The accelerated climate and ecosystem changes which all countries are currently faced with, tends to be more intense and rapidly felt by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) because of their small scale, geographic isolation, fragile ecosystems and high levels of endemism, extreme vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards, remoteness from international markets, reliance on tourism, trade and remittances, susceptibility to global markets fluctuations, undiversified economies, limited private sector and high debt-to-GDP ratio. 

These unique structural and endogenous development challenges are undermining SIDS’ limited financial, technical and human resource capacities to achieve the 2030 agenda and effectively implement the three Rio Conventions. These barriers require urgent attention and, as a result, SIDS have attracted funding towards ecosystem restoration over recent years, making them ideal candidates to become World Restoration Flagships for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). This Flagship focuses on three SIDS across the three official regions: Saint Lucia (Caribbean), Comoros (AIS) and Vanuatu (Pacific). While sharing unique SIDS features and restoration/conservation challenges, these three SIDS countries have also shown key characteristics that will be leveraged through the Flagship: (i) strong level of political will and tangible commitments towards blue economy transition at national level, (ii) learning, replicability and scalability potential and (iii) global and regional outreach potential. 

Highlighted activities

There have been a significant number of ecosystem restoration and conservation initiatives across the three SIDS regions, but most of these initiatives are faced with recurrent challenges that are undermining successful upscaling and replication of efforts. The SIDS Restoration Flagship will particularly focus on three recurrent common barriers and gaps:  

a) Poor Foundational Science: Data gathering in coastal and marine environments is difficult and expensive leading to data and knowledge gaps in ocean science. The science-policy interface is weak leading to poor evidence-based decision-making, which is compounded by a lack of use of data-oriented decision-support tools;  

b) Limited Financing: Marine and coastal restoration and conservation is underfunded at multiple scales. Globally, Sustainable Development Goal 14 is the least funded of the UN SDGs. Private sector investment for blue growth within SIDS is limited. For non-LDC SIDS, there is limited access to concessional financing; and  

c) Lack of Integration: Strategic actions needed to successfully upscale restoration and conservation initiatives are lacking. There is weak, and in some instances, no, integration, peer-learning and coordination across sectors, actors and scales, leading to an ineffective ridge-to-reef and seascape approaches. 

Movie: UNEP video  

Leading and partner organizations