Small Island Developing States

Session of special interest:

D1 – “Front-Line Islands and Cities: building resilient island communities“ hosted by ICLEI Oceania

Islands are at the front-line of climate change

Their towns and cities are growing rapidly, experiencing many of the development pressures of other larger cities.  This is compounded by their extreme vulnerability to climate change.  Island cities are also particularly significant as they are at the interface of human settlements and healthy oceans.  At COP23 in Bonn last November the Front-Line Cities and Islands initiative was launched, attracting great interest.  Front-Line aims to connect island cities and communities, within their own regions and with cities from other parts of the world, to form strategic and learning partnerships and to assist islands to fast-track sustainable urban development.

This session aims to give the early adopters of the Front-Line initiative an opportunity to present some of their initial experience and thinking about how to optimize city – island exchange, the most crucial issues confronting them, and to encourage others to join the movement. It also explores two “entry points” to island resilience – Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) as these are being applied in the South-West Pacific.