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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
    Batanes’ sustainable farming: a model for climate resilience
    Water & FoodAugust 9, 2024

    Batanes’ sustainable farming: a model for climate resilience

    Excerpt and photo from fairplanet.org In Batanes, the Philippines’ northernmost island, Indigenous peoples’ farming practices serve as a model for food sovereignty and climate resilience. Marilou Fitero and her then 6-year-old daughter, Dianne, were huddled under their table for hours, their hands pressed tightly against their ears to block out the deafening roar of 215 kph winds and the terrifying sound of iron sheets being torn from roofs and hurled across their hometown. Batanes is the smallest island-province in the Philippines, located at the northernmost tip of the archipelago. This isolated island, positioned within the Pacific’s typhoon belt, is home to over 18,000 indigenous Ivatan people, who are renowned for their resilience in the face of severe storms. But Kiko, a [super typhoon](https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/23/22/pagasa-redefines-super-typhoon-tweaks-wind-signals) in the region, was one of the most devastating storms the island had ever experienced.

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    French Polynesians revive traditional rāhui to protect fish — and livelihoods
    Water & FoodAugust 5, 2024

    French Polynesians revive traditional rāhui to protect fish — and livelihoods

    Image courtesy of Alexander Filous. Retrieved from news.mongabay.com It’s Mass Day in Fenua Aihere. There are no roads to this part of the island of Tahiti — it’s only reachable by boat. It’s Monday, not the typical day for Mass in a Catholic community in French Polynesia. But here, everyone is a fisher or the wife, daughter or son of one. And on Sundays, they all head to the market to sell their catch, either in Taravao, the nearest city, or across the island in Papeete, French Polynesia’s capital. Songs in Tahitian and French resonate inside the town’s small concrete church. Everyone listens carefully to the deacon’s speech, even though the temperature and humidity are nearly unbearable. The service lasts just over an hour. After one last song, believers leave the church and move on to the tasks of the day: taking care of the house and the kids, or getting ready to go out fishing. Fishers will head into the clear blue lagoon of Tautira municipality, but they must avoid the waters right off Fenua Aihere. Since 2018, 265 hectares (655 acres), about 10% of Tautira’s lagoon, have been protected with a rāhui. This Tahitian word indicates an area of land or sea where it is forbidden to take any resources, and in some cases even to enter. “I think it is a very good thing,” says Célestin Tevarai, a fisher like his father and grandfather, who sits on a bench in the church’s courtyard after the service, facing the blue lagoon. “It helps us protect the fish and to be sure that tomorrow our children will still be able to fish and feed themselves.”

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    St. Maarten Looks To Nevis’ Agriculture Industry For Best Practices, Possible Trade Link
    Water & FoodAugust 2, 2024

    St. Maarten Looks To Nevis’ Agriculture Industry For Best Practices, Possible Trade Link

    Excerpt and Photo: thestkittsnevisobserver.com Sint Maarten’s Minister of Tourism and Economic Affairs the Honourable Grisha Heyliger-Marten says not only can the Dutch territory learn from Nevis’ agriculture model, the possibility exists for the two islands to forge trade links. The idea of inter-island collaboration was well received by Deputy Premier and Minister of Agriculture in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA), the Honourable Eric Evelyn. He led the Honourable Heyliger-Marten and her delegation on a tour to various agricultural stations during a recent visit to Nevis. “We are always happy to welcome persons from the neighboring islands to come to see what we are doing and to see what they can take away. The Minister has been talking about more trade between Sint Maarten and the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis; that is something that we would also welcome.

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    Taking the chance out of agriculture in Cabo Verde
    Water & FoodJuly 29, 2024

    Taking the chance out of agriculture in Cabo Verde

    Excerpt and Photo from fao.org The beans pop out of their sheathing as Elisabeth Da Conceiçao lays them out to dry. It’s the end of the harvesting season. This year there was enough rain that she could keep some of the beans, sweet potatoes and corn for her family’s consumption, but also sell some. It all depends on the rain. Though the climate in Rui Vaz in the high hills of Cabo Verde’s capital island, Santiago, is humid and gets more precipitation than the rest of the arid country, there have been big changes here too. “In recent times, rainfall has been one of the major challenges because, as we know, the climate has changed. It rains less. We spend a lot of money to produce, and when there’s a lack of rain, everything is lost,” says Elisabeth. With the changes in climate, Cabo Verde like many other countries, has not only seen a decrease in rain but has also seen an increase in agricultural pests. In 2017,  [fall armyworm](https://www.fao.org/fall-armyworm/background/en/) arrived in the country decimating much of the corn crops, and not only. But there has been an increase in many other pests as well.

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    The Greek islands are grappling with a water crisis as tourist season kicks into gear
    Water & FoodJuly 23, 2024

    The Greek islands are grappling with a water crisis as tourist season kicks into gear

    Photo: Stelios Misinas/Reuters. Retrieved from edition.cnn.com The Greek Islands, known for their idyllic towns, rugged landscapes and sun-baked beaches, are in the grip of a serious crisis. Many are running alarmingly low on water — a problem set to get worse [as the tourist season hits full flow](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/29/travel/europe-heat-waves-tourism-safety-intl/index.html)and hot dry weather continues. Several****islands, including Leros, Sifnos and parts of Crete and Kefalonia, have declared states of emergency over water shortages, as years of very low rainfall and an abnormally hot winter have taken a toll on reservoirs and underground water sources. Authorities****are scrambling to find solutions, including turning seawater into drinking water, as the****islands prepare for millions of tourists to arrive in the weeks ahead. In Naxos, a mountainous island in the Aegean Sea, fringed with long sandy beaches, reservoirs have shrunk dramatically, revealing parched lake beds. The island’s two rain-fed reservoirs now collectively hold around 200,000 cubic meters of water (52.8 million gallons), just a third of what they had last year. “The situation for sure is bad,” said Naxos Mayor Dimitris Lianos.

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    Blood in the Water, Food on the Table, Protesters on the Shore
    Water & FoodJuly 12, 2024

    Blood in the Water, Food on the Table, Protesters on the Shore

    Photo by Reda Company srl/Alamy Stock Photo. Retrieved from hakaimagazine.com In a centuries-old tradition known as a grindadráp, the Faroese people hunt long-finned pilot whales for their meat and blubber. The whales are technically large dolphins, ranging from four to over six meters long, with bulbous heads and black tails. When a pod is sighted, someone calls a “grind,” pronounced “grinned,” and people are free to leave work to participate. School children leave class to watch. Once the hunters have killed the whales using lances, they share the meat and blubber, carrying it home in buckets, wheelbarrows, and truck beds for boiling and preserving. For many in this place so deeply connected to the sea, the practice is meaningful and central to cultural identity and memory. But it’s proven controversial to outsiders. Compared with industrialized commercial meat production today, which tends to remain contained within factories and industrial slaughterhouses, the grind does not hide the violent reality of harvesting meat for food. That—and the fact that the grind’s quarry is an intelligent marine mammal—have made the hunt a high-profile target for Østrem and Marshfield, and other activists. The pair is part of a land crew with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK. Paul Watson is the infamous founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society—best known for its militant tactics on behalf of marine life, including against Indigenous whalers. When Watson split with Sea Shepherd in 2022 over directional differences, a few chapters around the world changed their names to stay aligned with him, including Sea Shepherd UK.

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    Traditional Solomon Islands water well building methods facing challenges from climate change
    Water & FoodJuly 12, 2024

    Traditional Solomon Islands water well building methods facing challenges from climate change

    Excerpt and Photo from abc.net.au Traditional forms of water wells on Savo Island in Solomon Islands are stunning with wide open stone mouths that reach into the earth, giving access to fresh consumable water, but this method is under threat. As the climate changes, more of the water wells are unusable due to salination from the rising sea levels, something that local communities are concerned about. Victor Peter Kere is from Savo Island and acknowledges that the wells are facing a challenge due to rising sea levels but is desperate for the methods of building to be preserved. “I believe that the traditional way of building wells will be lost as people are looking at much better alternatives of getting water for consumption and use,” Mr Kere said. As a volcanic island, the traditional method of the wells has been a solid option for locals.

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    An Informal to Formal Fisher Story
    Water & FoodJuly 1, 2024

    An Informal to Formal Fisher Story

    How can we promote sustainable fishing behavior if our worry is futures that can shock their daily routines? How can our fishers think of a future if they do not understand options for their own identified issues and risks? To better understand our fishers, we listened to their stories of adventures in the seas and oceans early in the morning as they returned to shore after an evening off the coasts to catch fish and other marine species as their livelihood. In our discussions, I started asking myself, “Does a Fisher need to fish forever?” I have always been in awe of our fishers. They can survive being at sea every night by their lonesome; their work is actually one of the riskiest jobs with the sea having the ability to turn violent within a few seconds notice. Why can’t we care for our fishers the way we do to our doctors, our lawyers, our drivers, our office workers? Any profession would have social and financial protection mechanisms for themselves and their families. What makes it so difficult for fishers to have social services, health insurance, housing insurance and life insurance when their profession is what we need most to feed and nourish ourselves? In our contemplation of this conundrum, my team started collaborating with many groups to check the possibility to design social protection mechanisms for our fishers. Under the guidance of Rare, we finally launched the FishForever Social Protection program in 2018 and began rolling out full social protection access a year later, right before the COVID-19 pandemic. This event, which many were not prepared for, especially the fishers, validated the need for our fishers to have social protection. The trust we’d earned with our fishers ensured they continued sustainable practices despite food scarcity fears and health concerns. Going out to sea for enforcement and monitoring within their community waters felt more secure than staying home.

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    Thirsty in paradise: Water crises are a growing problem across the Caribbean islands
    Water & FoodMay 24, 2024

    Thirsty in paradise: Water crises are a growing problem across the Caribbean islands

    In the popular imagination, the Caribbean is paradise, an exotic place to escape to. But behind the images of balmy beaches and lush hotel grounds lies a crisis, the likes of which its residents have never experienced. Caribbean islands are in a [water crisis](https://www.paho.org/en/stories/thirst-change-caribbean-story-health-and-water-sustainability), and their governments have warned that [water scarcity may become the new norm](https://cwwa.net/news/water-scarcity-may-be-a-new-way-of-life-in-the-caribbean-warns-minister-of-public-infrastructure/). Within the past five years, every island in the region has experienced some sort of water scarcity. For example, Trinidad is experiencing its [worst drought in recent memory](https://newsday.co.tt/2024/03/05/updated-wasa-worst-drought-ever-new-water-restrictions-from-march-1-june-30/), and residents are under water restrictions through at least the end of June 2024, with [fines for anyone who violates](https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/wasa-begins-annual-water-restrictions-75-fine-for-violations-6.2.1942277.82d76552dd) the rules. Dominica, considered the [nature island of the Caribbean](https://www.travelandleisure.com/dominica-caribbean-island-guide-7109687) for its mountain rain forests, is seeing a [significant decrease](https://www.cijn.org/dominica-at-risk-of-losing-its-freshwater-resource/) in freshwater resources and increasingly frequent water shortages. In Grenada, known as the spice isle, [drought has affected](https://nowgrenada.com/2024/05/nawasa-declares-drought-emergency/) water systems throughout the island.

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