Re-framing island nations as champions of resilience in the face of climate change and disaster risk
UNU-EHS Working Paper Series, No. 9
This article presents several multi-scale case studies from islands around the world to offer a historically informed review of the cultural, environmental, political and economic systems and influences on island resilience. The discussion then shifts to the current state of vulnerable island populations, ecosystems and livelihoods, and opportunities for restoring and enhancing resilience through traditional and local knowledge and institutionalizing a longterm agenda to rebuild social and environmental justice.
In doing so, this article demonstrates how small island communities can become inspiring champions of livelihood resilience to global environmental change. The conclusions highlight best practices at the local, national and regional scales for addressing these challenges through education, women’s empowerment, health, intergenerational knowledge sharing, food security and innovative livelihood strategies such as varied mobility tactics. These practices ultimately serve as catalysts to reduce livelihood vulnerabilities and contribute to national and community level adaptive capacity to climate change, by helping forge a stronger sense of global community between small islands and non-small islands across the world.
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