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    Showing 9 of 96 news items in Water & Food
    Rethinking Water Management for a Changing Climate in SIDS
    Water & FoodDecember 8, 2025

    Rethinking Water Management for a Changing Climate in SIDS

    Excerpt from gca.org Water resources in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) present unique and complex challenges. Nearly all small islands are already experiencing water stress, defined as annual water supplies below 1,700 m3 per person. Paradoxically, some SIDS have sufficient water resources to meet demand, but do not have the infrastructure, institutional frameworks, or capacity to close the gap between supply and demand.

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    18 000 new seed samples to Svalbard Global Seed Vault
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    Water & FoodNovember 16, 2025

    18 000 new seed samples to Svalbard Global Seed Vault

    Photo credit: NordGen via Regjeringen.no Excerpt from regjeringen.no Eighteen genebanks representing every continent deposited more than 18,000 seed samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week. Among them were new contributors from the Philippines and Peru, safeguarding crops that embody generations of farmers’ knowledge and culture. "Now - 130 gene banks in almost 90 countries, have added an additional level of security for their seed collections. I recognize all the efforts of the gene banks in sowing and preparing the seeds for shipping to the Arctic”, says Nils Kristen Sandtrøen, Norwegian Minister of Agriculture and Food. The largest backup repository of crop diversity welcomed seeds of dietary staples such as Filipino rice and Peruvian chili peppers, as well as cultural icons like Ecuador’s chocho bean and Moroccan lavender. It received a major deposit from the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) genebank in Tanzania, which sent the largest-ever deposit of traditional African vegetable seeds to the Seed Vault.

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    Changing Course, Honolulu Is Now Planting Food In Public Spaces
    Water & FoodOctober 13, 2025

    Changing Course, Honolulu Is Now Planting Food In Public Spaces

    Excerpt from civilbeat.org Honolulu Skyline passengers may notice something different on their morning rail commute: more than half-a-dozen planter boxes full of growing tomatoes, eggplants, scallions and sweet potatoes, among other edible plants. Native kulu‘i, ‘ākia, ‘ohai, ʻākulikuli and kī can be found close by, planted on Thursday by a group of volunteers from the city and nonprofit sector as part of a nascent program aimed at making free food available in public spaces. The planting represents a paradigm shift for Honolulu, and possibly the state. Local authorities have long avoided growing edible plants and trees because of legal fears – mostly liability — over things like falling coconuts, fruit theft or slippery mangoes on the ground.

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    They help preserve America’s dominance in the Pacific. They’re paying a painful price
    Water & FoodSeptember 30, 2025

    They help preserve America’s dominance in the Pacific. They’re paying a painful price

    Excerpt from reuters.com EBEYE, Marshall Islands - Every Friday on this tiny Pacific isle, Korab Lanwe does his rounds. The people he visits have severely swollen, discolored legs, or wounds that won’t heal, or have lost a limb. They are so ill they cannot leave their homes of plywood and metal sheets. Lanwe inquires if they are taking their meds and checks their blood pressure. The result is often grim. Lanwe, who operates from an office with a rotting ceiling and boarded-up windows, is Ebeye’s diabetes coordinator. His homebound patients are in the advanced stages of a disease that plagues at least a third of the roughly 10,000 residents of Ebeye – a strip of sand 60 football fields in size, located 20 minutes by boat from an American base that has become pivotal in the U.S. showdown with China. Despite Lanwe’s efforts, his rudimentary hospital can do little as his patients’ limbs turn gangrenous and their kidneys fail. There are no dialysis machines for them, nor a prosthetics lab to replace the legs that surgeons amputate. Many people on Ebeye don’t live beyond their 50s.

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    Hawai`i Primed to Revive Agriculture
    Water & FoodSeptember 24, 2025

    Hawai`i Primed to Revive Agriculture

    Excerpt from hawaiibusiness.com Making agriculture a viable industry in today’s Hawai‘i is a daunting task. Biosecurity, agricultural crimes, infrastructure, land availability, an aging workforce, limited markets and few food processing centers are among the barriers facing this comparatively small segment of the state’s economy. But the state is planning and building a new network of opportunities and support intended to reinvigorate Hawai‘i’s agricultural sector. “It was generally thought that when sugar and pineapple plantations shut down, former plantation crop land would be cultivated with numerous smaller crops,” wrote UH economists Sumner La Croix and James Mak in 2021. “Instead, much of it lies fallow.” So true, but after decades of decline and stagnation, conditions may be ripe for a rebound in diversified agriculture.

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    Prince Edward Island (PEI) farmers join global fight in support of food security
    Water & FoodAugust 26, 2025

    Prince Edward Island (PEI) farmers join global fight in support of food security

    Excerpt from peicanada.com LOWER NEWTON – Sixteen acres of winter wheat in Lower Newton, near Eldon, is part of an effort linking PEI farmers to food security projects in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world. This year, Stephen Visser of J&S Visser Produce Inc. of Orwell Cove, partnered with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB), a Winnipeg-based national Christian organization that works to end hunger in over 35 countries.

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    Sark (Channel Islands) teens aim to revive island dairy
    Water & FoodJuly 7, 2025

    Sark (Channel Islands) teens aim to revive island dairy

    A fundraising duo hoping to revive Sark Dairy have won the support of hundreds of people already. Cerys and Harry Knight have launched a fundraising page with their dad Richard to test the water. Initially saying they wanted to raise £1,500 – the siblings have already secured nearly £5,000 from more than 130 donors. The 16 and 15 said that they want to “buy a prime Guernsey milking cow and begin our own herd”. If they can do that it will give them a “future on this small and idyllic island” they wrote.

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    Study shows the earliest evidence of rice in Pacific came from Guam
    Water & FoodJuly 7, 2025

    Study shows the earliest evidence of rice in Pacific came from Guam

    Pacific Island families have not traditionally cultivated rice, they’ve long depended on root crops like taro, yams and cassava. However rice has become a staple part of the Pacific diet. Now a new study shows the earliest evidence of rice in the Pacific Islands came by way of Guam, in the Mariana Islands of western Micronesia.

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    At the heart of the Arctic, the ‘Noah’s Ark for plants’ welcomes new seeds
    Water & FoodJuly 1, 2025

    At the heart of the Arctic, the ‘Noah’s Ark for plants’ welcomes new seeds

    The concrete triangle stands out against the snow-covered landscape. The mountain’s silence is broken only by the comings and goings of tourists, who step out of their bus or taxi for a few minutes to photograph the mysterious structure. The small building, barely wider than its armored door, is neither a work of brutalist art nor a Hollywood movie set. It is the entrance to the global agricultural seed vault – the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – built in Norway’s Arctic archipelago, 1,300 kilometers from the North Pole. Often dubbed the “Noah’s Ark for plants,” it preserves millions of seeds in case of catastrophe. “This place is one of the most important in the world,” said Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s foreign affairs minister. “If things go wrong, due to war, climate change, or a nuclear explosion, countries can come and retrieve their seeds and start from scratch.” At the end of May, the Norwegian politician and his British counterpart, David Lammy, came to deposit two precious sealed boxes containing, inside aluminum envelopes, seeds of peas, carrots, lettuce and cabbage.

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