serious gap in services provided to custom landowners. While the new legislation for determining ownership has increased transparency around the identification of custom owners, there remains no support provided to landowners who have received their determination and are seeking to negotiate leases. These negotiations may be with sophisticated investors or large companies, and custom owners may be negotiating in this space for the first time. It is recommended that support be provided to landowners to assist them to evaluate their options with respect to both lease proposals and other business development options. This was also a recommendation of both the World Bank Justice for the Poor report on land leasing in 2012 and the AusAID Making Land Work program. 4. Provide support to community governance development Finally, community governance is an area of conflict in many areas of Vanuatu, and as the state increasing defers power to community leaders, further support strengthening governance mechanisms would be desirable. This could include facilitating forums for knowledge exchange and conflict resolution. In addition, some communities are responding to these challenges by writing their custom laws, in order to protect them from manipulation and increase transparency. The processes and implications associated with this are poorly understood in the Vanuatu context. A research program exploring these processes and disseminating findings amongst other custom owner groups is recommended to help custom owners to evaluate their options for recording their laws of custom.