Many islands, many food opportunities

John Crump

By GRID-Arendal

September 22^nd, 2016

Food security for the world’s island communities in an era of climate change.

When we think about tropical islands, we tend to imagine places where people have all the food they need. They can pick fruit off trees or harvest bountiful gardens any time they want.

Reality is different. Many islands like Seychelles and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean rely enormously on imported goods. In fact, the Seychelles has seen “traditional diets consisting of fresh fish, root crops, breadfruit and local fruits and vegetables” replaced in the last few years “by imported, often highly processed foods such as refined white rice, flour, instant noodles, canned foods, fatty low grade meats and soft drinks with a high sugar content and imported poultry.”

“Countries that rely heavily on imported food are more vulnerable to external pressures including volatile global food prices and sudden changes in climate – storms, droughts, and so on,” says GRID-Arendal’s Tiina Kurvits. Climate change threatens food security in many places, she adds, including islands like the Maldives and the Seychelles.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization states that food security exists “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

By Charles Hoffman [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Or as Kurvits puts it, “you’re not hungry and you’re not afraid of going hungry.”

Kurvits will be talking about food security this week at a conference at the University of Prince Edward Island called Building Small Island Resilience to Global Climate Change. The university is in Canada’s smallest province, located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the country’s Atlantic coast.

Prince Edward Island has a population of about 140,000 and is known for its potatoes, its beaches and its deep red soil. Besides being a small island, it shares a couple of other things with places like the Seychelles and Maldives: tourism and food insecurity. A 2011 study showed that 15% of households were food insecure compared to 12% in the rest of the country.

The specific reasons might be different, but the result is the same. A large number of people is in danger of not getting the nutrition they need.

“Islands tend to be ‘continentalized,’” says Kurvits. We look at their problems and try to figure out solutions as if they were part of continents. But islands are different – and they have their own ways to solves problems.”

She says one of her messages to the conference will be that resilience begins locally. People living on islands are already taking many initiatives to support local food security and there are many other opportunities just waiting for the right support to help get them off the ground.

By TUBS [CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via W

By Martin Cathrae from Charlottetown, PE, Canada (UPEI) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Common

In an era of rapid climate change, small islands are vulnerable. Coastal erosion and rising sea levels are affecting tropical islands like the Maldives but also places like Prince Edward Island.

It’s a threat that needs to be handled globally as well as locally, Kurvits says. Major efforts like last year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreement in Paris to reduce global warming are important. But building resilience needs to come from the ground up.

“Working with communities to re-establish robust food systems would be a tremendous step for islanders to take the lead in securing their lives, livelihoods and unique cultures in a rapidly changing world.”