Small Island Developing States’ environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities

There is no single definition of a small island developing state. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)⁶ lists 51 SIDS, and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Land-locked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) lists the following 38 independent states as SIDS:⁷

3 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York, 9 May 1992, in force 21 March 1994, 31 International Legal Materials (1992) 849, <http://unfccc.int>.

4 See generally, <http://www.wto.org>.

5 There are a number of other multilateral fora that involve ocean governance, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, Rio de Janeiro, 5 June 1992, in force 29 December 1993, 31 International Legal Materials (1992) 822, <http://www.biodiv.org>. UNCLOS, the UNFCCC and the Doha Development Round have been chosen as three examples only.

6 See <http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/index.html>.

7 Taken from <http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/sid/list.htm> (visited 18 December 2012).

Antigua and

Barbuda Cuba Haiti

(LDC) Nauru St. Lucia Trinidad and

Tobago The Bahamas Dominica Jamaica Palau St. Vincent

and the

(LDC) Guyana Mauritius St. Kitts and

Nevis Tonga

The UN OHRLLS also lists the following 14 non-UN members/associate members of the regional commission as SIDS:⁸

American It is clear from the above tables that the type of states which are grouped as SIDS is varied, with some authors pointing out that some SIDS are neither small,⁹ islands,¹⁰ developing¹¹ or even states.¹² SIDS are largely made up of Caribbean and Pacific

8 Ibid. The OHRLLS separates SIDS into those which are independent states and those which are not, and also includes Bahrain which the UNDESA list does not.

9 Suriname, Cuba and Papua New Guinea have relatively large land masses. Also see Liam Campling, ‘A Critical Political Economy of the Small Island Developing States Concept – South-South Cooperation for Island Citizens?’ 22 Journal of Developing Societies (2006) 235–285 at 249, who points out that al-though there is no universal definition of ‘small’ the Commonwealth and World Bank have described small states as having populations of less than 1.5 million.

10 Belize, Guyana and Suriname are part of mainland Central and South America and Guinea Bissau is part of the African mainland.

11 See Ian Fry ‘Small Island Developing States: Becalmed in a Sea of Soft Law’ 14(2) Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (2005) 89–99 at 89 and Carola Betzold ‘“Borrowing Power” to Influence International Negotiations: AOSIS in the Climate Change Regime, 1990–1997’, 30 Politics (2010) 131–148 at 132–133 who have pointed to the relative prosperity of states like Singapore, The Bahamas and Barbados.

12 Some AOSIS member states are not fully independent. Some, like the Netherland Antilles, are dependent

states, but also include states from regions such as Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and South China Sea. These countries are diverse economically, geo-graphically, socially, and culturally, and are often competitors in the tourism, offshore banking and fisheries sectors. Some SIDS are least developed countries (LDCs), and some are not part of the G-77 and China negotiating bloc. Caribbean SIDS have over ‘four times more people than the Pacific SIDS, and nearly one-third higher gross domestic product per capita’ than Pacific SIDS,¹³ but higher debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratios than Pacific SIDS.¹⁴ SIDS do, however, share a number of commonalities, including both environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities.

These include:

• low-lying areas vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges;

• geographic positions strongly affected by tropical storms and cyclones;

• high temperatures;

• scarce land resources;

• limited development or diffusion of technology;

• considerable dependence on scarce or depleted fresh groundwater resources;

• small natural resource bases, with nutrient depletion, soil loss, deforestation and biodiversity loss occurring;¹⁵

• concentrations of population and infrastructure along coastal areas;

• dependence on a narrow range of export products;

• heavy dependence on imports;

• susceptibility to international trade and commodity price fluctuations;

• small domestic markets and limited ability to develop economies of scale;

• limited opportunities for economic diversification;

• high transport and communication costs (particularly acute in archipelagic na-tions);

• limited public budgets and dependence on foreign capital to finance develop-ment; and

• weak institutional structures and limited human capacity, primarily due to small manpower resource bases.¹⁶

These capacity constraints have made SIDS particularly vulnerable to environmental injury, including sea level rise, increased storm surge and flooding, ocean acidifica-tion, biological diversity degradaacidifica-tion, and damage from stronger or more frequent

territories and some members like the Cook Islands and Niue are ‘freely associated’ with New Zealand, and others like the Marshall Islands and Palau with the United States.

13 See Pamela S. Chasek, ‘Margins of Power: Coalition Building and Coalition Maintenance of the South Pacific Island States and the Alliance of Small Island States’, 14 Review of European Community and Inter-national Environmental Law (2005) 125–137 at 134.

14 See ‘Achieving Debt Sustainability and the MDGs in Small Island Developing States’, UNDP Discussion Paper, 20 October 2010 at 16–17.

15 Jon Barnett, ‘Titanic States? Impacts and Responses to Climate Change in the Pacific Islands’ 59 Journal of International Affairs (2005) 203–219 at 207.

16 Lino Bruguglio, ‘Small Island Developing States and Their Economic Vulnerabilities’ 23(9) World Devel-opment (1995) 1615–1632 at 1616.

hurricanes and typhoons. Betzold et al point out that although SIDS suffer from common vulnerabilities, the varied nature of these states means that their levels and types of vulnerability also vary.¹⁷ These authors point out that some low-lying states, such as Vanuatu, are more vulnerable to sea level rise than others such as Cuba or Belize, which can better adapt to that particular threat; whilst others, like Guyana, are more interested in the REDD+ mechanism¹⁸ in the UNFCCC negotiations than other, less forested, SIDS.¹⁹ However, on the whole, these shared capacity constraints contribute to SIDS’ unique vulnerability to environmental changes. These con-straints also reduce the resilience of these states, making them less able to combat and/or adapt to environmental degradation. In some arenas, such as climate change, the threats can detrimentally affect the development of these states.²⁰ This vulnerabil-ity has motivated, and continues to motivate, significant activvulnerabil-ity by SIDS in multi-lateral negotiations.