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© 2025 Island Innovation. All rights reserved.

    News

    Curated stories and analysis from islands and sustainability leaders worldwide.

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    Showing 9 of 89 news items in Water & Food
    Hawaii Island Seed Bank helps build climate resilience
    Water & FoodMay 12, 2026

    Hawaii Island Seed Bank helps build climate resilience

    Excerpt Photo credit from hawaiitribune-herald.com There is an off-grid, solar-powered storage container just north of Kailua-Kona filled with millions of seeds. Containing mostly native plants and some food crops, the Hawaii Island Seed Bank was created to help preserve and protect the island’s native species. It is a mission that has only become more pressing over the years as the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly felt across the state, especially in the form of more frequent and intense disasters. “If we have floods – which we do – if we have fires, if we have other Earth events, droughts – then we need to have backup,” said Jill Wagner, a Kona-based forestry specialist who runs the seed bank. “If we have a human-caused event, if something we do causes the destruction of native systems, it’s very important.”

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    Could This Fish Be a Notebook?
    Water & FoodMay 7, 2026

    Could This Fish Be a Notebook?

    Excerpt from reasonstobecheerful.world Forget AI — in Iceland, the truly exciting startups are working in fish. From medical bandages to sustainable furniture, the Icelandic fishing industry has learned to extract value from virtually every part of its catch, putting the country at the forefront of a global “blue economy.” It wasn’t always this way. A collapse in Iceland’s fisheries in the ’80s and ’90s forced the island nation to look beyond the fillet and find new uses for its top export, from scales to tails. Today, Iceland cod fishers use more than 90 percent of the fish they catch, compared to roughly 40 percent of each fish caught in North America’s Great Lakes. Now, the 100% Great Lakes Fish Initiative aims to follow Iceland’s lead, showing seafood companies from the region how using all of the fish can help keep their industry both profitable and sustainable. RTBC Founder David Byrne spoke with David Naftzger, executive director at Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers, which oversees the initiative, about Icelandic innovation, doing more with less, and Byrne’s method for cooking up homemade fish head broth. —RTBC Editorial Team

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    Rethinking Water Management for a Changing Climate in SIDS
    Water & FoodDecember 8, 2025

    Rethinking Water Management for a Changing Climate in SIDS

    Excerpt from gca.org Water resources in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) present unique and complex challenges. Nearly all small islands are already experiencing water stress, defined as annual water supplies below 1,700 m3 per person. Paradoxically, some SIDS have sufficient water resources to meet demand, but do not have the infrastructure, institutional frameworks, or capacity to close the gap between supply and demand.

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    18 000 new seed samples to Svalbard Global Seed Vault
    Water & FoodNovember 16, 2025

    18 000 new seed samples to Svalbard Global Seed Vault

    Photo credit: NordGen via Regjeringen.no Excerpt from regjeringen.no Eighteen genebanks representing every continent deposited more than 18,000 seed samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week. Among them were new contributors from the Philippines and Peru, safeguarding crops that embody generations of farmers’ knowledge and culture. "Now - 130 gene banks in almost 90 countries, have added an additional level of security for their seed collections. I recognize all the efforts of the gene banks in sowing and preparing the seeds for shipping to the Arctic”, says Nils Kristen Sandtrøen, Norwegian Minister of Agriculture and Food. The largest backup repository of crop diversity welcomed seeds of dietary staples such as Filipino rice and Peruvian chili peppers, as well as cultural icons like Ecuador’s chocho bean and Moroccan lavender. It received a major deposit from the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) genebank in Tanzania, which sent the largest-ever deposit of traditional African vegetable seeds to the Seed Vault.

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    Changing Course, Honolulu Is Now Planting Food In Public Spaces
    Water & FoodOctober 13, 2025

    Changing Course, Honolulu Is Now Planting Food In Public Spaces

    Excerpt from civilbeat.org Honolulu Skyline passengers may notice something different on their morning rail commute: more than half-a-dozen planter boxes full of growing tomatoes, eggplants, scallions and sweet potatoes, among other edible plants. Native kulu‘i, ‘ākia, ‘ohai, ʻākulikuli and kī can be found close by, planted on Thursday by a group of volunteers from the city and nonprofit sector as part of a nascent program aimed at making free food available in public spaces. The planting represents a paradigm shift for Honolulu, and possibly the state. Local authorities have long avoided growing edible plants and trees because of legal fears – mostly liability — over things like falling coconuts, fruit theft or slippery mangoes on the ground.

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    They help preserve America’s dominance in the Pacific. They’re paying a painful price
    Water & FoodSeptember 30, 2025

    They help preserve America’s dominance in the Pacific. They’re paying a painful price

    Excerpt from reuters.com EBEYE, Marshall Islands - Every Friday on this tiny Pacific isle, Korab Lanwe does his rounds. The people he visits have severely swollen, discolored legs, or wounds that won’t heal, or have lost a limb. They are so ill they cannot leave their homes of plywood and metal sheets. Lanwe inquires if they are taking their meds and checks their blood pressure. The result is often grim. Lanwe, who operates from an office with a rotting ceiling and boarded-up windows, is Ebeye’s diabetes coordinator. His homebound patients are in the advanced stages of a disease that plagues at least a third of the roughly 10,000 residents of Ebeye – a strip of sand 60 football fields in size, located 20 minutes by boat from an American base that has become pivotal in the U.S. showdown with China. Despite Lanwe’s efforts, his rudimentary hospital can do little as his patients’ limbs turn gangrenous and their kidneys fail. There are no dialysis machines for them, nor a prosthetics lab to replace the legs that surgeons amputate. Many people on Ebeye don’t live beyond their 50s.

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    Hawai`i Primed to Revive Agriculture
    Water & FoodSeptember 24, 2025

    Hawai`i Primed to Revive Agriculture

    Excerpt from hawaiibusiness.com Making agriculture a viable industry in today’s Hawai‘i is a daunting task. Biosecurity, agricultural crimes, infrastructure, land availability, an aging workforce, limited markets and few food processing centers are among the barriers facing this comparatively small segment of the state’s economy. But the state is planning and building a new network of opportunities and support intended to reinvigorate Hawai‘i’s agricultural sector. “It was generally thought that when sugar and pineapple plantations shut down, former plantation crop land would be cultivated with numerous smaller crops,” wrote UH economists Sumner La Croix and James Mak in 2021. “Instead, much of it lies fallow.” So true, but after decades of decline and stagnation, conditions may be ripe for a rebound in diversified agriculture.

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    Prince Edward Island (PEI) farmers join global fight in support of food security
    Water & FoodAugust 26, 2025

    Prince Edward Island (PEI) farmers join global fight in support of food security

    Excerpt from peicanada.com LOWER NEWTON – Sixteen acres of winter wheat in Lower Newton, near Eldon, is part of an effort linking PEI farmers to food security projects in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world. This year, Stephen Visser of J&S Visser Produce Inc. of Orwell Cove, partnered with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB), a Winnipeg-based national Christian organization that works to end hunger in over 35 countries.

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    Sark (Channel Islands) teens aim to revive island dairy
    Water & FoodJuly 7, 2025

    Sark (Channel Islands) teens aim to revive island dairy

    A fundraising duo hoping to revive Sark Dairy have won the support of hundreds of people already. Cerys and Harry Knight have launched a fundraising page with their dad Richard to test the water. Initially saying they wanted to raise £1,500 – the siblings have already secured nearly £5,000 from more than 130 donors. The 16 and 15 said that they want to “buy a prime Guernsey milking cow and begin our own herd”. If they can do that it will give them a “future on this small and idyllic island” they wrote.

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