WIREs Climate Change

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been impacted by and responded to COVID-19 in ways that give us clues about vulnerabilities under climate change, as well as pathways to resilience. Here, we reflect on some of these experiences drawing on case study examples from the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean SIDS, exploring how SIDS have responded to COVID-19 and considering the potential for coping mechanisms enacted for the pandemic to support long-term resilience to climate change. Island responses to the pandemic highlight both new directions, like tourist schemes that capitalize on the rise of remote working in Barbados and Mauritius, and reliance on tried and tested coping mechanisms, like bartering in Fiji. Some of the actions undertaken to respond to the pressures of the pandemic, such as visa schemes promoting “digital nomadism” and efforts to grow domestic food production, have climate resilience and equity dimensions that must be unpacked if their potential to contribute to more sustainable island futures is to be realized. Importantly, the diversity of contexts and experiences described here illustrates that there is no single “best” pathway to climate-resilient post-pandemic futures for SIDS. While the emerging rhetoric of COVID-19 recovery often speaks of “roadmaps,” we argue that the journey towards a climate-resilient COVID-19 recovery for SIDS is likely to involve detours, as solutions emerge through innovation and experiment, and knowledge-sharing across the wider SIDS community. This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Sustainability and Human Well-Being Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Assessing Climate Change in the Context of Other Issues

Recent assessments of future risk to atoll habitability have focused on island erosion and submergence, and have overlooked the effects of other climate-related drivers, as well as differences between ocean basins and island types. Here we investigate the cumulative risk arising from multiple drivers (sea-level rise; changes in rainfall, ocean–atmosphere oscillations and tropical cyclone intensity; ocean warming and acidification) to five Habitability Pillars: Land, Freshwater supply, Food supply, Settlements and infrastructure, and Economic activities. Risk is assessed for urban and rural islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, in 2050 and 2090, and considering a moderate adaptation scenario. Risks will be highest in the Western Pacific which will experience increased island destabilization together with a high threat to freshwater, and decreased land-based and marine food supply from reef-dependent fish and tuna and tuna-like resources. Risk accumulation will occur at a lower rate in the Central Pacific (lower pressure on land, with more limited cascading effects on other Habitability Pillars; increase in pelagic fish stocks) and the Central Indian Ocean (mostly experiencing increased land destabilization and reef degradation). Risk levels will vary significantly between urban islands, depending on geomorphology and local shoreline disturbances. Rural islands will experience less contrasting risk levels, but higher risks than urban islands in the second half of the century. This article is categorized under: Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives > Regional Reviews

The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2014 was the most comprehensive to date. Yet it left several gaps with regards to the impacts, implications and responses to climate change in small island developing states (SIDS). SIDS are recognized as a special grouping of developing countries. Located in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, Caribbean, and Pacific regions, they comprise 58 countries that are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. With adaptation to climate change viewed as a viable and necessary complement to mitigation, academic interest in adaptation in these complex geographies is increasing. Despite this, not enough is known about the body of knowledge relating to adaptation in SIDS. This article systematically reviews 208 articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, and notes, and synthesizes the nature and extent of the research evidence before and after AR5 (i.e., from 1990 to 2014, and from 2015 to 2018). It specifically explores shifts in (a) when, where and by what means knowledge is being produced (e.g., subject areas, methodologies), and the ways in which adaptation is being framed (i.e., conceptually, operationally), (b) the narratives, consensuses, and tensions across the key emerging themes in the literature, and (c) the knowledge gaps that exist. It also outlines a future research agenda, which is an important consideration not only for multi-scale actors working to help solve the global climate challenge, but also for the scholars preparing the Small Islands Chapter of the Sixth Assessment Report due in 2021. This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Sustainability and Human Well-Being Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies

In the international climate change negotiations, the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have emerged as a credible group through the AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and have called for a global temperature rise of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Whatever the outcomes of the negotiations, they are exacerbated by climate change and a rising sea level. Many share common characteristics of small size, high population density, limited land resources, vulnerability to natural hazards, threatened biodiversity, high dependence on tourism, and limited funds and human resources. The suggestions put forward for a research agenda for the SIDS include a comprehensive assessment of the SIDS as a group, a focused attention on oceans, increased development on renewable energy, inclusion of climate adaptation under natural disaster reduction, a strategy of ‘save some islands rather than not to have any’ for some SIDS, and large-scale modular mangrove planting for coastal protection and adaptation to sea-level rise. These suggestions could provide an expanded scope of adaptation for the SIDS. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 1–6 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.84 This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies Climate and Development > Knowledge and Action in Development