The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is financing the Sustainable Islands Platform (SIsP) with the primary goal of promoting action among islands territories looking to pursue sustainability through an innovative development pathway.
- Client: Inter-American Development Bank
- Partners: IDB Climate Smart Islands
- Project Duration: August 2018 – April 2020
Project Overview
Island territories and their residents face a series of challenges that limit their chances of sustainable development and make them highly vulnerable to climate change. They share a series of intrinsic characteristics including the limited size of their territories; limited access to freshwater resources; insularity, susceptibility to natural disasters while having limited capacity to respond to and recover from such disasters; the vulnerability of their economies that are dependent both upon narrow resource bases and reliant on a limited number of distant markets for international trade; reliance on a few industries such as tourism and fisheries; dependency on imported petroleum products; diseconomies of scale; low levels of foreign direct investment; and limited means available to exploit their natural resources on a sustainable basis. These factors combined make small island nations extremely sensitive to external financial and economic shocks. They also present risks which require new and innovative approaches and ways of thinking.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is financing the Sustainable Islands Platform (SIsP) with the primary goal of promoting action among islands territories looking to pursue sustainability through an innovative development pathway under one or more of the following program pillars:
- Circular Economy – a shift away from the “take, make and dispose””” business model to one that is restorative and regenerative by design. It relies on system-wide innovation, it aims to redefine products and services and transition economic activity away from the consumption of finite resources. Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources, and it builds economic, natural and social capital.
- Blue Economy – a sustainable ocean economy in which economic activity is in balance with the long-term capacity of ocean ecosystems to support this activity and remain resilient and healthy.
- Climate Resilience – Building upon the existing “Climate Smart Islands Program”, encouraging island nations to develop climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.
Making strides towards the pillars above represents a paradigm shift for island economies. In looking towards future development, decision makers need to change their perspectives from a small island economy to a big ocean economy. This will require islands to think about sustainability from an integrated systems approach by examining the following linkages and interactions between their economies, societies and the environment:
The platform will aim to highlight practical examples of innovations in this space and serve as a resource for those re-thinking development approaches as well as those working to make islands more sustainable around the world.
Major Activities:
Solimar is supporting the branding and communications of this initiative through development of the following:
- A visual identity and brand for the initiative
- A web-based platform to enable knowledge sharing, calls for applications and the processing of proposals for innovations related to developing the blue economy, circular economy or climate change adaptation and mitigation measures
- A marketing and communications strategy with the goal of disseminating information about the program and promoting participants as sustainable islands
Results:
- A logo, website platform and marketing strategy focused on disseminating information about the program and encouraging more islands to pursue sustainable development
