The island advantage

Practices for prospering in isolation

Island communities display rich and diverse cultures, languages, societies, histories, governance forms and livelihoods. Yet island characteristics such as isolation, restricted land area and limited domestic land-based resources bring about significant environmental and social challenges. The same characteristics also yield opportunities for tackling these challenges effectively.

Rapid environmental change, the potential loss of languages and cultures from declining island populations and significant gender inequities are examples of the challenges faced. For instance, the literacy rate in São Tomé and Príncipe is 23 percent lower among females than males. Hurricane Ivan caused damage in Grenada in 2004 valued at ten times the country's annual budget revenue.

However, characteristics such as tight kinship networks, unique heritage and a strong sense of identity, produce closely-knit communities with sustainable livelihoods. Remittances from islander diasporas and circulatory migration between islands and mainlands often boost this.

Traditional knowledge and experience of dealing with environmental and social change in isolation provide islanders (and non-islanders experiencing similar isolation) with skills that give them flexibility to adjust to several changes. These could include sudden events such as hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, creeping environmental changes such as drier or wetter climate, and longer-term social trends such as better internet connectivity and swifter transportation.

This issue of id21 insights illustrates approaches available, successes witnessed and challenges overcome for building and maintaining healthy and viable island communities. Contributors to this issue highlight the positive aspects of island life as well as real threats facing islands and islanders. The objective is to showcase successful experiences and tested ideas which exemplify 'good-practices' and could be adopted by other islands.

Lessons on overcoming island challenges could also apply to small, isolated, marginalised communities, not just islands. Landlocked and remote rural villages, mountain communities and even coastal cities despite their size, have strong parallels with islands. While non-island development approaches are frequently applied in island situations, less transfer occurs in the reverse.

Is the island advantage fleeting?

By focusing on certain challenges we might bypass mentioning successes. It is important to stress, however, that challenges and successes co-exist and/or situations could change. The Seychelles, for example, despite successes in environmental management, is suffering from global environmental change, seen partly through coral bleaching. São Tomé and Príncipe has poor literacy rates and gender inequality but is aiming for economic diversification including taking advantage of increased oil revenues. Yet, economic diversification could bring other challenges and may not necessarily assist in tackling gender and economic inequalities.

So, the island advantage, it could be argued, is fleeting with multiple views and perspectives regarding what constitutes a challenge or an advantage. The Maldives and the Seychelles are commended for their 'sustainable tourism' approaches, yet most tourists travel there via commercial jet flights. These flights contribute greenhouse gas emissions leading to climate change and sea-level rises which threaten the islands' environment and, for low-lying atolls, the islands' existence above water. Rather than asserting the hopelessness of the cycle in which tourists ruin that which draws them to the islands, Rachel Dodds and Jerome McElroy propose policy approaches which can reap rewards while minimising disadvantages.

Migration is another example. While emigration can help by avoiding resource-damaging population growth on islands and bolstering island economies through remittances, as seen on Jamaica and Kiribati, this can also dilute identity and culture. Conversely, immigration to islands brings cultural and economic diversity, as seen on Åland and Tonga. But it can also provoke conflict, as seen by attacks on Chinese immigrants and their descendants on Tonga and the Solomon Islands. Wei Choong describes the role of the Chinese in the Solomon Islands' economy and how improved openness and inclusiveness in economic, social and cultural decisions can reduce conflict.

Challenges become opportunities

Researchers and policymakers frequently note that isolation is 'problematic' for islands. Transport can be costly, infrequent, unreliable, and run by monopolies, encouraging emigration and increasing prices of imported products and services. Quality of island life is generally seen as being less than quality of mainland life.

Gestur Hovgaard provides a counter-example from the Faroe Islands, demonstrating how isolated communities can prosper with (or because of?) their isolation. He suggests basing creative livelihood strategies on local tradition, identity and history. The isolation that leads to unique island environments and cultures can be used as the basis not only for survival, but also prosperity – a policy supported by Iain Orr and Graeme Robertson with regard to island World Heritage Sites. This ethos has been also applied for pooling technical and political resources to generate 'island power' – strength through diversity and collaboration – and is key to understanding the island advantage (see article).

Similarly, Sandy Kerr explores island governance regimes, highlighting different forms of 'autonomy without independence'. Rather than becoming independent states or being entirely assimilated into another state, islands are asserting their jurisdicition in areas they wish to control – such as language, culture, natural resources, environmental regulation, trade and offshore finance – without severing all ties to their governing state. This helps the autonomous island by keeping its connection to a state with more resources and power. And the governing state takes responsibility for areas of less day-to-day interest for island governance, such as defence and humanitarian relief. While remaining an 'associated territory' might seem an unjust remnant of colonial rule, islands are turning this status to their advantage; often actively opposing full independence.

Tom Mitchell and Katharine Haynes explore disaster risk reduction for two non-sovereign Caribbean islands: Saint Kitts (part of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis) and Montserrat (a United Kingdom Overseas Territory). They show how scientific research can be used to foster an education and learning exchange between academia and those involved operationally in local disaster risk reduction. Traditional and scientific knowledges and approaches meld to produce solutions before a crisis strikes, rather than repeating the pattern where external 'experts' try to direct ongoing disaster situations, generating mistrust and conflict.

The island advantage

The evidence presented in this issue of id21 insights indicates that the island advantage is far more prevalent than is often admitted. However, there are gaps that still need to be addressed:

• Environmental and social changes over past millennia provide lessons for the future. Island anthropology and archaeology should be better applied to address contemporary island change.
• Indices such as the Environmental Vulnerability Index and the Happy Planet Index sometimes rank islands higher than islanders and mainlanders might expect. Shortfalls and constraints in the indices need to be better compared between potential local and non-local misperceptions of island life, as compared to other locations.
• Island states may comprise widely dispersed communities. The effect of different degrees of fragmentation, effective population, size and cultural coherence should be better understood in policymaking, policy implementation and island identity, especially for applying the island advantage.

Ilan Kelman
Center for Capacity Building, National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado, 80307-3000, USA
T +1 303 4978122
F +1 303 4978125
ilan_kelman@hotmail.com

See also

A World of Islands: An Island Studies Reader, Malta & Canada, Agenda Academic and Institute of Island Studies, edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 2007

Development in Disaster-prone Places: Studies of Vulnerability, London, Intermediate Technology Publications, by James Lewis, 1999

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