When the Caribbean island of Barbuda was battered by Hurricane Irma last September, about 90 percent of homes were destroyed or damaged, and the entire population had to be evacuated.

Since the school year ended last month, the pace of families returning from neighbouring Antigua - where many lodged with relatives or in state-run centres - has picked up, even though reconstruction is unfinished, the Red Cross said.

Almost half of Barbuda's roughly 1,800 people have gone back, as the cash-strapped, twin-island nation works on ways to protect people from future disasters while waiting for promised aid funds to rebuild homes - which could take years.

"It's going to be a long and painful process," Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We just have to rely mostly on our resources, and to find creative ways to generate income to continue the recovery efforts."

In the face of serious and growing threats, experts detect a sea change in many of the world's 57 small island states and other remote island economies that share development challenges.

They are finding innovative alternatives to lurching from one crisis to the next - whether the problem is extreme weather, mass tourism, plastic waste, water shortages or migration.

Barbuda, aware it will take time to get back on its feet even as this year's hurricane season began in June, aims to stay safer in future - like many of its Caribbean neighbours.

Brennan Banks, Red Cross operations manager for the Irma response, said the aid agency plans to build a new office on Barbuda that can double up as an emergency shelter.

It is also offering free first-aid training to locals and fixing up rainwater-collection systems, while working with the government to improve early warning on the two islands.

Such solutions - often developed at least partly with islands themselves - are already improving lives, and protecting communities and environments on a small scale.

But their fledging efforts need far more funding to make a difference - and lessons learned in these living laboratories must be shared widely, say officials and resilience experts.