Resilient islands through self-sufficiency and diversity

Our modern world faces big challenges. Economic systems are failing, growing populations and ecological decline lead to rising food prices and growing energy demands. Our dependencies on other parts of the world are increasing yearly. Climate change is just one of many issues forcing us to change the way we live.

Challenges for islands

Solving these issues for the world as a whole takes a lot of time. Islands commonly feature more dependent economies, due to their size and reduced diversity of resources, and will be affected rapidly. As food and fuel prices rise, the cost of living will increase fast. Economic depression will affect island economies (e.g. by a decrease in tourism).

Building towards a resilient and autonomous island community is critical to its future. But where to start, and how to make sure the necessary investments benefit the economy now as well as in the future?

The good news

The Sustainable Island Scan (SIS) answers these questions, in a smart and integrated way. Building strong economies and lowering dependencies go hand in hand. New technologies that focus on localized economic cycles, ecosystem services and smart urban innovations are very attractive and beneficial for islands. They increase living quality on the island and create new opportunities for tourism.

The integrated approach

In our decade of work, we’ve found that it’s highly effective to find solutions that affect several areas at once, for instance, using energy generating technologies that support the local community, builds biodiversity and functions as a tourist attraction.

In order to find these multi-faceted solutions for island communities, we developed SIS. Since 1999 we have worked to perfect this approach, built a team of worldwide experts and gathered experience in a wide range of fields. Contact us to find out more.

SIS Results

Strategic benefits:

• An island map showing all major assets and most critical economic, ecological and social dependencies
• A realistic road map in time towards a resilient, sustainable and beautiful island community
• An overview of feasible solutions to climate change, global economic distress and ecological issues.
• Vision on strategic Island development formed by a team of global experts on all relevant topics.

Economy & community results:

• Opportunity to disconnect from global economic fluctuations for primary resources such as oil and food
• Increased opportunities for attracting tourism
• Meaningful employment and job creation, adding economic diversity
• Valuable local industry and strong social communities
• Increased human capital and education capacities
• Opportunities to close local money flows, keeping value from being extracted from the island
• Increased capacity to attract investment
• Trendsetting programme among marine communities, inviting positive press and PR
• Strong and healthy island ecosystems