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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 93 news items in Water & Food
    Drinking water outage hits half of Mayotte
    Water & FoodNovember 20, 2024

    Drinking water outage hits half of Mayotte

    Photo: © AFP – Julien de Rosa. Retrieved from rfi.fr The “event of electrical origin” at the Ouroveni plant overnight from Monday to Tuesday “is leading to water cuts mostly located in the centre and south” of Mayotte’s main island Grande Terre, the prefecture said. Around half of [Mayotte’s](https://www.rfi.fr/en/tag/mayotte/) population of 320,000 depends on Ouroveni’s daily output of up to 20,000 cubic metres of drinking water. The island territory has for years been battling water shortages. Low rainfall and numerous leaks in the distribution system prompted authorities to cut [water](https://www.rfi.fr/en/tag/water/) supplies for as much as two out of every three days between August 2023 and January this year. Cuts are still in force for one in every three days as “daily consumption is estimated at 45,000 cubic metres, but the territory can only produce a maximum of 40,000,” said Jerome Josserand, head of the territory’s [DEALM](https://www.mayotte.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/) environment, planning, housing and maritime authority.

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    Kiribati fishermen bring expertise and song to Australia’s tuna farms
    Water & FoodOctober 25, 2024

    Kiribati fishermen bring expertise and song to Australia’s tuna farms

    Photo courtesy: ABC Eyre Peninsula: Amelia Costigan. Retrieved from abc.net.au It’s not uncommon to hear Port Lincoln’s crew of Kiribati fishermen burst spontaneously into song while at work. Their sweet-sounding harmonies are reminders that despite being naturals on the water, the community of seasonal tuna industry workers have brought more than much-needed fishing expertise to Australia’s seafood capital. The 82-strong crew from the Micronesia sub-region of the Pacific Islands spend nine months of the year in the Eyre Peninsula town where South Australia’s $120 million tuna industry is concentrated. Kiribati seasonal worker Teraaka Toaraoi says the experience is mutually beneficial for the Australian and Kiribati employees. “It’s kind of quick when they show us how to do it, we learn it quickly because back home we’re fishing, so fixing something like nets, we know how to do it, how to tie things, we do it,” he said. “We really like working here because it’s the same as back home. We go early in the morning, we come back in the afternoons, same as back home.”

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    How diverse crops create a safety net for Solomon Islanders
    Water & FoodOctober 11, 2024

    How diverse crops create a safety net for Solomon Islanders

    Photo source: IFAD/Barbara Gravelli. Retrieved from ifad.org The [Solomon Islands](https://www.ifad.org/en/web/operations/w/country/solomon-islands) are made up of about 1,000 islands spread over a vast expanse of the western Pacific Ocean. Like other [Small Island Developing States](https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/about-small-island-developing-states) (SIDS), the country is particularly vulnerable to external shocks and environmental crises due to its small size, remote location and limited resources. This became especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when [60 per cent](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/b41ee2ed-71ee-5709-8519-d8a7c461288d) of households reported running out of food. It wasn’t always this way. Traditional food systems in the archipelago were once characterized by the [trade and exchange of diverse foods](https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/7d18c77e-78ca-4190-aa7f-0b6a94869809) grown in gardens or caught from the bountiful sea. It is only in recent decades that people have become dependent on imported foods, like refined rice, which are cheaper and less perishable but have seriously damaged local nutrition and agrobiodiversity. Bringing back that traditional dietary diversity is crucial to building resilience and ensuring Solomon Islanders can always access enough nutritious food, even in times of crisis. Sowing the seeds of resilience As Elsie Rayan Gideon patiently extracts aubergine seeds, she knows that this seemingly quotidian task has implications far beyond her family’s dinner table. As a member of the Ringgi Farmers’ Association on the island of Kolombangara, she is collecting them for the community germplasm centre. Supported by the IFAD-funded [PIRAS facility](https://www.ifad.org/en/initiatives/rural-poor-stimulus-facility/pacific-islands-rural-stimulus-facility) in partnership with the [Kastom Gaden Association](https://kastomgaden.org/), this vital resource stores seeds and cuttings of a range of locally adapted plants, including native species.

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    Empowering Women in Zanzibar: the Transformative Impact of Amaranth Farming
    Water & FoodOctober 4, 2024

    Empowering Women in Zanzibar: the Transformative Impact of Amaranth Farming

    Excerpt and Photo from en.krishakjagat.org On Pemba Island, part of Tanzania’s Zanzibar archipelago, more women are engaging in vegetable production and value addition, bolstering household nutrition and income security. This movement is significant in areas where modern agricultural technology and awareness of nutrient-rich crops like amaranth—a vegetable high in fiber, protein, and essential micronutrients—are limited. Mariam Salim, who lives in Mjini Ole village on Pemba Island, is among the women embracing amaranth cultivation. Along with 272 other farmers, 53% of whom are women, she attended a three-day training course on vegetable cultivation and value addition. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through CIMMYT under the Southern Africa Accelerated Innovation Delivery Initiative (AID-I) project, and implemented by the World Vegetable Center, the training covered good agricultural practices, as well as the cultivation and processing of grain amaranth into flour. The training equipped Mariam with essential knowledge and skills to enhance her agricultural productivity and livelihood. Participants received seed kits containing eight varieties of nutritious traditional **African vegetables**, including African eggplant, African nightshade, amaranth, cowpea, and Ethiopian mustard. Farming a diverse range of crops supports food security and improves community nutrition.

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    Iceland’s high-tech farm turning algae into food
    Water & FoodSeptember 26, 2024

    Iceland’s high-tech farm turning algae into food

    Excerpt and Photo from bbc.com With short summers, a cold climate, and a landscape of lava fields and glaciers, Iceland’s not the first place you’d think of for farming. But pioneering entrepreneurs are growing some surprising crops and doing it sustainably. Adrienne Murray from BBC visits a high tech farm.

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    Food resiliency and climate change in the San Juan Islands
    Water & FoodSeptember 26, 2024

    Food resiliency and climate change in the San Juan Islands

    Excerpt and Photo from salish-current.org “We’re a very long way from producing all of our own food. Right now, only around 3.5% to 4% of the food that’s purchased in San Juan County is grown here,” explained Faith Van De Putte from Midnight’s Farm who also serves as the county’s Agricultural Resource Committee coordinator. In the San Juan Islands, food resiliency is a vital part of community members’ livelihoods — and it is more important than ever in the face of climate change. The changing climate creates new obstacles for agriculture in the islands. Farmers are facing wetter springs that delay planting and disrupt pollination, followed by hotter, drier summers that bring drought and the risk of total crop failures. Van De Putte recalled the devastating heat dome from three years ago which led to multiple farms losing their entire crops: “Those kinds of events can have a very big impact. Anytime we go outside our normal bounds, there’s going to be effects.” Nathan Hodges of Barn Owl Bakery concurred: “It’s really difficult to predict overall changes in weather patterns due to climate change.” Hodges and Sage Dilts grow some of their own grain for the bakery and shared that, to mitigate this unpredictability, they focus on building diversity within their grain seed bank. “Rather than relying on one very productive monocrop that is genetically identical across all the individuals…we rely on thousands of genetically distinct individual plants and seeds, so that in any given year, there’s always going to be some plant that will do well,” Hodges explained.

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    Indigenous Women Face Water Shortages on Mentawai Islands in Indonesia
    Water & FoodSeptember 17, 2024

    Indigenous Women Face Water Shortages on Mentawai Islands in Indonesia

    Photo Credit: Rus Akbar Saleleubaja. Retrieved from earthjournalism.net Erminarti Sabelau (35), a resident of Bungo Rayo Hamlet, Sinaka Village, South Pagai Sub-district, Mentawai Islands Regency, Indonesia, rowed a canoe across the Tattanen River. She was carrying her three-year-old son. Inside the canoe were six 5-liter jerry cans filled with water. She tied her boat to a cement ladder on the riverbank, where people usually moor their boats. On top of the ladder was her big jerry can. She transferred water from the six small jerry cans in the boat to the big jerry can. She went back and forth three times. Erminarti fetches water twice a day. She has to go boating 200 meters away from the Bungo Rayo village and then walk another 200 meters. “We have been fetching water like this since last August, since the floods hit our village which caused the Pamsimas water channel to no longer flow to the houses,” Erminarti said on October 28, 2023. Pamsimas—Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation—is a national program to provide drinking water in villages. The Pamsimas water reservoir in Bungo Rayo Hamlet is located across the Tattanen River. The source of the water is from the upstream of the river, which is channeled by pipes. From the basin, the water is piped to the village.

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    Storms on the horizon: Can aquaculture insurance work on Prince Edward Island?
    Water & FoodAugust 26, 2024

    Storms on the horizon: Can aquaculture insurance work on Prince Edward Island?

    In September 2022, post-tropical storm Fiona dumped up to 90 mm of rain in Prince Edward Island (PEI), bringing wind gusts up to 150 km an hour, high waves and flooding. Similar – and worse – activity happened across the Maritimes. “Huge rafts of buoys that had broken loose and in a tangled mess were floating around,” said Peter Warris, executive director of Prince Edward Island Aquaculture Alliance. “We literally had whole mussel farms, oyster farms just swept away. Gears strewn over miles and miles and miles.” One of the industry’s issues that Fiona exposed was the lack of affordable private insurance options for PEI’s growers, which motivated a new pilot project currently underway to rectify that situation. A combined effort amongst industry organizations, including the PEI Aquaculture Alliance and local insurers, with support from the provincial government – and hopefully, eventually, the federal government – the project aims to help aquaculture companies recover quicker from future storms and support a growing part of PEI’s economy.

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    They’re 600km off the coast, but farmers on Lord Howe Island say ‘we can’t compete with Woolworths’
    Water & FoodAugust 16, 2024

    They’re 600km off the coast, but farmers on Lord Howe Island say ‘we can’t compete with Woolworths’

    Excerpt and photo from theguardian.com Everyone who was around in 1974 remembers the runway going in. From above, the kilometre-long tarmac strip resembles a faded scar through the belly of [Lord Howe Island](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/lord-howe-island), a tropical jewel of conservation 600km off the New South Wales coast. For longtime locals such as Robert Jeremy, its completion marked the end of a wilder era. Jeremy is a descendant of one of the first settlers of the island, a south Pacific paradise uninhabited by humans until its discovery in 1788. He has fond memories of summers spent at****his grandparents’ island property, which hosted the butcher’s shop, dairy, liquor store and library. “The island was very family-orientated, there were no telephones, it was an isolated place,” he says. “The old family network has broken down quite a lot, but it’s still there in a meaningful way.” Then came the runway. It opened the island to the outside world, paving the way for the expansion of the tourism industry and successful conservation campaigns. It was a lifeline – and also the final nail in the island’s long tradition of****subsistence farming.

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