World Island Info

Foreign Policy magazine recently addressed a topic often linked to islands: how to start your own country.

See this for WorldIslandInfo’s take on the topic. My page deals with some of the problems Joshua Keating touches on in this FP article, such as acquiring land and attracting a population.

(Image courtesy Odalaigh)

Writing in The Star (Malaysia), Yip Yoke Teng describes a trip by the Mastery Academy of Chinese Metaphysics to study the feng shui of Tibet.

They visit Namucuo (commonly known as Nam Co or Nam Tsho, a high salt lake.

Teng writes:

It was evident that all mountain ranges converged on the lake, and there was an island emerging from the centre of the lake. Together, they formed “The Dragon Celebrating Pearl Formation” that facilitated Tibet’s spirituality.

Incidentally, Teng (and other sources) refer to Nam Co as “highest lake on earth,” but there are other, higher lakes, including Orba Co, the site of the highest islands in the world.

Iran is creating a female-only island on one of the 102 islands of Oroumiyeh Lake (Lake Urmia) in the country’s northwest.

The island is intended to be a tourist destination, and all facilities will be staffed by women, in keeping with the Iranian government’s impulse to segregate the sexes.

Perhaps the Iranians would like to emulate a society recounted by Marco Polo: men and women supposedly lived on, respectively, Male Island and Female Island, and kept to themselves, except for three months of the year, when the men would come over to visit.

Bldgblog examines micronations, interviewing the author of the Lonely Planet guide to the phenomenon.

WorldIslandInfo has examined the kindred topic of how to form your own island country.

The Washington Post today reports on efforts to preserve the islandness of Mont-Saint-Michel, the island abbey off the north coast of France. The historic rocky islet “is succumbing to a relentless invasion of silt and sea grass, which are surrounding the island and threatening to make it part of the mainland.

Part of the 19th century causeway will be replaced with a bridge.

Says a leader of the project to hold back the encroaching land, “If we don’t do anything at all, in 40 years Mont-Saint-Michel will be part of the continent.”

“Being an island is part of its strong identity — a gem in the sea,” says the mayor of the island, which has a population of 26 but is visited by 3 million people a year.

Long a pilgrimage destination, its island nature also has symbolic significance:

Brother François, who heads a group of six brothers and five sisters from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem who conduct services in the abbey, said Mont-Saint-Michel was laden with powerful religious symbolism that is important to protect — the mountaintop, the story of the archangel’s appearance, the sand flats where pilgrims wander, waiting for the parting of the sea at low tide.

After the causeway was built in 1879, Victor Hugo decried the change: “The Mont-Saint-Michel must remain an island. We must save it from mutilation!” People are at last responding.

[Image courtesy Neerav Mehta]

Some long-term thinkers are taking advantage of the nature of islands: they are creating a “doomsday” seed bank meant to contain every kind of agricultural seed on the planet on the island of Svalbard.

The high-security vault, almost half the length of a football field, will be carved into a mountain on a remote island above the Arctic Circle. If the looming fences, motion detectors and steel airlock doors are not disincentive enough for anyone hoping to breach the facility’s concrete interior, the polar bears roaming outside should help.

The isolation of Svalbard would hopefully keep the seed library out of harm’s way in even the worst circumstances:

The “doomsday vault,” as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe — the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that, difficult as those times would be, humankind would not have to start again from scratch.

Planners even examined what is likely to happen to Svalbard if global warming picks up, and how it would fare in the event of serious cooling due to a Gulf Stream collapse.

This evening the TV show “Numbers” mentioned the famous “Seven Bridges of Königsberg” math problem.  Königsberg in East Prussia

included two large islands which were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The question is whether it is possible to walk with a route that crosses each bridge exactly once, and return to the starting point. In 1736, Leonhard Euler proved that it was not possible.

The islands are still there, in Kaliningrad, Russia, though some of the bridges are gone.

To firm up the definition of Okinotorishima as an island — and thereby insure rights to a large economic zone in the Pacific — Japan is planning to seed corals on the reef in hopes that the island might grow. The island is now almost wholly covered at high tide.

Overall, the Japanese case is weak, though the government argues otherwise. According the the UPI article,

Last year Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalist Governor of [Tokyo], was photographed kissing its dwindling earth. The problem is Article 121 of Part VIII of the UN Convention: “Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.” Even Mr Ishihara would balk at living on Okino-Torishima, although there is talk of setting up an electricity plant to establish “economic life”.

(Perhaps the Japanese have heard this Malay saying: “Where good seed falls into the sea, one day an island may appear.”)

Brochures for the lovely-sounding island were passed out to New York commuters. Dozens of people called for more information.

What’s not to like about a place whose “original motto, in Latin, was ‘populus quisnam operor non lego non exsisto inquisitor,’ which translates roughly to ‘people who don’t read can’t be trusted.’”

Alas, the island lacks so-called “existence.” (Via Boing Boing)

For the less wealthy, the virtual world Second Life offers islands, beginning at $1,250 for 16 acres.  Sixty-four acres can be had for $5,000.

The new owner can choose from “six different topologies,” name his island, and choose the rating (PG or M).  Unlike most real islands, the new island can be moved, for a fee.

Of course, for about the same price as a small virtual island, you can rent Ranguana Caye, Belize, for a week.