Small island nations around the world are bracing for shocks to their economies and environments due to their extreme vulnerability to climate change, lack of wealth to reverse it on their own, and lack of poverty to rely on aid and development funds.
Both will be high on the agenda this week when the Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda hosts the fourth UN Conference of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which begins on Monday.
From the Caribbean to Africa to the Pacific, trapped between growing debt and rising sea levels, many Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have traits in common that make them particularly susceptible to external shocks: small landmasses with non-diversified economies that rely heavily on imports and are home to dispersed and isolated populations.
And climate change — with its brutal droughts, powerful hurricanes and rising seas — is threatening to erase some of them from the map altogether.
“The next ten years are critical for SIDS,” reads the draft document set to be adopted at the UN conference, which will bring together countries ranging from Asian economic heavyweight Singapore to Cape Verde in Africa to the Bahamas.
High on the agenda for the 39 states, whose populations number roughly 65 million people: increasing climate financing, even as many criticize the slow pace of fulfilling previous UN aid pledges.
“The harsh truth is for these countries, climate change is already a reality,” Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), told AFP. “Because of their smallness as economies… one extreme weather event can literally throw a country back 5-10 years in its development.”
“One hurricane, one typhoon that crosses — by sheer lottery of bad luck — the terrain of a small island developing state can wipe out a third or more of the entire infrastructure of a country.”
However, the majority of tiny island nations are categorized as middle-income or higher, which means they are not eligible for the same international assistance and preferential funding as the world’s poorest nations.
Furthermore, a lot of people already have heavy debt loads. According to UN predictions, in 2024 SIDS will spend 15.9% of their total government revenue on interest alone.
“They are being trapped in a no man’s land where financing from the international community that is often a kind of safety net is simply not available to them,” Steiner said.
The UNDP estimates that the annual funding required for climate adaptation measures in SIDS countries ranges from $4.7 to $7.3 billion.
“SIDS cannot be left to drown in crises not of their own making. This would have catastrophic consequences for the entire world,” said Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr Pa’olelei Luteru, Samoa’s ambassador to the UN.
