Climate change: thinking small islands beyond Small Island Developing States (SIDS)

Abstract

Sea level rise and extreme weather events threaten the livelihoods and possibly the long-term existence of whole island nations. While the media, policy, and often scientific arenas essentially focus their attention on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are widely recognised as hotspots of global climate change, the situation of the numerous other vulnerable island territories has been relatively neglected. As a result, the focus on SIDS has paved the way for mainstream adaptation research and, in turn, for biases in the interpretation of climate change vulnerability and risks of small islands in general. Here, we argue that such an overly narrow scope severely limits our understanding of island-specific issues that influence island societies' adaptability to on-going and future climate change. This article reviews the current perspective on challenges and opportunities for climate change adaptation on SIDS and compares it with other types of island territories, especially dependent islands of continental states and semi-autonomous sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJ). This comparison reveals that despite critical socio-political differences between the respective island types, more general lessons can be learned as island territories at large face similar issues both regarding the drivers of vulnerability and exposure and the adaptation measures needed. We propose an analytical framework for looking 'beyond SIDS' that includes the recognition of critical issues (asymmetrical governance structures, archipelagic constellations, inter-island connections) that shape island societies' vulnerability and leeway for adaptation to climate-related hazards.

Climate change adaptation in SIDS: A systematic review of the literature pre and post the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

“…Klöck and Nunn (2019), which captured the primary climate impacts to which SIDS are adapting, is a systematic review of adaptation literature published between 2000 and 2016. Petzold and Magnan (2019) reviewed the challenges and opportunities for adaptation in SIDS and compared them with other types of island territories. Despite these studies, Wong's (2011, p. 2) call for an “assessment of all SIDS bringing together knowledge, experiences, data, data gaps, and future needs for the SIDS group” has largely remained unanswered.…”

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Climate Change Adaptations in the World’s Largest Mangrove Ecosystem

“…[43]. Significant barriers to adaptations could include: bio-physical-climate variability and change; socio-economic-lack of climate change awareness among decision-makers; political-asymmetrical governance structures; and other cross-cutting barriers, which carry the potential of evolving into hard limits to adaptations [44][45][46][47].…”

Climate change induced effects or maldevelopment: small islands and conflicting attribution of root causes

“…However, especially small island countries are often confronted with a number of issues that further complicate finding sustainable solutions to infrastructure demands 12,13 : On the one hand, decisions are regularly made from afar by the central government without addressing the knowledge and integration of local knowledge. On the other hand, island states often lack expertise, human and financial resources to allow thorough planning and proper implementation 14 . Thus, development decisions are embedded in political structures on multiple levels of governance, determining how decisions are made and what actors are involved in the process 12,15,16 .…”