Climate Resilience Planning in Small Island Developing States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22815446Keywords:
small island developing states, SIDS, climate resilience, adaptation planning, sea level rise, climate finance, loss and damage, disaster risk reduction, national adaptation plans, atoll nationsAbstract
Small island developing states (SIDS) face a combination of climate hazards, sea level rise, tropical cyclone
intensification, ocean acidification and coral reef loss, and freshwater salinization, that is disproportionate to their
negligible contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, and their resilience planning has become a distinct and
rapidly growing strand of the adaptation literature. This review synthesizes evidence from Pacific, Caribbean, Indian
Ocean and Atlantic-Indian Ocean-South China Sea (AIS) SIDS on four interrelated dimensions of climate resilience
planning: the physical exposure and habitability evidence base for atoll and low-lying island nations; the institutional
and governance architecture through which National Adaptation Plans and equivalent instruments are formulated
and implemented; the persistent gap between SIDS' assessed adaptation finance needs and the finance they
actually access; and the emergence of loss and damage as a distinct policy track once adaptation limits are
reached. Drawing on more than two decades of peer-reviewed research spanning geomorphology, climate
governance, development economics and international law, we find that although atoll reef-island geomorphology is
more dynamic, and projected uninhabitability more geographically uneven, than early linear-inundation narratives
suggested, exposure to compounding hazards such as wave-driven groundwater salinization remains severe for
many communities well before land area is lost outright. National adaptation planning has matured substantially
since the mid-2000s but continues to be constrained by thin technical and administrative capacity, donor-driven
rather than nationally led prioritization, and weak integration between national plans and the community-based
adaptation initiatives that deliver much on-the-ground implementation. Climate finance access remains
disproportionately small relative to assessed vulnerability, is skewed toward a subset of
better-institutionally-resourced SIDS, and is dominated by loans rather than grants in ways that raise
debt-sustainability concerns for small, open economies. Loss and damage, catalysed by Pacific and Caribbean
advocacy culminating in the 2022 Loss and Damage Fund, has emerged as a necessary complement to adaptation
finance rather than a substitute for it. We conclude by identifying priority research gaps, particularly longitudinal
evaluation of adaptation outcomes, and the integration of finance, governance and physical-exposure evidence into
a single resilience-planning framework.
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