1 Introduction

It has been 10 years since the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR), a period in which disasters and risks have become increasingly prominent within scholarly, political, and other discourses. This is certainly true for islands, which many have come to see as a distinctive object of disaster risk policy and research (Shultz et al. 2016). Although the discourse of disaster and risk, together with the related discourses of vulnerability and resilience, is now one of the dominant rhetorical lenses through which islands are discussed worldwide, researchers in the multidisciplinary field of island studies have warned about the dangers of essentializing islands in these terms. Narratives of island riskiness and vulnerability can take on lives of their own, with cliches of disaster driving media and policy approaches, such as in discourses of “climate migrants” (Kelman 2018, 2020b). Technocratic approaches to dealing with risk and vulnerability can conceal or preclude other options, such as approaches building upon traditional knowledge (Walshe and Foley 2021; Nunn et al. 2024). The great diversity of islands may be overlooked, with certain stereotyped islands assumed to possess particular kinds of vulnerabilities overshadowing the needs of other kinds of island societies (Mycoo et al. 2022; Petzold et al. 2023). The sometimes perceived association between islands, disaster, and risk (depending on who is doing the perceiving) has furthermore prompted scholarly responses across a number of disciplines within the field, beyond disaster risk and climate change adaptation research itself (Perdikaris et al. 2022; Borazon et al. 2023; Gfoellner 2023; Matheson et al. 2024).

The present article directs an island studies perspective toward the SFDRR, discussing obstacles to the framework’s implementation in island contexts. We place focus on two interrelated sets of issues: (1) problematic aspects of the concepts of “development” and “Small Island Developing States” (SIDS) as they are applied to islands; and (2) international cooperation, militarism, and geopolitics.

Even among researchers who feel that island status matters for places, there is no consensus as to why or how it matters (Foley et al. 2023). For the purposes of this article, “island” is defined as a piece of land smaller than a continent that is surrounded by water (Ratter 2018). Although it is significant that most island states and subnational island jurisdictions (SNIJs) are in fact archipelagic (composed of multiple islands), we here use the term “island” to refer to both island and archipelagic polities. This definition encompasses everything from river islands to oceanic islands at a great distance from continental landmasses, from the Tropics to the Arctic and Antarctic, from low-lying atolls and barrier islands to mountainous islands, and from densely urbanized island cities to sparsely populated islands. Given the vast diversity of islands around the world, each of which is subject to different kinds and combinations of risks and is in possession of different arrays of resources and capacities, a comprehensive investigation of islands, disaster, and risk would be impossible. As discussed below, this emerged as an hinderance to conceptualizing what SFDRR implementation might mean for islands as a coherent category.

It is also important to note that there is no consensus on the meaning of “disaster.” It has been shown that “disasters” are understood and defined differently in different island contexts (Calandra 2020; Le Dé and Gaillard 2022). As this topic has been widely discussed elsewhere, it is not considered in detail here.

2 Development and Small Island Developing States

The concept of “development” is a key underlying principle of the SFDRR. The term “sustainable development” occurs 20 times in the text, and “development” is fundamental to the notion of “Small Island Developing States” (SIDS), which are mentioned seven times (UNISDR 2015). In fact, the SFDRR only mentions islands in the context of SIDS, a United Nations’ group of 39 states and 18 subnational associate members (Small Island Developing States 2024). In this section, we consider the nature of SIDS, how they became central to international discussions of disaster risk, and the problems that have arisen as a result.

It was not always like this. The influential Agenda 21 action plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro prioritizes not just SIDS but also the special needs and characteristics of “islands supporting small communities” and “small islands” more generally. Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992, pp. 17.123–17.126) casts small islands as “ecologically fragile and vulnerable. Their small size, limited resources, geographic dispersion and isolation from markets, place them at a disadvantage economically and prevent economies of scale.” Heightened impacts from disasters are also noted, and “Because small island development options are limited, there are special challenges to planning for and implementing sustainable development” (UNCED 1992, pp. 17.123–17.126). This treatment of island economic, planning, and administrative challenges dovetails with much contemporary and more recent scholarship that sees islands as being associated with certain economic, administrative, and social characteristics independent of “developing” or “developed” status (Baker 1992; Briguglio 1995; Armstrong and Read 2021), though research within island studies has increasingly been at pains to note the economic and administrative opportunities associated with island status (Baldacchino and Milne 2000; Baldacchino 2010; Grydehøj 2018).

Small Island Developing States was first officially conceptualized at the UNCED in 1992 and held an inaugural meeting at the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States in Barbados in 1994. Small Island Developing States is self-selecting and is not based on a coherent set of criteria for inclusion: SIDS currently includes several states that are not primarily island-based (Guinea-Bissau, Guyana) and a number of states and SNIJs with very high per capita GDP (for example, Bermuda, Singapore). Small Island Developing States also consists of states and SNIJs with vastly different sizes, from Papua New Guinea’s population of 11,781,599 and land area of 462,840 km2 (National Statistical Office 2021) to Niue’s population of 1,681 and land area of 261 km2 (Statistics Niue 2023). Furthermore, the composition of the SIDS group changes over time. Hong Kong and Macao (at that point, British and Portuguese colonies respectively), both of which have been researched within island studies (Sheng et al. 2017; Kwong and Wong 2020; Lau et al. 2022), were represented at the 1994 SIDS conference but have ceased involvement since becoming special administrative regions of China. The initial list of SIDS included Cyprus, Malta, and Bahrain (UNEP 2004), none of which are currently listed as members of the group (UN-OHRLLS 2024b), with the latter of these countries having ceased to be an “official” SIDS only within the past few years.

These changes in membership affect the manner in which the SIDS group presents the idea of what it means to be a SIDS. In 2004, SIDS were divided into the Caribbean, East African, South Asian, South Pacific, and Mediterranean regions (UNEP 2004); today, this regionalization takes the form of the Caribbean; the Pacific; and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea (AIS) (UN-OHRLLS 2024a). Changes in SIDS membership are not always publicly announced or explained, and the process by which a polity becomes, remains, or ceases to be a SIDS is far from transparent. The complexity yet importance of defining SIDS has been further explored by the United Nations itself (UNCTAD 2022).

Despite this definitional instability and opacity, the SIDS group’s consolidation as a distinct organization within the United Nations and its increasing discursive ownership over island issues on the international stage have contributed to a narrowing of international policy attention. The more inclusive island scope of Agenda 21 was dropped in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 (World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction 2005) and the subsequent SFDRR, which discuss islands exclusively as SIDS. This narrowing of focus is concerning. As the scholarly literature within island studies has consistently shown, for all that “developmental” differences may exist between different island states and territories, there are significant shared experiences and dynamics at play in island polities characterized by small populations, small land areas, and/or relative isolation from/remoteness to a mainland. Some of these experiences and dynamics are also shared with islands that are not small and remote.

Islands probably do not tend to possess greater absolute vulnerability to disaster than many other polities, but some small islands possess exceptional proportional vulnerability (Kelman 2020b): That is, relatively limited land areas and population sizes may cause relatively large proportions of a territory or population to be impacted by a disaster. Issues connected with relative remoteness and inaccessibility in times of disaster may also affect both “developed” and “developing” island societies, both island states and SNIJs, and islands outside whatever regionalization scheme SIDS happens to be using at the time. For Petzold and Ratter (2019, p. 3), “A generalisation of islands under SIDS and the lack of attention to other island territories risks a faulty understanding of island-specific factors of vulnerability and potentials for adaptation.” For example, disasters in “developed” Arctic economies—such as disasters linked to a tsunami in Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland (Matti et al. 2023), avalanches in Svalbard (Duda et al. 2020), and volcanic eruptions in Iceland (Jonassen 2024)—are outside both the geographical scope and developmental scope of SIDS yet can be just as impactful for those living in remote affected areas.

The SIDS group has in some respects been highly effective at making its voice heard in securitized climate diplomacy, insisting for instance on more multifaceted approaches to “existential” climate change threats (Rasheed 2023). However, the enhanced voice that comes from coordinated diplomatic activity by SIDS has also encouraged harmful essentializations of islands and the disaster risks that confront them. Narratives of island disappearance and wholesale population displacement can prove both politically convenient and disempowering for islanders in the long term, as attributions of vulnerability exist in tension with the exercising of political agency (Kelman 2018). Even the use of SIDS-centric climate change discourses to harness aid flows can encourage strategies of “conspicuous sustainability” (Grydehøj and Kelman 2020) and adaptation to aid-givers’ norms (Ruehr 2022) that entrench negative dependencies and vulnerabilities.

The direction in which risk flows within these discourses is not merely incidental. Others have highlighted how continued colonial hierarchies and governmentalities are embedded within the United Nations’ rhetorics of sustainable development and climate change solutionism (Telleria 2018; Sultana 2022). Disasters cannot be separated from their colonial contexts (Ferdinand 2021).

Dominant states commonly use discourses of development and risk, together with false binaries of absolute dependence and independence, to project power over weaker states and territories, including islands and particularly current or former colonies (Grydehøj 2020). The conflation of disaster risk with abiding ideas of island underdevelopment contributes to the racialization of vulnerability, discourses of helplessness, and processes of marginalization. This is especially the case for many SNIJs, which continue to simultaneously be at the diplomatic periphery and often far down the list of national-level disaster risk reduction priorities. Ferdinand (2018, p. 127), writing of the French overseas territories, challenged the dominance of state perspectives in climate change policy and diplomacy: “The geographical remoteness and the specific vulnerabilities only tell part of the story, a story in which the Outre-mer can only play the role of peripheral, silent, and ahistorical victims.” If islands as entities subject to disaster risk are seen through the lens of SIDS (which are categorically understood as requiring further “development”), then individual island societies will continue finding themselves trapped between being conceptualized either as inescapably powerless and wholly dependent or as beyond the need for assistance and policy support.

Although the SFDRR asserts that “disasters continue to undermine efforts to achieve sustainable development” (UNISDR 2015, p. 5), this causality is challenged by scholarship that instead views poor policies and unsustainable development as conducive of disasters (Kelman 2020a; Mosneaga 2022). The SFDRR also begs the question of what it means to “achieve” sustainable development. The SFDRR and the United Nations’ sustainability work more generally seem to conceptualize sustainable development as a continual, unending process undertaken by both “developing” and “developed” states. How, then, can we understand the SFDRR’s discourse of SIDS and “developing countries” (mentioned 27 times)?

Within certain approaches to island studies, wealthy and powerful, large and continental countries are seen as having achieved their state of development (or overdevelopment) through genocide, ecocide, colonialism, and other forms of exploitation, while the processes of “development” and “security” are perceived as mechanisms for controlling and exploiting faraway islands (Ginoza et al. 2020; Ferdinand 2021; Grydehøj et al. 2021). Critiques of Eurocentric developmentalism, accompanied by reflective criticism of the abiding Eurocentricism of the critiques themselves and of applying critical theory to the field of practice (Grosfoguel 2000; Marwah 2019; Nadarajah 2023; Temin 2023), are not limited to island studies. From these perspectives, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction are indeed tasks for all societies but perhaps especially for those that have hitherto developed in the most harmful and damaging directions—none of which are SIDS.

These criticisms also apply to the SFDRR’s aims for “North-South cooperation, complemented by South-South and triangular cooperation” (UNISDR 2015, p. 23). The SFDRR leaves the terms “North” and “South” undefined. North-South binaries further calcify understandings of certain parts of the world as being essentially and irrevocably categorized as requiring externally initiated transformation and reform. The concepts have been shown to often lack practical saliency in the policy-making realm (Haug 2021). If North and South are seen as static categories, with no movement between them (Sud and Sánchez‐Ancochea 2022), and the South is associated with underdevelopment relative to the North, does this not imply the inevitable economic and political superiority of one category over the other?

3 International Cooperation, Militarism, and Geopolitics

Prominent within the SFDRR is the idea of international cooperation to reduce disaster risk. In its broadest formulation, the SFDRR’s (UNISDR 2015, p. 7) key goal:

requires the enhancement of the implementation capacity and capability of developing countries, in particular the least developed countries, Small Island Developing States, landlocked developing countries and African countries, as well as middle-income countries facing specific challenges, including the mobilization of support through international cooperation for the provision of means of implementation in accordance with their national priorities.

Despite these aims, the past decade has seen a retreat from global international cooperation on key issues, with disaster risk being among them.

One immediate issue is that, as noted above, the SFDRR’s elision of SIDS and islands sometimes ends up overlooking SNIJs, even though 18 SNIJs are currently associate members of the SIDS group. Subnational island jurisdictions, particularly those that have been historically colonized, often find themselves awkwardly positioned when it comes to asserting their own special needs and priorities. France’s overseas territories are caught in a “political ‘in between’” in climate change adaptation and disaster risk planning, simultaneously excluded from intergovernmental schemes and neglected by national authorities (Ferdinand 2018, p. 125). The Danish government has used Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland as a victim and an icon of climate change vulnerability, yet in formal international forums and negotiations, this Indigenous-majority SNIJ often lacks the ability to speak for itself (Westerling and Klöck 2023). After Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was devastated in 2017 during Hurricane Maria, a disaster claimed to be linked to climate change, support from the US government was slow and insufficient (Espinosa 2020), and SNIJ status combined with longstanding inequities and environmental injustices linked to colonialism frustrated recovery efforts (García-López 2018; Lloréns 2018).

This issue is compounded by the manner in which SIDS and SNIJs are drawn into geographies of geopolitical tension. Particularly but not exclusively in island societies with histories of colonization, disaster risk is often impossible to disentangle from processes of militarization. In Oceania and the Indian Ocean, it is common for both island states and SNIJs to be conceptualized from the outside in terms of Great Power competition and spheres of influence, ignoring local approaches and priorities (Davis et al. 2020; McDougall and Taneja 2020). Neither the Hyogo Framework for Action nor the SFDRR addresses military hazards, yet the global or regional powers’ siting of overseas military bases in Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific island states and SNIJs both directly and indirectly increases certain disaster risks. While some argue that an overseas military presence makes islands safer, others argue that this makes islands prime targets for attack in the event of war (Grydehøj et al. 2021).

Military presences and expansions of militarized space may degrade or replace terrestrial and marine environments that provide important biological, economic, spatial, and cultural resources for island populations. This could heighten vulnerability in the event of disaster, including disasters linked to natural hazards. The risk of environmental destruction has been at the heart of anti-militarization protests in Guåhan/Guam, Okinawa, and Vieques in the past two decades (Marler and Moore 2011; Chibana 2013; Na’puti and Bevacqua 2015; Ramos-Gutiérrez and Pagán 2023). Natural and military hazards can also combine to increase disaster risk: Hazardous materials (including radioactive waste) that have been deposited or abandoned in island military sites may be at increased risk of contaminating the island environment due to sea level rise, increased storm strength, ice melting, or other processes associated with climate change (for example, in Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland and the Marshall Islands) (Gerrard 2015; Colgan 2018).

The apparent willingness to overlook disaster risks associated with overseas military activity suggests a devaluing of islanders’ lives and is frequently an extension of longstanding colonial relationships (Kim 2022). It may be seen in light of a “climate coloniality” in which “Eurocentric hegemony, neocolonialism, racial capitalism, uneven consumption, and military domination are co-constitutive of climate impacts experienced by variously racialized populations who are disproportionately made vulnerable and disposable” (Sultana 2022, p. 4). Na’puti (2022) criticized “disaster militarism” in Oceania, where the US military uses rhetoric of its purported role as “first responder” in the event of disasters to construct ignorance surrounding environmental destruction occasioned by the military. Similar problems exist elsewhere, for example in Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland, in which search-and-rescue and disaster response operations promote the idea of the Danish military as the SNIJ’s protector, despite the disasters and risks associated with the military presence in these islands, as exemplified by radioactive contamination that resulted from the 1968 B-52 crash near Thule Air Base, the secret holding of nuclear weapons on the island, and the hazardous waste stored beneath the ice at Camp Century (Nielsen 2021).

Beyond risks directly linked to military activities, geopolitical tensions and Great Power games also lead to the politicization of accepting of aid, infrastructure construction, technical assistance, knowledge sharing, and other forms of support. Accepting support has come to be viewed as choosing sides. In Oceania in particular, decision makers in island states and SNIJs are well aware that their bilateral or multilateral cooperation, even on issues such as climate change adaptation, will be framed by others as embracing or rejecting particular global or regional powers (Wesley-Smith and Finin 2024). All kinds of activities by Chinese state and private actors in the region are often presented as illegitimate and/or as threats to Australia’s or the United States’ implicit or explicit spheres of influence, taking focus off the needs and desires of island governments (Grydehøj et al. 2021; Maggio 2023; Mausio 2023; Chan 2024). More generally, global and regional powers are directly incorporating climate change adaptation and wider development aid into their strategic competition planning, indicating a world in which disaster risk is viewed as a game involving deserving winners and losers. Additional complications arise from transboundary effects in contexts of limited regional and international cooperation. State and private actors may sometimes make decisions with implications for disaster risk without adequately engaging with or considering the needs of populations in affected island territories. This has arguably occurred in the case of radioactive discharge from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan (Johansen et al. 2015; Li et al. 2023) and is evident in extractive industries such as sand mining (Miller 2022; Park 2024).

4 Conclusion

This article has directed an island studies perspective toward the SFDRR, discussing obstacles to the framework’s implementation in island contexts. In international scholarship and policy discussions, islands have come to be presented as icons of risk. This is evident in the SFDRR. In this article, we focused on the interrelated issues of (1) problematic aspects of the concepts of “development” and “Small Island Developing States” (SIDS) as they are applied to islands and (2) international cooperation, militarism, and geopolitics.

These obstacles have, perhaps, as much to do with the realities of world politics and the workings of the United Nations as they do with the hopes and beliefs of those who have drafted the SFDRR’s text. It is unsurprising that the United Nations, which is after all a body comprised of sovereign states, takes a sovereign state perspective and is less attentive to the issues affecting SNIJs as such. It is likewise unsurprising that the SFDRR, in seeking to encourage responsible actions from global and regional powers, presents a vision of North-South and South-South cooperation that is often difficult to discern in practice, and not just in the context of disaster risk reduction.

The question arises as to what relevance the SFDRR has for island societies. The SFDRR and other United Nations disaster risk frameworks and initiatives do have the ability to draw attention to and amplify the voices of some states and territories that otherwise risk being neglected in conversations among more powerful international actors (Shultz et al. 2016). This attention can benefit island societies in the short, medium, and long terms, for example by helping to direct aid flows to island states; by serving as tools that SNIJs can use to influence national policy; and by facilitating the development of policies, technologies, and practices that reduce disaster risk in a general sense, including in island societies.

The danger is that the kinds of rhetoric that inform the SFDRR come to limit island societies’ scopes for action or visions of what is possible to achieve. Essentialized and colonially inflected approaches to islands may conceal research gaps and misplaced priorities (Petzold et al. 2023). Small Island Developing States may benefit from the higher profile the SFDRR grants them while also finding themselves trapped in the boxes in which the SFDRR places them (Grydehøj and Kelman 2020). The SFDRR and its developmentalism may let off the hook those states with the greatest ability and responsibility, emphasizing forms of collective action that seem ever-less likely to succeed in an increasingly divided world. The SFDRR may provide cover for the kind of “disaster militarism” (Na’puti 2022) and support in the service of strategic competition that puts island lives at risk and makes island well-being conditional upon individual countries’ geopolitical priorities.

There can be no catch-all solution to disaster risk when it comes to islands. We can, however, demand greater attention to the needs of island societies. This includes more appreciation of the fact that island societies have a right to trade with, make agreements with, and learn from a diverse range of partners: An island’s disaster risk should not be conditional upon its willingness to favor this or that global or regional power.