This book explores the idea that small island communities could be regarded as canaries in the coal mine of sustainable development because of scientific and anecdotal evidence of a common link between rapid population growth, degradation of the local resource base, and intensification of disputes over the ownership and use of terrestrial and marine resources. The authors are all anthropologists with a specific interest in the question of whether the economic and social ‘safety valves’ that have previously served to break some of the feedback loops between these trends appear to be losing their efficacy. While much of the debate about economy–society–environment relationships on small islands has been overtaken by a narrow focus on the problem of climate change, the authors show that there are many other factors at work in the transformation of island lives and livelihoods.

Small Island Developing States are often depicted as being among the most vulnerable of all places to the effects of climate change, and they are a cause c?l?bre of many involved in climate science, politics and the media. Yet while small island developing states are much talked about, the production of both scientific knowledge and policies to protect the rights of these nations and their people has been remarkably slow.This book is the first to apply a critical approach to climate change science and policy processes in the South Pacific region. It shows how groups within politically and scientifically powerful countries appropriate the issue of island vulnerability in ways that do not do justice to the lives of island people. It argues that the ways in which islands and their inhabitants are represented in climate science and politics seldom leads to meaningful responses to assist them to adapt to climate change. Throughout, the authors focus on the hitherto largely ignored social impacts of climate change, and demonstrate that adaptation and mitigation policies cannot be effective without understanding the social systems and values of island societies.

Small Island Developing States are often depicted as being among the most vulnerable of all places to the effects of climate change, and they are a cause celebre of many involved in climate science, politics and the media. Yet while small island developing states are much talked about, the production of both scientific knowledge and policies to protect the rights of these nations and their people has been remarkably slow. This book is the first to apply a critical approach to climate change science and policy processes in the South Pacific region. It shows how groups within politically and scientifically powerful countries appropriate the issue of island vulnerability in ways that do not do justice to the lives of island people. It argues that the ways in which islands and their inhabitants are represented in climate science and politics seldom leads to meaningful responses to assist them to adapt to climate change. Throughout, the authors focus on the hitherto largely ignored social impacts of climate change, and demonstrate that adaptation and mitigation policies cannot be effective without understanding the social systems and values of island societies.

The volume attempts to triangulate three vibrant discourses of our times: It combines postcolonial and decolonial readings of cultural conflicts with assessments of ecological dimensions of those conflicts, as well as their significance within discourses on natural and cultural world heritage. The examples from four continents range from the medieval Middle East - already shaken by a convergence of ecological and social disaster - to modern imaginary constructions of medieval Vikings, the persistence of Indigenous knowledge in the Arctic, literary poetics of patrimony, and the heritage politics of Mediterranean urban architecture. Authors ask which strategies societies in developing countries use to defend their cultural and ecological uniqueness and integrity while being penetrated by environmental hazards and hegemonizing 'Western' forms of heritage culture; or how western societies construct their own past in ways that are sometimes reminiscent of traditional imaginations of a pre-modern past, petrified eternally in an 'ideal' moment of time. Colonial and historical forms of 'heritagization' of human and non-human environments, the essays show, answer to pressing emotional needs for a sense of stability. But the desire for nostalgia, frequently commodified, tends to collide with the similarly pressing need for political and economic survival in a rapidly changing world and in the face of accelerating extraction practices. Without being able to solve this dilemma, the volume makes an interdisciplinary contribution to taking intellectual stake of the asymmetrical politics and poetics of heritage and collective cultural memory.

Rounding off the “Rethinking the Island” series, this book shares critical and creative insights on the methodologies and associated practices, protocols, and techniques used by those in island studies and allied fields. It explores why and how islands serve powerful analytical ends. Authored by three scholars who work in and across geography, sociology, and literary studies and incorporating conversations with colleagues from around the world, the work considers significant, interdisciplinary questions shaping the field, including on belonging, boundedness, decolonization, governance, indigeneity, migration, sustainability, and the consequences of climate change. In the process, the authors model what it means to think about and rethink island and archipelagic methodologies and point to emergent innovations in the field.