![]() ![]() Water shortages exacerbated by climate change are affecting the Maldives' low-lying islands. He added that their debts are “creating impossible financial problems for their ability to recover from the crisis.” “Their revenues have virtually evaporated with the end of tourism, due to lockdowns, trade impediments, the fall in commodity prices, and supply chain disruptions”, warned Munir Akram, the president of the UN Economic and Social Council in April. The worldwide crisis has severely curtailed international travel, making it much harder for them to repay debts. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the economic situation of many island states, which are heavily dependent on tourism. They are often vulnerable to increasingly extreme weather events, such as the devastating cyclones that have hit the Caribbean in recent years, and because of their limited resources, they find it hard to allocate funds to sustainable development programmes that could help them to cope better,for example, constructing more robust buildings that could withstand heavy storms. The 38 member states and 22 associate members that the UN has designated as Small Island Developing States or SIDS are caught in a cruel paradox: they are collectively responsible for less than one per cent of global carbon emissions, but they are suffering severely from the effects of climate change, to the extent that they could become uninhabitable.Īlthough they have a small landmass, many of these countries are large ocean states, with marine resources and biodiversity that are highly exposed to the warming of the oceans. ![]()
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