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This study aims to assess policies and mechanisms in Caribbean and Pacific small island developing states (SIDS) that address climate-induced migration and displacement. The migration of communities away from vulnerable regions is highly likely to be an adaptation strategy used in low-elevation SIDS, as the impacts of climate change are likely to result in significant loss and damage, threatening their very territorial existence. SIDS must ensure that residents relocate to less vulnerable locations and may need to consider international movement of residents. Ad hoc approaches to migration and displacement may result in increased vulnerability of residents, making the development and enforcement of comprehensive national policies that address these issues a necessity.

Interviews with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiators for SIDS as well as analysis of secondary data, including Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, are utilized to determine policies and mechanisms in place that focus on climate-induced migration and displacement.

While climate change is acknowledged as an existential threat, few SIDS have policies or mechanisms in place to guide climate-induced migration and displacement. Potential exists for migration and displacement to be included in policies that integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation along with national sustainable development plans. Regional bodies are beneficial to providing guidance to SIDS in the development of nationally appropriate frameworks to address climate-induced migration and displacement.

Existing gaps in policies and mechanisms and challenges faced by SIDS in developing strategies to address climate-induced migration and displacement are explored. Best practices and recommendations for strategies for SIDS to address migration and displacement are provided.

This paper offers a critical review of climate change related initiatives in small island states, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which can end up as ontological traps: fuelled and supported by external donor agencies, thwarting out-migration and shifting scarce and finite resources away from other, shorter-term and locally spawned development trajectories and objectives.

This paper is based on a selective literature review. It clusters important themes found in published research and policy documents.

The results identify a burgeoning critical voice in regards to resilience and its legitimation of climate change driven projects in SIDS. This paper recommends a more nuanced approach which also privileges migration.

This paper provided a critical overview and synthesis of the immobility implicit in much climate change related work, through the critical lens of island studies and post-colonial studies.

Climate data, including historical climate observations and climate model outputs, are often used in climate impact assessments, to explore potential climate futures. However, characteristics often associated with “islandness”, such as smallness, land boundedness and isolation, may mean that climate impact assessment methods applied at broader scales cannot simply be downscaled to island settings. This paper aims to discuss information needs and the limitations of climate models and datasets in the context of small islands and explores how such challenges might be addressed.

Reviewing existing literature, this paper explores challenges of islandness in top-down, model-led climate impact assessment and bottom-up, vulnerability-led approaches. It examines how alternative forms of knowledge production can play a role in validating models and in guiding adaptation actions at the local level and highlights decision-making techniques that can support adaptation even when data is uncertain.

Small island topography is often too detailed for global or even regional climate models to resolve, but equally, local meteorological station data may be absent or uncertain, particularly in island peripheries. However, rather than viewing the issue as decision-making with big data at the regional/global scale versus with little or no data at the small island scale, a more productive discourse can emerge by conceptualising strategies of decision-making with unconventional types of data.

This paper provides a critical overview and synthesis of issues relating to climate models, data sets and impact assessment methods as they pertain to islands, which can benefit decision makers and other end-users of climate data in island communities.

Climate change poses diverse, often fundamental, challenges to livelihoods of island peoples. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these challenges must be better understood before effective and sustainable adaptation is possible.

Understanding past livelihood impacts from climate change can help design and operationalize future interventions. In addition, globalization has had uneven effects on island countries/jurisdictions, producing situations especially in archipelagoes where there are significant differences between core and peripheral communities. This approach overcomes the problems that have characterized many recent interventions for climate-change adaptation in island contexts which have resulted in uneven and at best only marginal livelihood improvements in preparedness for future climate change.

Island contexts have a range of unique vulnerability and resilience characteristics that help explain recent and proposed responses to climate change. These include the sensitivity of coastal fringes to climate-environmental changes: and in island societies, the comparatively high degrees of social coherence, closeness to nature and spirituality that are uncommon in western contexts.

Enhanced understanding of island environmental and social contexts, as well as insights from past climate impacts and peripherality, all contribute to more effective and sustainable future interventions for adaptation.

The need for more effective and sustainable adaptation in island contexts is becoming ever more exigent as the pace of twenty-first-century climate change increases.

Based on a panel vector error correction model (PVECM), this study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on tourism development in a selected group of 17 small island economies during 1995-2018. In the long run, a positive and direct relationship was found between foreign investment and tourists’ arrival. Moreover, economic performance and tourists’ income were also found to be key determinants of tourism development. It is further observed that there is bidirectional causality between the two variables. Hence, one can argue that FDI is a key element for tourism development. So, if the countries can attract more FDI and grow economically, these elements will contribute positively to the sector in the future.

This work uses rigorous dynamic time series analysis, namely, a dynamic PVECM, which takes into account dynamism and endogeneity issues in tourism modelling. Furthermore, the PVECM is also appropriately suited for integrating short- and long-run analysis.

The results confirm that FDI has been an important ingredient in the tourism development of the island economies in the long run. Interestingly, a bidirectional causality between FDI and tourism development is validated. Moreover, growth will as well be important. So, if the country can attract more FDI and grow economically, these elements will attract the tourists of the future.

Relatively few studies have rigorously studied the relationships between FDI and tourism development, particularly with respect to developing countries and small island states which rely heavily on tourism as well as FDI. As such existing research has neglected dynamic and reverse causality analysis in their respective FDI-tourism modelling. This study thus attempts to address the above and supplement the literature by investigating the direct and indirect relationship between FDI and tourism development for the case of small island economies over the period 1995-2018. Moreover, the implication of foreign capital inflows on tourism futures will as well be developed.

Higher education plays a vital role in educating citizens about climate change and promoting pro-environment behavior. Based on this statement, this study aims to analyze and evaluate students’ perception of climate change at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. The study aims to understand the main ideas and concepts of climate change by analyzing information habits and individual opinions on the causes of climate change as perceived by the students of two student organizations aimed at environmental protection.

A qualitative approach was used to gather data on students’ perceptions and information habits toward climate change. The data were collected through a questionnaire to characterize students from the socio-demography and their perceptions, information habits and knowledge relating to climate change. This paper uses the case study method to examine students’ climate change perceptions at two different student organizations at the same university. The research study involved a focus group technique. Two focus groups at the University of the South Pacific were administered. The focus groups’ selection in this study took into account the aims and objectives of the students’ organization toward climate change awareness, adaptation, mitigation and environment protection.

The focus groups participants believe that climate change is a serious problem in the South Pacific region. Results suggest significant differences in climate change perception at the two students’ organizations chosen for this study. Students at the Econesian society nicknamed climate change as a nuclear weapon for the South Pacific responsible for changes in the habitat, coral bleaching, lifestyle changes, mother of all other environmental problems and the introduction of invasive species into Fiji. Students at Wantok Moana-related climate change to drastic weather changes, lack of fish feed and additional toxins in the sea. The results also showed that students at the Econesian society have a better understanding of climate change than the students of Wantok Moana.

This paper provides an insight into how students of Small Islands Developing States view climate change and the factors affecting their opinions. It also shows how climate change perception varies within the same university. This implies the need to integrate climate change into the higher education curriculum and more research on this topic.

This paper is the first to compare and contrast university students’ climate change perception in Fiji. The results make an essential contribution to the extant climate change literature by identifying and categorizing climate change perception and the factors that shape students’ perception of climate change from the university students’ perspective in Fiji.

While the South Pacific is often cited as highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, there is comparatively little known about how different groups perceive climate change. Understanding the gaps and differences between risk and perceived risk is a prerequisite to designing effective and sustainable adaptation strategies.

This research examined three key groups in Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu: secondary school teachers, media personnel, and rural subsistence livelihood-based communities that live near or in conservation areas. This study deployed a dual methodology of participatory focus groups, paired with a national mobile phone based survey to gauge perceptions of climate change. This was the first time mobile technology had been used to gather perceptual data regarding the environment in the South Pacific.

The research findings highlighted a number of important differences and similarities in ways that these groups perceive climate change issues, solutions, personal vulnerability and comprehension of science among other factors.

These differences and similarities are neglected in large-scale top-down climate change adaptation strategies and have key implications for the design of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and therefore sustainable development in the region.

The research was innovative in terms of its methods, as well as its distillation of the perceptions of climate change from teachers, media and rural communities.

This study aims to shed light on the phenomenon of food waste generation by the food and beverage sector of hotels of Mauritius as well as examine the current status of food waste management.

This paper addresses the issue of the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions within the information and communication technology (ICT) and engineering fields. The study examines the complex issue of vertical segregation and gender equality by exploring the barriers that women encounter and the potential coping strategies they adopt to advance in their careers.

The study employs a qualitative approach, conducting semi-structured interviews with 17 women at middle and upper management levels in the ICT and engineering sectors. This approach aims to better understand women's workplace experiences and gain deeper insights into the nature of the barriers they face.

The study identifies four main factors hindering women's progression toward senior management positions, namely working hours, work-family conflict, social role stereotypes and second-generation bias. The results also offer useful insights into the coping strategies adopted by women to overcome these barriers.

The study highlights the persisting underrepresentation of women in senior positions, indicating a societal and organizational lag in terms of inclusion and equity. It underscores the importance of developing effective policies to address the challenges faced by employees striving to balance their work and family commitments. Training is recognized as an important tool for raising awareness about gender stereotypes among employees and reducing second-generation bias.

This study provides valuable lessons derived from its findings, including potential strategies that organizations can implement to help women navigate and overcome workplace barriers in the ICT and engineering fields.