Guest editorial : development and climate change in small island developing states

Abstract

The evidence is increasing that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) will be heavily impacted by climate change (Nurse et al., 2014), especially among coastal communities (Formosa et al., 2017), and the challenge of fostering their development will be more difficult as a result. Many varied policy and practice responses to climate change have been proposed and critiqued, from migration, to physically engineering islands, to societal changes (Gerrard and Wannier, 2013; Yamamoto and Esteban, 2014), including emphasis on integration with sustainable development planning (Ayers and Huq, 2009). But what this means for specific island communities is still largely unknown (Nunn et al., 2007). Although attention toward the challenges faced by SIDS because of climate change, and because the social construction of climate change is gaining momentum (Kelman, 2014), lack of data and research capacity remains a major problem. This is especially true for the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable communities in SIDS, which paradoxically are frequently neglected even in research about SIDS’ climate change impacts and adaptation (Lewis, 1999; McCubbin et al., 2015). Furthermore, given the necessary interdisciplinary nature of dealing with climate change, there has not yet been a clear identification of methodological frameworks capable of operationalizing the required theoretical and practical aspects at the state/island and local levels. This too delays the comprehensive understanding of how specific development interventions can enhance adaptation, and how funds for addressing the negative effects of climate change are fairly and equitably distributed (Remling and Persson, 2015).