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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.

The purpose of this paper is to present a forward-looking case of climate change induced displacement in the Pacific Islands as a multidimensional phenomenon with a moral dimension. Instead of seeking to provide a definitive solution to an imagined problem, the authors have identified the complexity of the situation through an exploration of the accounts of place and accountability for the consequences of displacement.

The paper explores displacement from a sociological perspective. The authors use the sociology of worth (SOW) to anchor explicit and competing moral claims in an evaluation regime that considers questions of justice and the common good. The public accounts of place in the Pacific Islands provide the empirical material for a consideration of a situated crisis. While SOW is generally adopted for current crises or disputes, this study explores the pre-immigrant story and a future case of displacement. Bauman’s (1998, 2012) perspective on globalization is used to narrate the local conditions of place in a global context as reflective of a dominant social order.

Since place is a multidimensional concept and experienced according to various states of being including physical, functional, spiritual and emotion or feeling, displacement is also felt at a multidimensional level. Thus to provide an account of a lived experience and to foster a moral accountability for climate induced displacement requires a consideration of multiple accounts and compromises that need to be considered.

As with the majority of accounting research that is concerned with the suffering of those at a distance, we too must tackle this conundrum in a meaningful way. As members of a society that is the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gas, how do we speak for our drowning neighbors? The paper concludes with some insights from Boltanski (1999) as a way forward.

The paper presents a forward-looking scenario of a looming crisis from a sociological perspective. It adds to the literature on alternative accounts by using stories, media, government reports and other sources to holistically build a narrative grounded in a current and imaged social order.

Drawing on theories of development economics and sustainable tourism, this research explores the differences between sovereign and nonsovereign small island tourism economies (SITEs) and identifies the antecedents and effects of overtourism in the Caribbean.

The research design is based on a comparative case study of selected Caribbean SITEs. Case study research involves a detailed empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. The main purpose of a case study is to provide a contextual analysis of the conditions and processes involved in the phenomenon under study. A comparative case study is an appropriate research methodology to explore new multi-faceted concepts with limited empirical evidence.

The results confirm previous studies that nonsovereign SITEs have a distinctive overdrive toward tourism specialization. Moreover, the findings indicate that overtourism is driven by both global and domestic policy factors and generates significant economic volatility, social inequality and ecological stress. The paper discusses the tourism policy implications of the evolving economic disconnectedness, environmental decay and social tensions in SITEs in the Caribbean.

Policy recommendations are presented for transitioning toward a more inclusive development and strengthening the resilience of small island tourism development in the Caribbean.

Increasingly, land is a scarce resource which is much sought after in Penang Island, Malaysia. This is because Penang is largely made up of steep topography and much of the lowland areas are already developed. Penang is one of the many rapidly industrialising states in Malaysia with a largely urban populace. In recent decades, efforts at industrialisation and the development of other economic sectors have been intensified, leading to greater urbanisation and greater pressures on land. Although land reclamation has eased the pressures somewhat, it is not enough to satisfy the high demand for land on the island. As such, developers have turned to the remaining hill land on the island. Many hills and their environs are already being developed and many hill projects are in the pipe line. This has led to many environmental problems such as deforestation, decimation of water catchments, destruction of endangered fauna and flora, soil erosion, landslides, water pollution, sedimentation and downstream flooding. Some of these problems have been exacerbated and turned into disasters due to the extremely fragile and sensitive nature of hill ecosystems. Despite such problems, the State Government has decided to lift the freeze on development of hill land since January 1998, and this has effectively opened up all hill land for development on the island. Therefore, hill land needs to be protected and conserved by other means and this study recommends the adoption of a policy of “No development in all ecologically and environmentally sensitive areas”, the setting up of a Hill Land Technical Committee (HLTC) to manage all developments pertaining to hill land and to gazette all hill land in the State, and the use of state‐of‐the‐art remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to monitor and control development activities on hill land in Penang.

This study aims to investigate growth differentials among small islands and the impact of tourism specialization on the growth and the economic performance of small islands.

The study is based on trade theory and uses data from a panel of small islands for 1995-2007. It applies panel regression and standard time series methods combined with a qualitative approach.

Small islands experienced stronger basic patterns of growth than many developed countries, especially where economies of scale are not an issue. The findings further suggest that tourism specialization is not harmful to growth, and, in lieu of technological gaps and resource limitations, tourism specialization is a sound option. Size, a lack of complete sovereignty or independence and export orientation do not seem to affect the variance in the real per capita GDP at a greater degree. Finally, small islands may leverage returns to scale in global markets.

While tourism specialization is assumed to enhance growth, in the case of small island destinations, the study did not formally test whether increased terms-of-trade may be perpetually improved.

The study prompted four policy suggestions: small island economies should engage in tourism specialization; small island economies should allocate more resources to the tourism industry than other economic sectors; the success of tourism specialization does not depend exclusively on comparative advantage; and institutional realities and path dependence may play a role in economic performance.

The originality of this study lies in the detection of a paradox in mainstream economics that indicates that small islands may not enjoy sustained economic growth. The detection led to a surprising discovery that tourism specialization may propel growth. The value of the study is twofold: theoretical value is added by suggesting a reconceptualization of the construct capital; and, practical value is strengthened in the sense that tourism specialization may only work under a condition where upon tourism offerings command higher prices than other commodities.

Globalization is rapidly integrating markets, universalizing Western materialism, and weakening the capacity of national states to safeguard local values and institutions. While some, principally the World Bank (1999) regard integrating world markets as an efficiency‐driven process, spreading the benefits of technical innovation and information technologies around the world, many are skeptical. Skeptics include in particular social scientists writing from a Non‐Western and Islamic perspective (Ismail 1999, Rajee 2000). If globalization is indeed a threat to the Nation‐State, then it would follow that small states would be the most vulnerable. At a minimum, it is significant to inquire whether globalization threatens the survival and sustainability of small states.

This paper investigates tourism distribution channels in a small island destination with capacity constraints and contributes to understanding distribution in an emerging economy. Using the case of Fernando de Noronha in Brazil, the structures and factors underlying channel choice behaviour of tourism suppliers and intermediaries were investigated.

41 in-depth interviews were conducted with the private sector (tourism suppliers based on Fernando de Noronha and intermediaries, based on the island as well as mainland Brazil) as well as governmental organisations. A stratified purposeful sample was taken to select suppliers and data were examined based on thematic analysis.

Both direct and indirect distribution channels are used, with limited airline tickets influencing the suppliers' choice of channels in this small island and capacity-constrained destination. Many suppliers focused on relationships with destination-based ground operators. These local intermediaries are important and extremely relevant to small island destinations building an effective business network to connect the destination to geographically distant markets and intermediaries.

Limitations include the absence of air and cruise operators as interviewees.

The paper provides a comprehensive representation of the structures and analysis of tourism distribution channels in fragile small island destinations, specifically, in an emerging country context. This includes emphasising previously unexplored indirect channels of cruise ship operators and supplier's associations.

Overall, there is a lack of research using online reviews as a proxy of customer experience when addressing the study of tourism in island destinations.

The current investigation aims to fill this gap by focussing on an African small island developing states, i.e. Cape Verde. This paper reports of tourist reviews extracted from TripAdvisor from “two islands of the senses” as coined by this archipelago’s national tourism organization, specifically Santo Antão and Fogo islands. The data analysis was performed through Leximancer software to generate concepts out of words, followed by themes.

The present research focussed on experiences in island tourism to identify their main dimensions based on visitors’ narratives in online reviews. The obtained results are of potential value to the literature by contributing to a better understanding of tourist experience in the context of tourism in islands in an understudied country, Cape Verde.

Results are presented and object of discussion vis-à-vis scientific literature and conclusions put forward in this journal paper.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of disaster logistics among Caribbean small island developing states that are Caribbean Community (CARICOM) members, and, based on those findings propose a coherent logistics framework that could influence the development of a robust system that can effectively respond to disasters in the region.

Consisted of a series of in-depth interviews with national and regional disaster managers in the Caribbean. Secondary sources augmented the interviews. Data analysis conformed to Pope, et al. guidelines for qualitative research. There are limitations to this approach, but, the lack of existing research on the region and the need for information on the topic justify the approach.

The main findings show the lack of a coherent and integrated logistics strategy. Missing or weak components like transportation and distribution infrastructure, a procurement strategy, inadequate port facilities and insufficient human resources undermine the overall logistics performance. Although limitations of small island status further weigh on the development and implementation of a regional logistics approach is possible. The paper proposes one.

The proposed framework has implications for disaster management and disaster policy in the Caribbean. From a disaster policy perspective it suggests important logistics governance decisions including funding, scalability issues and formalized agreements that must be made collectively.

From a management perspective the shows how to strengthen the regional response mechanism (RRM), builds efficiency in response and provides redundancies in the regional logistics system.

This paper’s value lies in its focus on a region that is often omitted in academic literature, but is disaster-prone. Importantly, the research proposes a workable framework on which to build a robust logistics infrastructure and improve logistics capacity based on primary research.