Island Innovation and the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) launched a survey aiming to better understand how Covid-19 was being dealt with on islands globally. SCELG was soon joined by Island Innovation and together they reached out to their island network. The goal was not to undertake a research project, but to collate “raw” data from anybody who was inclined to respond and put such data at the disposal of policy makers and wider island related stakeholders in their ongoing activities to deal with and adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic. The response to the survey was very positive and so far responses from islands in 36 countries have been included in an online database where people can now find the data divided by islands and by specific survey question.
Questions included in the SCELG and Island Innovation survey:
After just over one month from its start, the survey will now expand and attempt to collate data on what can be framed as “Phase 2” of dealing with Covid-19 and that relates on when and how to relax the lockdown and the long-term economic implications such as the impact on the tourism industry. Before SCELG and Island Innovation move towards this new territory it is time to start reflecting on the responses to the survey so far.
This policy brief was written as a collaboration between the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) and Island Innovation and was co-authored by Francesco Sindico and James Ellsmoor.
Island Responses Webinar Series
We invite you to join our free webinar series on island strategies for the future.
We know that the implications of COVID-19 will impact islands in many ways, particularly noting public health, self-sufficiency and the economy – tourism being a particularly important part of the discussion.
In this series we will start the global discussion looking at a selection of global islands, before moving into the specific response of the Caribbean region and then looking at the country-level response in Jamaica.
We will be exploring the current crisis’ implications for islanders around the world, and invite you to participate in the live discussion through the event chat, polls and Q&A.