Could climate change destroy islands — home to 10 percent of the world’s population and more endangered, threatened and rare species than anywhere else on Earth?

Read below as Susi Olmsted, a senior policy advisor for The Nature Conservancy and the acting coordinator for the Global Island Partnership, talks about why climate change is menacing island life — and how The Nature Conservancy is working to build resilience into these unique places.

Nature.org: How is climate change expected to impact islands?

Susi Olmsted: We’re past the point of waiting for climate change to impact islands — it’s already happening.

For instance, sea-level rise — a major impact of climate change — is already threatening vital infrastructure, settlements and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities around the world.

The new president of the Maldives, an island country in the Indian Ocean, just announced that he is looking to buy land elsewhere to ensure a future home for his people in the case that rising oceans caused by climate change engulf the island.

But sea-level rise is not the only way that climate change will impact islands:

• Island freshwater supplies can be affected by saltwater intrusion — the movement of saltwater into freshwater when sea levels equalize with freshwater aqueducts — and precipitation changes that can leave island inhabitants without a dependable source of fresh water.
• Food security is at risk from rising sea water temperatures that severely affect the health of coral reefs and other marine ecosystems that sustain fisheries. At the same time, a decline in the fresh water supply and saltwater intrusion impact agriculture.
• Tourism — the major contributor to revenues and employment in many small islands — will be affected as sea-level rise, warming seas and extreme weather events accelerate coastal erosion, damage infrastructures, and cause coral reef degradation and bleaching.
   

Nature.org: Most islands are small compared to nearby mainlands, and seem so far away from those who don’t live on or near them. Do they and their resources really matter?

Susi Olmsted: We often associate the idea of islands with tiny tropical paradises, but there are also large and important island countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia and Madagascar. In fact, islands are extremely important to the world community as a whole:

• More than 650 million people (10 percent of the world’s population) live on some 175,000 islands around the globe.
• Islands occupy just one-sixth of the Earth’s surface, but contain more endangered, rare and threatened species than anywhere else in the world.
• Islands act as the "canaries in the coal mine" for many major global threats, demonstrating the impacts of climate change and invasive species far before they are visible on larger land masses.
• The importance of island tourism is astonishing, with an estimated 150-200 million people traveling to islands for leisure tourism every year.  

But all of that is just numbers. The real issue is a moral one: Most of the island inhabitants around the world — whether in North America, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or the Pacific — are a part of unique cultures and have been living on their island homes for thousands of years.

And though they emit only a fraction of the global carbon emissions, island inhabitants will have to physically move themselves from their homes — becoming “environmental refugees” — if the pace of climate change does not slow down.
 

Nature.org: Can island nations adapt to climate change?

Susi Olmsted: Yes — but only with lots of help.

The current climate changes are unprecedented, occurring at a pace faster than ever before.  The conservation community needs to recognize and support efforts that will reduce the unavoidable effects of climate change on people and nature.

For example, we need to protect reef and mangrove ecosystems that help coastal areas withstand increased storm surges and the consequences of sea-level rise. These efforts, called adaptation, focus on maintaining healthy natural resources and can help islands adapt to increased impacts of climate change in a cost-effective and sustainable way.

But adaptation will come at a cost. Support from the international community will be needed, and approaches like ecosystem-based adaptation — that strengthen the resilience of communities and the natural systems upon which they depend — will need to be included in any financing mechanisms as part of the new international climate framework.
 

Nature.org: Islands are tiny. How can they possibly influence the likes of the United States or China?

Susi Olmsted: Yes, some are tiny. But they are many. And in climate negotiations, the vote of one island nation like the Seychelles or Palau counts the same as the vote of a large superpower.

For this reason, and because of the way climate changes affects them, islands have worked together to create a strong voice in the negotiations and have been quite influential, like the UN’s Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) and the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS).  
 

Nature.org: How is the Conservancy helping?

Susi Olmsted: The Nature Conservancy has been working on islands for many years — from California's Santa Cruz Island to Martha's Vineyard, from islands in the Caribbean to those in the Pacific.

The Conservancy is also among the main supporters of the Global Island Partnership (GLISPA). Since 2006, the Conservancy has helped revolutionize island and global conservation by working with governments and partners to establish the Micronesia Challenge — a pledge from the Micronesian countries to protect between 20 percent and 30 percent of their land and near-shore marine habitats by 2020 — as well as the Caribbean Challenge and the Coral Triangle Initiative.  

From this effort and from our ongoing participation in GLISPA, the Conservancy's programs on islands are closely connected with governments. We are helping these governments understand how commitments to conservation will help strengthen the resilience of their communities and natural systems to climate change.  

The Conservancy is also an observer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)  in Poznan, Poland where we are using our global reach to promote climate change adaptation strategies and to educate others on their promising success in combating the effects of climate change.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Mark Godfrey (Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea); Photo © Photographer/Org (Susi Olmsted).