Island Studies Journal

Can mitigation of the spread and transmission of COVID-19 cases on islands, especially in the Caribbean, be attributed to the fact that they are just that: islands? As the corona crisis escalated in 2020, island authorities initially were able to keep COVID-19 cases low and mitigate their spread by implementing unprecedented actions, foremost among them border closures. However, as the realities of economic stresses surfaced, due to the decline in tourism, especially in the Caribbean, the need to balance COVID-19 spread and economic propriety posed a challenge. In this regard, the corona crisis illuminated spatial notions of islandness: boundedness, smallness, isolation and fragmentation. This perspective essay explores islandness in the context of the actions taken in the case study tri-island state of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Being a tri-island state, the nuances of islandness, experienced in an archipelagic context (an archipelago within the Caribbean archipelago) are emphasized. The paper chronicles the measures, issues and challenges of the case islands during the period between 13 March 2020 and 30 January 2021 and juxtaposes them against other actions in other countries and theories of islandness. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to and champion the field of island studies, especially within the Caribbean region.

Small island developing states (SIDS) are distinct from other developing countries: they are particularly and comparatively more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Efforts to understand national-level vulnerability in these countries are limited. This paper helps to fill this gap and has two main aims. First, it identifies trends in national-level climate change adaptation among SIDS in the Caribbean region. Second, it identifies the limits to adaptation at the national level in these countries. In applying a resilience lens, and using summative content analysis techniques and semi-structured interviews with 26 senior policy-makers, this paper finds that Caribbean SIDS are primarily adapting to changes in hurricane, rainfall, and drought patterns. It also finds that most adaptations are being undertaken in the coastal zone and the water and agriculture sectors, and that there are many factors limiting national-level adaptation. The most commonly reported limit is financing, though not all policy-makers agree that financing is a limit. These findings are important for national SIDS governments and international donors and agencies that will be better able to identify and fill gaps in their adaptation actions and financing. This paper’s findings also highlight the importance of depoliticising climate change and prioritising good governance, improving SIDS’ access to international adaptation financing, and making the road to a climate-resilient future by walking.

Small island developing states (SIDS) are portrayed as icons of climate change impacts, with assumed islandness characteristics being used to emphasise vulnerability. Meanwhile, island resilience expressed as the stability of island “paradises” is said to be undermined by climate change. Two dominant counternarratives have been emerging. Physical science demonstrates the limited empirical evidence at the moment for SIDS being destroyed due to climate change. Notwithstanding that such empirical evidence could appear in the future, social science counternarratives are challenging notions of SIDS’ peoples inevitably fleeing their homes as climate refugees. Instead, SIDS’ peoples have strong abilities and desires to make their own mobility decisions, whether due to climate change or other impetuses. Consequently, islandness within SIDS’ climate change narratives is not necessarily problematic, but instead can help islanders address climate change and wider challenges. The counternarratives, even if not entirely contradicting the dominant narratives, provide needed nuances, balance, and contextualisation to provide a full picture of SIDS, islandness, and climate change.

Islands and islanders are often misrepresented in the climate change discourse, oversimplifying their experiences and interactions with climate change. In reality, islands and islanders have far more complex relationships with climate change. This special thematic section presents eight papers that highlight local responses and localized impacts of climate change on islands, reiterating the importance of considering local community perspectives in small island contexts to overcome simplistic viewpoints. Such perceptions and perspectives are increasingly being recognized as offering a valuable contribution to climate change adaptation, particularly to counter the misrepresentation of small islands as vulnerable or passive, and the disregard for the fact that climate change is a global, as well as continual process. This special thematic section further demonstrates that island research is well placed to address the disproportionate concentration of perspectives and opinions of climate change from the Global North and adds to the calls for increased efforts to give a voice to island communities of all kinds.

Islands are sites of innovative conceptualizations, whether of nature or human enterprise, whether virtual or real. The study of islands on their own terms today enjoys a growing and wide-ranging recognition. This paper celebrates the launch of Island Studies Journal in the context of a long and thrilling tradition of island studies scholarship. Not sun, sea, sand but ice, isolation, indigenous people: the critical exploration of extreme tourism in cold water locations has barely started. Cold water island locations tend to have harsh, pristine and fragile natural environments, characterized by wide open spaces. They become contexts for an exceptional and expensive form of vigorous, outdoor, adventure or cultural tourism, and direct encounters with nature. The nature and practices of the tourism industry suggest a more sustainable form of island tourism, very different from what is experienced on the warm, tropical and exotic island stereotype. This paper critically reviews some of the salient contrasts between the hot and cold versions of island tourism. It discusses how, on many cold water island locations, sound strategic management, limited civilian buy in, low populations and an absence of pluralism in political life, can conspire with climate and relative inaccessibility to limit tourism to a small scale, low impact industry with a relatively high, locally-retained value added. Some warm water islands are trying to follow this model for tourism development, with mixed results.