Share this article
Have you heard of SIDS? Probably not. Well, SIDS are the world’s Small Island Developing States. Guess, you get them now- yes, these are the island states in the Pacific Ocean, Maldives and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, and islands in the Caribbean.
You would have read or heard that these island states are very vulnerable to climate change, e.g., the Maldives might not exist as a country by next century if ice-caps melting continues and the resulting rise in sea levels might drown the entire country…a scary thought, no doubt…
Given their unique circumstances, the world’s 58 Small Island Developing States (SIDS)- 38 are member states of the United Nations- have belonged to a special group within the UN since 1992. So, in this blog let us analyze why these SIDS are so much prone to getting impacted by global warming and then look at some possible solutions to counter this impact.
Broadly, there are 3 structural vulnerabilities impacting the Small Island Developing States.
Vulnerability 1- Small populations (below 1 million)
Why should this impact?
Well, given their small populations, Small Island Developing States exports are concentrated in just a few activities, predominantly tourism. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, SIDS economies were hit much harder than most other countries. For example, in 2020, the GDP of Barbados, Fiji, and Maldives declined respectively by 17%, 19%, and 32% compared to say 3.5% in the US.
Vulnerability 2- Higher shipping costs
Unfortunately, given that SIDS is far away from the world’s main shipping routes they tend to incur higher ship-freight costs and must purchase in smaller volumes than larger economies can.
Vulnerability 3- Physical geography
This exposes SIDS to significantly greater environmental vulnerabilities along with special risks and food insecurity. For example, in a larger country, a natural disaster like a hurricane or drought would affect only one area directly, but in SIDS, it would impact the entire country…Hurricane Elsa hit the Caribbeans in 2021, and unfortunately, these are not one-off events.
Damages caused
Let us look at some of the damages caused to the SIDS over the past few years due to the above factors…
Rising sea levels have already led to the shrinking of land areas of several Pacific Island countries, and their populations might eventually need to migrate elsewhere. In the Maldives, fresh water has always been scarce, and groundwater sources are under continual threat from rising sea-levels and changing rainfall patterns. In the Caribbean, high-intensity hurricanes not only cause immediate death and destruction but also leave the states with huge recovery costs and high debt levels.
A possible solution
Before we propose a possible solution, we must bear in mind that the onus to help the SIDS is with the rich developed countries whose fossil-fuel usage and other environmental destruction activities have ultimately led to the current problem facing SIDS and the rest of the world. Hence, we expect these countries to contribute more capital to international Banks (e.g., Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, or Caribbean Development Bank), so they can in turn lend to the SIDS at preferential rates.
Another action that the developed countries could take would be to tax their fossil fuel industries to help cover the rising costs of their production and usage worldwide.
In summary
It would indeed be interesting to keenly observe how the SIDS fare in the coming years with the increasing and visible impacts of global warming that we all are witnessing, and also whether the rest of the world comes together to work towards a common end goal to make our planet safe and secure from these events.
