Socio-ecological resilience in small island developing states through a socio- ecological islandscape framework and resilience capacity index

Abstract

It can be argued that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have unique characteristics, i.e. “islandness” that influence the social and environmental aspects of a socio-ecological system. Considering “islandness” as a fundamental element that substantially influences socio-ecological systems on islands, socio-ecological systems, therefore, materialise as socio-ecological islandscapes. The proposed socioecological islandscape approach considers these “islandness” factors and argues that these are required for an augmented assessment of socio-ecological systems on SIDS, allowing for more in-depth analysis of sustainability from a landscape outlook. An island-focused outlook acknowledges that islands are distinctive and are not just microcosms for a global perspective. The study makes use of Bayesian Belief Networks to provide empirical evidence of the influence of “islandness” on the socioecological systems of SIDS, highlighting the effects of island size as well as the influence of SIDS being an archipelago. The empirical evidence from the BBNs supports the development of the socio-ecological islandscape framework, while the development of a Socio-Ecological Islandscape Resilience Capacity Index (SEIRCI) operationalises the framework to illustrate the benefits of taking a socio-ecological islandscape perspective. The study highlights the need for a robust index development process, through analysing a variety of theoretical frameworks and weighting methodologies (PCA, entropy and equal weighting). The results of the SEIRCI further illustrate the effects of “islandness”, provide further justification of the special designation status of SIDS and identify the trends within the socio-ecological islandscape-resilience nexus.