As a reminder, the coastal protection services delivered by the reef-island system include incoming wave energy attenuation and sediment supply to the coast. The latter is driven by reef productivity (i.e. reef health), reef-to-shore sediment transport (controlled by wave energy and the maintenance of clear sediment transport pathways), and the maintenance of accommodation space for sediment deposition at the coast. Despite recent attempts to evaluate the coastal protection service delivered by reefs (e.g. Ferrario et al., 2014; Quataert et al., 2015), such a task remains challenging, due not only to the complexity and variety of this ecosystem (Moberg & Folke, 1999; Elliff & Silva, 2017), but also to the great amount of work required if it was to be conducted island by island on a national scale. Yet, as nearby islands may exhibit highly contrasting situations, in regard not only to the exposure of human assets (i.e., people, infrastructures, and buildings), but also to shoreline and environmental change (Duvat, Magnan, Wise, et al., 2017; Duvat, 2019), the island scale appears to be a very critical one.

To overcome these constraints, we designed a simple methodology allowing us to assess the degree of undermining of the coastal protection services provided by the reef-island system by direct, i.e. local, human disturbances. This methodology assesses the functionality of this system, i.e. the capacity to naturally respond and adapt to ocean-climate related pressures of its two major components, namely the coastal sedimentary system (extending from the base of the beach to the landward limit of active coastal features) and the reef ecosystem (extending seaward from the base of the beach to the atoll outer slopes). This assessment is based on photointerpretation, using the satellite images that were used to assess island area change. The adaptive capacity of the coastal sedimentary system was assessed based on a single variable, namely shoreline type, given that (*i*) natural shoreline is required for the maintenance of accommodation space for sediment deposition to occur at the coast (McLean & Kench, 2015; Duvat, Salvat, & Salmon, 2017), and (*ii*) shoreline hardening increases storm wave–induced sediment loss (Duvat et al., 2019; Pillet et al., 2019), which contributes to beach loss and thereby to the annihilation of the wave attenuation service provided by the beach. We classified shoreline type into five categories, i.e. entirely natural (100%; S1 in Panel A in Figure 1), predominantly natural (i.e. > 50% of shoreline length; S2), half-natural half-modified (between 45 and 50% of natural and the same proportion of modified shoreline; S3), predominantly fixed (i.e. > 50% of fixed shoreline; S4), and entirely fixed (100%; S5). The coastal protection service delivered by the coastal sedimentary system decreases from S1 to S5, as the degree of undermining of this service by human disturbances increases.

In addition, the functionality and adaptive capacity of the reef ecosystem was assessed by evaluating the extent of direct human pressures that (*i*) alter reef productivity and (*ii*) obstruct reef-to-shore sediment transport, including harbours, channel dredging across reef flat, erection of longitudinal marine protection structures (i.e. breakwaters), and sediment dredging from reef flat. Considering that the functionality of the reef ecosystem is inversely proportional to the extent of human disturbances, we distinguished three levels of undermining of the coastal protection service delivered by the reef ecosystem, from 'non-existent to limited' (R1 in Figure 1) to 'high to very high' (R3 in Figure 1 ).

Finally, the degree of undermining of the coastal protection services delivered by the reef-island system as a whole was obtained by aggregating these two indicators (S + R in Figure 1). This allowed distinguishing five island types, from *functional and potentially able to naturally adapt* (Type 1, i.e. T1 in Figure 1) to *non-functional and unable to naturally adapt* (Type 5, i.e. T5 in Figure 1). These five types correspond to various degrees of undermining of the coastal protection services delivered by the reef-island system: no undermining (Type 1), limited undermining (Type 2), moderate undermining (Type 3), high undermining (Type 4), and very high undermining (Type 5). Figure 2 provides real-world examples of these five types, using examples from the Maldives Islands. T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 correspond to the five island types illustrated in Figure 1.

**Figure 1: Methodology used to assess the degree of undermining of the coastal protection services (CPS) provided by the reef-island system by local human disturbances in atoll environments**

**Figure 2: Illustrative example of the five island types highlighting the contrasting degree of undermining of the coastal protection services (CPS) provided by the reef-island system by human activities in the Maldives (source: Duvat & Magnan, 2019).**

**A: Maafinolhu Island, Ihavandhippolhu Atoll, illustrates the situation of an undisturbed island (Type 1). B: Kudabados Island, North Kaafu Atoll, shows the situation of an island exhibiting limited undermining of the CPS by human activities (Type 2). C: Hirimaradhoo, Haa Alifu-Noonu Atoll, shows a significant undermining of the CPS, especially on its eastern coast (Type 3). D: Rasdhoo Island, Rasdhoo Atoll, illustrates a substantial undermining of CPS (Type 4), as a result of extensive shoreline modification and armouring, reef degradation, and sediment transport obstruction, due to the establishment of a harbour on its northern side and to the erection of breakwaters on its eastern side. Panels E (Fieeali Island, Faafu Atoll) and F (Muli Island, Meemu Atoll) show a very substantial undermining of CPS (Type 5), as a result of island artificial expansion, still in operation on F,**  **extensive shoreline armouring, and extensive reef flat mechanical destruction due to harbour establishment, boat channel, and sediment dredging.**

### 3.2 Synthetic results

### *Change in island size*

The results indicate that over the past decade (i.e. between 2004–06 and 2014–16), none of the 107 study inhabited islands underwent a reduction in size. Importantly, while 41.1% of them (i.e. 44 islands) remained stable in area, 58.9% (i.e. 63) increased in size. The latter underwent high rates of expansion, with respectively 47.6%, 27.0%, and 25.4% of these 'growing islands' exhibiting growth rates ranging from 3 to 10%, 10 to 25%, and more than 25% (Table 2). Although the period of analysis considered here is shorter than the one considered in abovementioned shoreline change studies (i.e. decadal vs. multi-decadal), the results confirm that the majority of inhabited islands, far from undergoing a reduction in land area, expanded, and in this case very rapidly. The highest rates (> 10%) were however due to land reclamation, which was generally carried out for urbanisation or infrastructure construction purposes, and with consequences on the remaining potential for NBS.

**Table 2: Change in inhabited island land area in the Maldives between 2004-06 and 2014-16**

### *Human-driven undermining of the coastal protection services of the reef-island system*

The results (Figure 3) show that Maldivian inhabited islands generally fall within types 3 to 5, therefore exhibiting a moderate to very high level of undermining of the coastal protection services provided by the reef-island system by direct human disturbances. In 2014–16, 73 islands (68.2%) exhibited a moderate human-induced undermining (T3) of these services, while respectively 8 (7.5%) and 23 (21.5%) islands experienced a high (T4) and very high (T5) level of undermining (Figure 3, Panel A). Of note, these proportions were much lower in 2004–06 (72 islands falling within T3 to T5) compared to 2014–16 (103 islands). Importantly, only 7 islands (compared to 23 in 2014–16) belonged to T5 in 2004–06 (Figure 3, Panel A).

**Figure 3: Human-induced undermining (HIU) of the coastal protection services (CPS) delivered by the reef-island system on Maldivian inhabited islands over the past decade. Panel A shows changes in island types (T1 to T5) between 2004–06 and 2014–16. See Figures 1 and 2 for the description of island types. Panel B summarises the results.**

These results show a marked increase in human-induced undermining of the coastal protection services delivered by the reef-island system in only one decade (Figure 3, Panel B). They highlight that almost all inhabited islands currently exhibit a moderate to very high level of human-induced degradation of the coastal protection services delivered by the reef-island system to island communities. However, three contrasting situations can be distinguished: (*i*) T3 islands, representing 68.2% of inhabited islands, experience a partial degradation of these services, mainly due to the weakening of the functions of the reef ecosystem. On these islands, the reef ecosystem still partly fulfils its functions, and because the shoreline is predominantly natural, it is still able to adjust to ocean-climate related pressures. As a result, the coastal protection services are still functional along most of the

shoreline of these islands, with the exception of hardened shoreline sections and harbour areas exhibiting disrupted sediment production, transport, and deposition patterns. In contrast, T4 and T5 islands exhibit highly degraded coastal protection services. (*ii*) T4 islands (7.5%) experience extended reef flat degradation and shoreline hardening or destabilisation. As a result, along most of the shoreline of these islands, these coastal protection services are no longer delivered by the reef-island system. (*iii*) Last, on T5 islands (20.6%), the coastal protection services have been totally undermined by local human disturbances. On these islands, the reef ecosystem has been extensively damaged by the reclamation of the reef flat, and the shoreline is nearly entirely to entirely fixed, depending on cases. Such results suggest first, that the potential for NBS will be highly variable depending on the island type considered, and second, that this potential may rapidly decrease over time, especially on islands exhibiting high human disturbances. These findings advocate for the design of island-specific (i.e. based on island types) adaptation pathways taking into account change in island capacity to adapt.

### **4 NBS as triggers for atoll adaptation pathways**

The emerging 'adaptation pathway' approach refers to long-term adaptation strategies based upon decision cycles that, over time, sequence a set of possible actions based on alternative external, uncertain developments (Haasnoot, Kwakkel, Walker, & ter Maat, 2013; Barnett et al., 2014; Wise et al., 2014). Adaptation pathways are fundamentally designed to cope with multiple-source uncertainty (climate change and socio-economic trends, emergence of tipping points, etc.) and hence to enhance systems' flexibility (Brown, Nicholls, & Woodroffe, 2014; O'Brien et al., 2012; Noble et al., 2014). In addition, their context-specific nature is widely recognised. To date, applications of the adaptation pathway approach to atoll systems have been little explored. Here, based on our own expertise, we propose a fivepillar pathway (Magnan, 2018). Each of the pillars as well as the role of NBS in their implementation are described in a separate sub-section. Based on these developments, the final sub-section proposes a synthesis of the role of NBS in supporting such an atoll adaptation pathway.

### 4.1 A generic adaptation pathway for atoll contexts

The proposed five-pillar adaptation pathway framework for atolls considers multiple temporal scales and sea-level rise scenarios (Figure 4). While the first three pillars – (*i*) increase ecosystem resilience, (*ii*) minimise the risk of maladaptation, (*iii*) facilitate internal relocation – deal with short-to-medium-term strategies with expected long-term benefits, the two last ones – (*iv*) island fortification associated with ground elevation, and (*v*) permanent international migration – address medi-

resources. (*i.b*) and (*ii.b*) represent the needed long-lasting efforts to maintain safe environmental and living conditions, for example to continue benefiting from some ecosystem services such as coastal protection and food supply, and to limit anthropogenic contribution to environmental problems. (*iii.a*) captures the preparation phase of an internal relocation plan considering not only the relocation of people to safer places within the same island or in neighbouring ones, but also options to unclog capital areas through regional development in outer islands, as done in the Maldives, for example. (*iii.b*) describes the implementation phase of the internal relocation plan, including long-lasting monitoring and adjustment efforts. (*iv.a*) represents the maintenance of the protected shoreline length as it is today or as planned in the already ongoing projects, without any new major protection works being undertaken. (*iv.b*) captures the development of ground elevation works preferably on uninhabited islands and/or artificial islands, together with the elaboration of a resettlement plan for urban and rural populations at risk, suggesting links to be made with (*iii.a*) and (*iii.b*). (*v.a*) represents the elaboration of an international migration plan in contemplation of a possible high-end sea-level rise scenario. In accordance with the work undertaken by the international community on the definition of legal bases for international migration, such a plan must address multiple dimensions, from the issues related to the departure of people (e.g., education programmes, funding securing, etc.) to the hosting conditions in the country of destination (e.g. bi- or multi-lateral national agreements, access to living conditions comparable to the ones lost, maintenance of cultural and social values, etc.). Finally, *(v.b*) describes the implementation of the international migration back-up plan.

### 4.2 Increase ecosystem resilience

Because the reef ecosystem functions (i.e. wave energy dissipation and sediment supply to islands) are indispensable to atoll habitability and are increasingly undermined by both human activities and ocean changes (sea-level rise, ocean warming and acidification), one first unavoidable way to enhance adaptation pathways in atolls consists in maintaining or restoring ecosystem resilience. This pillar applies to the reef-island system as a whole, including the reef ecosystem, reef-derived beach, beach-dune system and its vegetation, and intertidal mangroves. It is all the more valuable that natural islands > 10 ha that have undisturbed nearshore dynamics are healthy, i.e. were either stable or increased in size over the past decades (Duvat, 2019). The fact that natural ecosystems have up to now at least partly adapted to changing ocean conditions advocates for ecosystem protection and restoration.

It is obvious that the three NBS clusters have a critical role to play in supporting this ecosystem resilience pillar (Figure 5). For instance, as mentioned earlier, mangrove replanting can seriously help mitigate relative sea-level rise impacts at the coast (Cluster A). Also, avoiding clearing the indigenous coastal vegetation belt (Cluster B) that usually surrounds atoll islands would help limit storm-induced marine inundation, as indigenous species have proved to be more resistant and resilient than non-indigenous species (Stoddart, 1963, 1965; Duvat et al., 2016; Duvat, Volto, & Salmon, 2017; Duvat et al., 2019). While coral reef restoration (Cluster B) can also be of direct help, the development of Marine Protected Areas (MPA, Cluster C) can contribute to healthier ecosystems, and hence indirectly support the contribution of the latter to coastal risks reduction now and in the long run. MPA's contribution will however hugely depend on the effectiveness of management systems associated with each MPA, as shown in some recent studies (Abelson et al., 2016; Albright et al., 2016; Cinner et al., 2016).

This pillar is especially relevant for T1 and T2, as they still have healthy and functional ecosystems (Figure 5). It can also play an important role in T3 inhabited islands where the coastal protection services are still delivered by the reef system, although they were degraded by human activities along some shoreline sections. On T3 islands especially, restoring the functionalities of the reef-island system would produce short- and medium-term benefits that would help limit the pathdependencies to human intervention, e.g. the resort to coastal engineered structures to protect exposed human assets. In contrast, because coastal protection services have already been extensively to totally undermined by human activities on T4 and T5 islands, e.g. on atoll capitals (e.g. Male', South Tarawa), this pillar has a more limited potential on these islands.

### 4.3 Minimise the risk of maladaptation

According to Juhola, Glaas, Linnér, and Neset, (2016, p. 139), societal maladaptation is defined "as a result of an intentional adaptation policy or measure directly increasing vulnerability for the targeted and/or external actor(s), and/or eroding preconditions for sustainable development by indirectly increasing society's vulnerability". Minimising the risk of maladaptation strongly relates to limiting the prevailing anthropogenic drivers of vulnerability that operated over the last decades and contributed to past and current maladaptation (Magnan et al., 2016; Duvat, Magnan, Wise, et al., 2017). A classic example is the construction of new buildings in flood-prone areas, e.g. on recently accreted sand spits in South Tarawa Atoll as a result of uncontrolled in-migration from outer rural atolls (Duvat et al., 2013). Because of economic and social path-dependency effects (i.e. spatial concentration of economic activities and modern jobs, education and health opportunities, etc.), reversing recent trends in maladaptive anthropogenic features such as urbanisation, represents an area of 'unavoidable' solutions for adaptation (Magnan & Duvat, 2018; Magnan, 2018)*.*

Here again, NBS could critically contribute to this end. For example, the consideration of the topography and elevation (Cluster C) is a prerequisite for urban planning to avoid the construction of new human assets in flood-prone areas. This can be supported by introducing the climate impacts buffering role of the environment in education programmes (Cluster C). Similar to the previous pillar, making the indigenous vegetation a strong basis for any management and settlement plans (Cluster B) would bring important benefits in terms of coastal risk reduction. Finally, the development of nature-friendly building standards, the design of which considers the natural dynamics of the coastal sedimentary system, can be considered as a NBS. For example, houses on stilts (Cluster C) allow the maintenance of clear sediment transport pathways and hence sediment deposition at the coast, with benefits in terms of reducing both coastal erosion and marine inundation (for the latter, due to the upwards growth of coastal features). Building on stilts also reduces the direct exposure of human assets to marine inundation, hence referring to Cluster A.

Because "minimising the risk of maladaptation" allows limiting the exposure of human assets in all atoll contexts, it theoretically applies to all of the Maldivian inhabited island types, from T1 (undisturbed islands) to T5 (very highly disturbed islands that have lost the natural capacity to adapt). NBS contribution to this pillar however varies significantly across island types. For example, few T5 islands have proper coastal defences, i.e. adequately designed, calibrated, and continuous along the shoreline. Male' is an exception, as its entire shoreline was equipped with properly engineered structures following the highly destructive 1987 distant-source swell event (Cazes-Duvat, 2005; Wadey et al., 2017). In such contexts, the potential for NBS remains limited, not to say almost nil in extreme cases such as Male' where the reef ecosystem has been extensively destroyed by land reclamation (Naylor, 2015). Yet, various examples in developing and developed coastal countries demonstrate similar storylines as Male' in 1987, i.e. the failure of massive engineered structures to protect people and human assets, due to low maintenance levels (e.g. New Orleans in the face of Katrina in 2005, France during the Xynthia storm in 2010; Temmerman et al., 2013). Collectively, these insights suggest that coastal protection structures should not be considered as a self-sufficient solution in the face of increased climate pressures, and that where they are not already prominent (T1 to T3 islands in this study), NBS should be considered. Whatever the option, the above advocates for the 'unavoidable' nature of this pillar.

### 4.4 Facilitate internal relocation

Before considering international migration, internal relocation possibilities should be assessed (e.g., Owen, Kench, & Ford, 2016), as this strategy may first help address the inextricable problems faced by some capital islands before becoming a way to cope with sea-level rise. Noteworthy is that this pillar is highly complementary to the previous one dealing with the risk of maladaptation, as well as that it will necessarily benefit from the first one on maintaining/restoring ecosystem resilience. A key specific point here is that atoll islands have contrasting topographic profiles, making some of them intrinsically more vulnerable to climate-related pressures than others (Woodroffe, 2008). Islands that have higher elevations, that are little exposed to tropical cyclones due to their latitudinal location, and that either increased or remained stable in area over the last decades, should especially be considered as potentially offering valuable relocation opportunities, provided that they also meet other requirements (e.g. have freshwater and food resources) and do not raise inextricable land tenure problems. This could be the basis for a settlement plan using all of the NBS clusters, e.g. by settling areas located at the back of the most elevated coasts (Cluster A), maintaining the coastal indigenous vegetation (Cluster B), and using stilts for constructions as much as possible (Cluster C).

As in the case of South Tarawa in Kiribati, capital atolls generally have a high number of rural and uninhabited islands extending in continuity with the densely settled areas that could be, if they met the abovementioned conditions, considered for internal relocation. Furthermore, envisaging the relocation of the people and human assets of these densely populated islands (e.g. 13,000 inhabitants/km<sup>2</sup> on Betio, South Tarawa) on some other islands (either natural, or rural) in the same atoll would provide an opportunity to get out of the inherited path-dependency (i.e., resort to engineered structures to reduce risks, which in turn increases human assets' exposure, due to beach disappearance, and vulnerability as a result of the false sense of security caused by the construction of such structures) caused by the unsustainable development practices of the past decades.

### 4.5 Island fortification associated with ground elevation

In atoll countries having very low-lying and small islands, such as the Maldives (Aslam & Kench, 2017; Duvat, 2019), the protection of existing settlements and/or internal relocation may require ground elevation and coastal protection by adequate engineered structures. The option of creating such 'safer islands' had incidentally been envisaged by the Government of the Maldives after the December 2004 tsunami, with the Hulhumale' artificial island as a real-life test. Although controversial, this experience suggests that this 'fortification + ground elevation' pillar could constitute an option in the face of this country's specific constraints, including projected sea-level rise and rapid population growth (almost doubling of the population every 25 years over the past decades).

This pillar however requires, first, adequate material extraction sites to be identified to avoid destroying reef flats supporting islands (Cluster C), and second, long-run financial and technical international support. That is, it imposes potentially major negative collateral effects on the local environment, as well as a high dependence on external funding. Despite this, it should still be considered as it can offer one of the few available options for already densely populated areas such as the capital islands (e.g. Male'/Hulhumale' in the Maldives), where the space for pillar (*i*) (see Figure 5) is often low due to already high levels of coastal and marine environmental degradation. It can however largely benefit from the implementation of pillars (*ii*) and (*iii*). But as a whole, this pillar offers little room for manoeuvre for NBS. It should be more specifically considered in the future for T4 and T5 Maldivian islands for which other solutions are not appropriate given, first, the high level of degradation of the reef-island system, and second, the high number and crucial importance (i.e. people, buildings, infrastructure) of highly exposed human assets.

### 4.6 Permanent international migration

The permanent international migration of atoll populations option should be considered as a very last resort in case of high-end sea-level rise scenarios (Figure 5). On the ground, international migration of atoll populations remains mostly theoretical. On the one hand, there is still no scientifically based, uncontroversial evidence on the prevailing role of undergoing climate change impacts in people's decision to move abroad permanently (Connell, 2012). On the other hand, no example exists of a country ready to host an entire environmentally displaced nation. Despite this, we argue that this pillar must still be considered as being part of the panel of options for atoll countries, for three main reasons. First, because there is still uncertainty regarding the 21st century in terms of both the future rates of sea-level rise (especially in the second half of the century) and atoll island physical response to changing conditions (including ocean warming and acidification). Second, because even in the case of drastic greenhouse gas emissions mitigation at the global scale in the coming decades, sea level will continue to rise beyond the 21st century (Church et al., 2013), this fact imposing the need to not limit reflections on atoll population future to the next decades only. Third, because latency phenomena in human systems (i.e. in social, decision-making, and economic processes) call for a multi-decadal anticipatory approach. This last point means that the implementation of responses that are compatible with sea-level rise worst-case scenarios needs time to be designed, hence the usefulness, for example, of starting to discuss the legal status of climate refugees from now on and despite scientific controversies (e.g. Yamamoto & Esteban, 2014). Anticipating international migration is all the more important because it requires concerned communities to have financial means (Oakes, Milan, & Campbell, 2016) and to be provided with adequate resources in the country of destination (Allen, 2012).

Due to multiple sources of uncertainty, this pillar must thus be considered as a back-up plan rather than a priority strategy. There is however no space for naturebased action here, as NBS apply to the local context and as this back-up pillar precisely consists in leaving such a local context.

The previous sub-sections suggest that while various types of NBS can bring multiple benefits for enhancing societal adaptation and thus reduce long-term vulnerability to climate-related hazards, especially coastal erosion and marine inundation, their potential contribution is and will still be highly variable across space and time (Figure 5).

**Figure 5: Contrasting potential contribution of nature-based solutions to atoll island adaptation pathways for five distinct island types. See Figure 4 for explanations of Panel A (adaptation pathways). Panel B shows the highly-variable (from nil to high) potential benefits that can be expected from each adaptation pillar for the five island types considered in this study. It highlights the decreasing potential benefits provided by pillars (i) and (ii), from island types T1-T3 to T4-T5. Panel C shows the decreasing contribution of NBS to adaptation from the (i) increase ecosystem resilience and (ii) minimise the risk of maladaptation to the (iii) internal relocation, and then to the (iv) fortification associated with ground elevation and (v) international migration adaptation pillars.**

### **5 Concluding discussion on the potential contribution of NBS to atoll adaptation pathways**

Using the case of the inhabited islands of the Maldives, we highlighted the variable contribution of NBS to enhance adaptation pathways in atoll islands. Such a potential contribution will however not only depend on island types, but also on three major contextual elements:

 As both the shaping and effectiveness of NBS critically depends on local context specificities, any change in the natural components of the considered system (reef-island system here, which may exhibit differences in configuration from one setting to another) due to the combined impacts of ocean changes,

i.e. sea-level rise, ocean warming, and ocean acidification, will affect NBS contribution.

All of this suggests a possible decreasing importance of NBS contribution as long as we progress into the adaptation pathway pillars sequencing (i.e. from top-left to bottom-right in both Panels A and C in Figure 5). The results emphasise that today, in the Maldives, NBS represent a promising area of action in more than two thirds of the 107 sampled inhabited islands, with multiple benefits that will in turn reduce coastal risks and increase NBS effectiveness in the future. As a result, in these inhabited islands (mainly T2 and T3) and in all 'natural' islands (T1), positive feedback loops can still be engaged, with a sequencing of NBS reflecting the first three pillars of the adaptation pathway approach presented in Figure 4 and Figure 5 (i.e. "increase ecosystem resilience", "minimise the risk of maladaptation", "facilitate internal relocation"). However, in already densely populated islands (T4 and T5), the space for NBS is already limited, and the "island fortification associated with ground elevation" pillar must be prioritised. This does not prevent NBS being used to help reduce coastal erosion and marine inundation, but the former will only have limited benefits for risk reduction. Finally, because it consists in leaving atolls, the "permanent international migration" pillar leaves no space for *in situ* NBS.

### **Acknowledgements**

This work was supported by the French National Research Agency under the STORISK project (No. ANR-15-CE03-0003). Virginie Duvat was also funded by the INSeaPTION project, which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), BMBF (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462). Alexandre Magnan also thanks the ANR programme "Investissements d'avenir" (No. ANR-10-LABX-14-01).

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# **4**

### **Distributing scarce adaptation finance across SIDS: Effectiveness, not efficiency**

### *Christian Baatz and Michel Bourban*

Although Small Island Developing States (SIDS) receive high amounts of adaptation finance on a per capita basis, current and expected funding is much lower than present and future adaptation costs. Since funding is insufficient to cover all needs, adaptation finance ought to benefit those who are most entitled to the funding. These entitlements can be determined via prioritisation criteria. Vulnerability is the most prominent prioritisation criterion but must be supplemented with further criteria because of its shortcomings. In this contribution we thus investigate whether cost-effectiveness and democracy should play this role. To this end, we first discuss Stadelmann and colleagues' proposal to operationalise the costeffectiveness criterion via three indicators (absolute economic savings, relative economic savings, and avoided loss of Disability Adjusted Life Years). We argue that this set of indicators fails to capture important adaptation benefits and may reinforce the current bias towards hard adaptation measures. We further claim that one should 'just' focus on safeguarding effective, that is successful, adaptation instead. To that effect, we propose 'democracy' as an alternative to costeffectiveness. We first justify the criterion by providing intrinsic and instrumental reasons in its defence and, second, discuss how to operationalise it, using the example of SIDS. We conclude that although also challenging, democracy is less difficult to operationalise than cost-effectiveness.

Cite this article: Baatz, C. & Bourban, M. (2019): Distributing scarce adaptation finance across SIDS: Effectiveness, not efficiency. In: Klöck, C. & Fink, M. (eds.): *Dealing with climate change on small islands: Towards effective and sustainable adaptation?* (pp. 77–99). Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1212

### **1 Introduction**

While Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are not a homogeneous political, social, or cultural group, they share common characteristics that distinguish them as highly vulnerable to climate change, such as smallness, isolation, and remoteness. All SIDS are exposed to severe climate impacts, such as sea-level rise, stronger and more frequent storms, coastal erosion, cyclones, and changing rainfall patterns, and thus face high relative adaptation costs (Nurse et al., 2014). For instance, the costs of shore protection works aimed at reducing the adverse effects of sealevel rise in small islands is substantially higher in terms of both per capita and percentage of GDP than the costs of similar structures in larger territories with larger populations and higher levels of gross national income per capita (Nurse et al., 2014).

Many SIDS use international adaptation financing to meet adaptation costs and ease domestic constraints. Between 2003 and 2017, multilateral climate funds provided US\$ 1,380 million to the 38 UN member SIDS for 210 projects of both mitigation and adaptation. Approximately 56% of climate finance has contributed to adaptation efforts, 25% has contributed to mitigation, 3% has contributed to REDD projects, and 16% has had multiple foci (Watson, Bird, Schalatek, & Keil, 2017). To date, most adaptation finance has been provided through bilateral channels. Between 2010 and 2014, OECD countries self-reported committing an estimated US\$ 2 billion in adaptation finance to all 58 countries classified as SIDS, 51% of which went to Cabo Verde, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guyana, and Timor-Leste (Robinson & Dornan, 2017). On a per capita basis, SIDS were among the largest recipients of adaptation aid between 2010 and 2015 (Betzold & Weiler, 2018, p. 116). However, it is difficult to measure aggregate flows of international adaptation finance. Even though OECD countries claim that US\$ 10.1 billion of bilateral aid was adaptation-related in 2012, Weikmans and colleagues (2017, p. 466) conclude that only US\$ 2.35 billion appeared to be genuinely adaptationrelated, and that only US\$ 1.2 billion seemed to have targeted adaptation as a principal objective.<sup>1</sup>

Still, despite growing and substantial (self-reported) adaptation finance flows to SIDS, they cover only a small part of actual adaptation needs (Watson et al., 2017, p. 1). In such a context of scarcity, finance should benefit those who are most entitled to the funding. These people can be determined, in principle at least, via so-called prioritisation criteria.

Vulnerability is the most prominent criterion in both political and academic debates. Scholars agree that adaptation finance ought to benefit those who are

 <sup>1</sup> These significant differences are mainly a result of the over-coding of adaptation-relevant projects by donor countries, a problem caused by the absence of independent quality control in the Rio marker reporting system, a lack of clarity within aid agencies about the distinction between climate change adaptation and other types of environmental projects, and the pressure on developed countries to show that they are taking action on climate adaptation (Weikman et al., 2017, pp. 467–468).

most vulnerable to climate change (e.g. Ciplet, Roberts, & Khan, 2012, p. 60) and all major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreements have restated this principle (see Klein & Möhner, 2011, pp. 16–17). Yet, as Pickering (2012, p. 5) states, "broad agreement on this issue masks two important areas of disagreement, namely how vulnerability should be conceived and measured, and whether (and which) other principles could also inform prioritization".

While SIDS have been recognised as 'particularly vulnerable' throughout the history of climate negotiations, from the UNFCCC to the Paris Agreement (Weikmans, 2016, pp. 5–7), this category is very broad. There is no consensus on the list of countries that should be classified as 'highly vulnerable' (Weikmans, 2016, p. 7). And even among SIDS, vulnerability varies considerably both between and within countries, as a result of geographical, social, and political factors (Sjöstedt & Povitkina, 2017). For instance, SIDS include both least developed countries like Comoros and Tuvalu and high-income countries like Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Bahamas.

Treating SIDS as a group with homogeneous entitlements therefore does not make much sense. A more refined approach is necessary and several studies have developed complex, aggregate global vulnerability indices (e.g. Barr, Fankhauser, & Hamilton, 2010; Chen et al., 2015). However, "the rankings of countries yielded by the various indicators diverge greatly" (Mathy & Blanchard, 2015, p. 757), "there is no agreed way of assessing […] and comparing the vulnerability of countries" (Klein & Möhner, 2011, p. 16) and "all attempts to allocate adaptation funding based on aggregate national-level indices of vulnerability to climate change have been deeply unsatisfying" (Füssel, Hallegatte, & Reder, 2012, p. 323).<sup>2</sup> This may not come as a surprise since data aggregation requires a lot of empirical and normative assumptions, some of which are rather controversial. As long as no agreed methodology exists, aggregating many heterodox factors that influence vulnerability into a single number will "not reveal more but rather disguise[s] what is known" (Hinkel, 2011, p. 205). Therefore, basing the prioritisation of adaptation finance on such an index-based vulnerability ranking is too arbitrary and not a reasonable option (Barr et al., 2010, pp. 845–846; Füssel, 2010, p. 608; Hinkel, 2011, p. 206).

If vulnerability should not be the sole, and perhaps not even the main, prioritisation criterion, distributing funding on the basis of the (expected) benefits of different adaptive measures might be a reasonable complementary criterion. In this regard, Stadelmann and colleagues (2014, 2015) propose different costeffectiveness indicators that enable such comparisons. Since we dispute that using these indicators as universal metrics in the prioritisation of adaptation finance is desirable and think that alternative indicators for cost-effectiveness would face similar problems, we propose 'democracy' as a better complementary criterion to

 <sup>2</sup> The verdict also holds for more recent studies (Baatz, 2017).

vulnerability to check whether conditions exist that allow for desirable adaptation processes and outcomes.

All three criteria already seem to play some role in the distribution of international funding in practice. Countries that are more *vulnerable* to climate change tend to receive more bilateral adaptation finance, at least if the physical components of vulnerability, that is exposure and sensitivity to climate risks, are measured (Betzold & Weiler, 2018, p. 166). Since vulnerability is also influenced by social factors determining people's adaptive capacity (IPCC, 2014, p. 21), a distribution according to physical vulnerability may not prioritise the most vulnerable, all things considered. Bilateral donors also tend to give more adaptation finance to better governed countries, since they are perceived as better able to use resources in an effective and *efficient* manner (Betzold & Weiler, 2018, p. 116). Thus, (perceived) efficiency, i.e. cost-effectiveness, seems to influence funding decisions but is not used as a discrete allocation criterion. The level of *democracy*, on the other hand, is positively correlated with the amount of foreign aid a country receives (e.g. Dollar & Levin, 2006). Similarly, well-governed countries are substantially more likely to receive adaptation finance and to receive higher levels of adaptation aid per capita (Weiler, Klöck, & Dornan, 2018, p. 74). The notion of good governance and how it is measured by Weiler and colleagues, however, includes aspects that go beyond democracy (e.g. whether regulation enables growth), and the robustness of the indices usually employed to measure democracy has been questioned (e.g. Thomas, 2010). That being said, it is likely that democracy positively affects funding levels.

This chapter does not investigate whether and how these criteria are used, but aims at answering the normative question of whether cost-effectiveness and democracy *should* guide the distribution of scarce funding in the context of adaptation. We proceed as follows: Section 2 critically discusses Stadelmann and colleagues' proposal; Section 3 briefly argues that, instead, criteria and related indicators should show to what extent conditions allowing for effective adaptation prevail; Section 4 develops our proposal for a democracy criterion; and Section 5 summarises key findings.

### **2 Cost-effectiveness as a (further) prioritisation criterion?**

Generally, adaptation funding should be effective, i.e. reach its desired goal(s). In human systems, the goal of adaptation is to reduce current and expected climateinduced harms (Field et al., 2014, p. 40; Hartzell-Nichols, 2011).<sup>3</sup> Reducing harm is a very general goal when it comes to adaptation finance. Given scarce funding, among other things, a reasonable aim of international adaptation finance is not so

<sup>3</sup> The IPCC adds that adaptation also aims at exploiting beneficial opportunities (Field et al., 2014, p. 40). As the goal of adaptation finance should be minimising or avoiding net harm, we ignore this aspect.

much to reduce – and ideally avoid – any kind of harm, but to minimise *serious* harm.

In order to determine which harm should count as 'serious', a normative theory is required. In line with previous works we adopt a human rights framework according to which all human beings have certain rights, as for example those laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Everybody is bound by these rights and the associated duties not to violate them, to contribute to protecting them, and to aid those deprived of their rights (Shue, 1980). On this account, all those harms are serious that undermine people's ability to exercise their human rights.<sup>4</sup> The account offers a sufficientarian threshold of what people are entitled to as a matter of justice. People may be entitled to more in terms of global justice (i.e. what people from everywhere owe them) and to much more in terms of national justice (i.e. what they are owed by fellow citizens). As citizens of country X they may be entitled to basic income, education, health services, and other goods that go (far) beyond what is established by this human rights account. We adopt a less demanding standard to avoid controversial but unnecessary assumptions.

There is a broad agreement in the literature that climate change will undermine and is already undermining the exercise of several internationally protected human rights, such as the right to life, to an adequate standard of health, to the means for subsistence, and to shelter and property – and this also holds for inhabitants of SIDS (Humphreys, 2010). Adaptation aims at maintaining or restoring the conditions under which people can exercise these rights in the face of climate change threats (for detail see Baatz, 2017, as well as Caney, 2012). This goal can be reached to varying degrees. If funding is insufficient to protect the human rights of all people foreseeably threatened by climate change, it seems reasonable to support those measures that best protect human rights: that is, which protect as many people as possible for a given amount of funding. Put in more general terms, those measures should be funded that are most efficient or cost-effective. Cost-effectiveness is a term prominently used in health care and denotes the measures that achieve the greatest improvement in health for a given amount of resources (World Health Organization, 2019). Here, cost-effectiveness analysis aims at identifying projects that deliver the greatest adaptation benefit, in terms of human rights protected, for a given amount of funding.

As with vulnerability, cost-effectiveness must be 'measured' or specified to guide funding decisions. To compare adaptation benefits across projects, Stadelmann and colleagues (2014, 2015) propose corresponding indicators. They argue that what is ultimately of interest is not the output or outcome (e.g. trained people or built dams) but the impact of a given adaptation project (Stadelmann, Persson, Ratajczak-Juszko, & Michaelowa, 2014, p. 110). But the impacts of a project are hard to predict, especially for soft and flexible measures as well as for those

<sup>4</sup> Alternatively, one could adopt the capabilities approach (see e.g. Schlosberg, 2012; Govind, 2013; Shockley, 2014). This does not affect our argument below that the diverse nature of adaptation benefits heavily complicates measuring and comparing the cost-effectiveness of adaption projects.

that support basic development. Moreover, even if it were possible to predict the likely effects, accurately measuring these effects in a way that makes them comparable across projects and regions would remain a major challenge (Stadelmann et al., 2014, p. 108).

Faced with these problems, Stadelmann and colleagues (2014, p. 110) "rely on a set of three indicators that try to proxy cost-effectiveness: absolute economic savings, relative economic savings, and human lives saved per USD of spending". The absolute economic savings indicator is defined as the monetised assets saved by adaptation. Since it ignores non-monetised benefits and favours wealthy people and regions over poor ones, the authors use two additional indicators (Stadelmann et al., 2014, p. 110). Relative economic savings "are defined as the percentage of annual income saved, multiplied with the number of beneficiaries. […] Human lives savings are measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years Saved (DALYs) [sic], an indicator systematically utilized by the World Health Organization" (Stadelmann et al., 2014, p. 111). The authors aim at avoiding a "monetary-only approach" while at the same time allowing for universal comparisons of projects, i.e. across different areas, that are not possible so far because existing approaches only work within areas or sectors (Stadelmann, Michaelowa, Butzengeiger-Geyer, & Köhler, 2015, p. 2149).

### 2.1 Absolute economic savings

Despite the shortcomings of absolute economic savings measured via saved monetised assets, the authors supplement rather than replace the indicator because "it is the usual way to measure macro-economic effectiveness, it is a standard indicator for evaluating the well-being of societies, it reflects overall utility as stated by market participants" (Stadelmann et al., 2014, p. 111). The fact that something is routinely used is not a justification for using it as well and it has been doubted for quite some time that absolute economic savings or even economic savings is a good indicator of the wellbeing of societies or, rather, people (e.g. Sen, 1999).

In the context of adaptation, the indicator is likewise problematic. The key objective of adaptation is to avoid serious harms caused by climatic changes; it protects what is of value against loss and damages and fulfils this function for people in very different situations. Where more valuable objects and opportunities exist, more can be lost. Therefore, more losses can be prevented by undertaking adaptation where many objects and opportunities exist. If all of these objects and opportunities were of equal worth, it would make sense to favour measures that protect more of them, as argued above. However, absolute economic savings hardly measure equally valuable things. According to this indicator, a loss of US\$ 100 for a member of the Singaporean elite and a subsistence farmer in the Comoros has the same weight (Stadelmann et al., 2014, p. 111). Moreover, while many fundamental losses are hardly captured by the measure (say, a person contracts dengue fever, does not receive medical treatment, and dies), comparatively trivial monetary losses of affluent persons are fully accounted because they are reliably captured by this indicator.<sup>5</sup>

### 2.2 Relative economic savings and DALYs

There are different ways to adjust the economic savings indicator in order to dampen the bias in favour of wealthier people. The option suggested by Stadelmann and colleagues is measuring the percentage of annual income saved. The main drawback of the relative economic savings indicator (as percentage of annual income saved) is that it ignores all effects that are not income related. And while the protection of income is often very important, the adaptation literature stresses that vulnerability to climate change cannot be reduced to lack in income (Paavola & Adger, 2006, p. 605). Furthermore, the criterion ignores how the person that loses (part of) her income is situated, that is, how wealthy/poor she is (see also Persson & Remling, 2014, p. 29). This is relevant for losing, say, 10% of one's income might impose serious hardship on a poor person while it does not for a very wealthy member of society. Overall, the criterion is under- and over-inclusive: it does not capture human rights threats that are not related to income losses and captures income losses that are not related to human rights threats. An indicator that does not adequately capture whether adaptation is effective faces problems when comparing the cost-effectiveness of various projects.

The under-inclusiveness of relative economic savings is reduced by adding the third indicator, DALYs lost, which is more directly related to human rights threats. A reduction in DALYs may indicate that the right to life and to an adequate standard of health care are temporarily or permanently undermined.<sup>6</sup> In combination, DALYs and relative economic savings might better indicate threats to human rights. The remaining problem is that both indicators do not capture many effects that are highly relevant.

We illustrate this point by drawing on the distinction between so-called hard and soft adaptation measures, referring to technology-driven infrastructure projects like dams or irrigation systems and to changes in planning, institutional settings, and behaviour respectively (Fankhauser & Burton, 2011, p. 1045). While "there is a well-known and long-observed practice in adaptation studies to prefer hard […] over soft measures" (Fankhauser & Burton, 2011, p. 1045), the latter are at least as important as the former. Usually, non-climatic factors make people vulnerable to climate change: the "lack of social, political, and economic resources that poor and marginal communities fail to command is the main factor creating

<sup>5</sup> It is noteworthy that, strictly speaking, human rights do not measure things of equal moral worth either, for one would probably say, for example, that the right to life is of greater importance than the right to establish unions. However, the problem of giving equal weight to unequal values is much graver in the case of economic savings.

<sup>6</sup> However, mild diseases will increase the number of DALYs but will not undermine the exercise of human rights.

their inability to cope with climatic changes" (Khan & Roberts, 2013, p. 183). Activities that effectively reduce vulnerability (also) need to tackle these factors, and technology-based measures that address specific climate impacts are unable to do so (Roberts & Parks, 2007, p. 132; Klein & Persson, 2008, p. 40; Ayers & Dodman, 2010, p. 165). Effective adaptation often can be achieved by changes in practices, and when hard adaptation is effective it needs to be accompanied by design or regulatory, i.e. soft, measures (e.g. Fankhauser & Burton, 2011, p. 1045).

Therefore, it is crucial to overcome the bias towards hard measures, but the indicators proposed by Stadelmann and colleagues may rather reinforce it. Consider two examples: Protecting flood-prone shores of SIDS from inundation might allow for a straightforward calculation of losses prevented in the future. In comparison, a successful development policy, a reform of the schooling system, or a change in regulations may result in very beneficial developments in the long-run that are, at the same time, difficult to predict and to accurately calculate. It would be challenging, for example, to express the benefits of the schooling reform in terms of the avoided loss in DALYs or income. Using these indicators may thus favour hard over soft measures.

The shortcomings of these cost-effectiveness indicators can also be illustrated by the serious non-economic losses inhabitants of SIDS are facing. Sea-level rise may force many people to leave their home, even their country. To the extent that people will be dispersed through various places willing to accept immigrants in a limited number, they face the threat of cultural and linguistic loss that can undermine the social bases of self-respect (Zellentin, 2015, pp. 496–497; see also Farbotko, this volume). These as well as other non-economic losses and damages associated with 'climate migration' are not captured by the indicators.

Stadelmann and colleagues highlight the major challenge of measuring adaptation benefits in a way that makes them comparable across projects and regions. For the reasons just stated, we do not think that the indicators they propose even come close to meeting the challenge because too many important effects are not captured by them. However, we acknowledge that any indicator will face this problem because the benefits of adaptation are highly diverse and cannot be captured with one or two indicators (see examples of economic, social, and environmental benefits provided in Remling & Persson, 2015, p. 27). We thus doubt that it makes sense to universally compare the cost-effectiveness of adaptation projects as this would require a host of different indicators that are based on incommensurable values as well as the quantification of effects that are both hard to predict and hard to measure.<sup>7</sup> But note that our argument leaves the door open to use relative economic savings and avoided DALYs losses<sup>8</sup> for projects whose key aim is to protect

<sup>7</sup> Scepticism regarding the usefulness of a cost-effectiveness criterion is also voiced by Paavola and Adger (2006, p. 605) and Persson et al. (2009, p. 89).

<sup>8</sup> In the context of public health and medical ethics, the DALYs approach faces severe criticism on both methodological and normative grounds (e.g. Daniels, 2008; Klonschinski, 2016). We deal with this critique in future work on the (non-)relevance of efficiency considerations in adaptation finance.

the same aim in one region/country.

### **3 Focusing on conditions for effective adaptation**

Given the difficulties of determining cost-effective measures in a reasonable way, we suggest using alternative criteria that focus on the more basic challenge: ensuring that adaptation is effective at all. Due to the well-known barriers to adaptation,<sup>9</sup> achieving effectiveness is far from trivial. Effectiveness is determined not only by case-specific factors, such as project idea and design, but also by the capacity of regional or national authorities to implement effective adaptation projects (Persson & Remling, 2014, p. 494). For this reason, implementation capacity could serve as a general criterion to prioritise funding. But higher implementation capacity usually means better governance and higher adaptive capacity (Pickering, 2012, p. 5). Since adaptive capacity is a component of vulnerability, higher adaptation and implementation capacity means lower vulnerability.

Faced with the trade-off between effectiveness (specified via implementation capacity) and vulnerability, Barr and colleagues (2010, p. 852) argue that low implementation capacity should not be a reason to provide less funding to a country: "Insufficient implementation capacity may point to […] stricter monitoring arrangements and a stronger role for development agencies in project management. It also points to a need for capacity building as an adaptation (and development) priority". And "a more hands-on approach on project implementation may be required" in these cases (Barr et al., 2010, p. 854). Pickering (2012, p. 845) correctly stresses that "even 'hands-on' approaches may be insufficient to counter major obstacles to implementation such as civil conflict or entrenched corruption".

These considerations highlight that the reasons for low implementation capacities matter for funding decisions. If a country 'merely' lacks the bureaucratic apparatus, the know-how to develop effective adaptation measures, and/or the capacity to absorb, manage, and distribute substantial amounts of international funding, capacity building indeed is the correct way forward. If, on the other hand, the main problem consists in, say, kleptocratic forms of government, supporting the enlargement of the bureaucratic apparatus will most likely increase corruption levels and hardly benefit marginalised and vulnerable groups.

Therefore, universal criteria should indicate whether the conditions that allow for effective adaptation are present or can be facilitated via the funding. The next section proposes 'democracy' as one possible criterion to fulfil this function. We suggest that capacity building is more reasonable in democratic than in non-

<sup>9</sup> Barriers to effective adaptation in SIDS include for instance access to financial, technological, and human resources, issues related to cultural and social acceptability of measures, and constraints imposed by the existing political and legal frameworks (Nurse et al., 2014).

democratic countries. Non-democratic countries would instead require something like 'democracy building'.10 Next, we therefore defend the idea that prioritising democratically governed people is justified.

### **4 Towards a democracy criterion**

By 'democracy', we refer "to a method of group decision making characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage of the collective decision making" (Christiano, 2015). The degree of equality can be more or less deep: It can represent mere formal equality, such as the one-person one-vote rule in an election, or a more robust form of equality, such as equality in the process of deliberation. It may involve either direct participation of members of society in law and policy making or selection of representatives (Christiano, 2015). Democracy does not require perfect equality, but a certain degree of equality: regarding opportunities for political participation, individual freedoms, limited influence of private interests over the state, and so on.

### 4.1 Reasons for a democracy criterion

In this sub-section, we offer (what may be called) intrinsic and instrumental reasons in favour of a democracy criterion, starting with the former.

From the perspective of climate ethics, people in the Global South vulnerable to climate change are entitled to support from the Global North in their adaptation efforts (for detail see Baatz, 2013, 2017). Adaptation finance is owed to the persons whose rights are threatened or undermined and, once provided, it is owned by these people (Duus-Otterström, 2016). The human rights perspective entails that it is not owned by the representatives of a citizenry or the country as a collective.

However, it does not make much sense to pay adaptation finance to individuals. Adaptation that effectively protects people usually must be undertaken at the collective level. And since the benefits of various adaptive measures are difficult to estimate (see above), it must be decided at the collective level where to undertake which projects. Thus, adaptation usually involves a considerable amount of collective decision-making. But due to citizens' entitlement to the funding, they ought to participate in the collective decision-making process, ideally with an equal say. This does not necessarily mean that everyone whose human rights are threatened ought to have the opportunity to personally participate in the decision-making on how to spend adaptation finance, but that their interests must be appropriately represented. According to the human rights account we endorse, people threatened by climate change are not seen as helpless and speechless victims but rather as bearers

<sup>10</sup> We discuss in a separate paper under development whether adaption finance should also be used in this regard (Bourban & Baatz, 2019).

of the right to voice their interests and concerns as equals in policy discourses. If this is not possible, opportunities for political participation ought to be created.

In addition to this entitlement argument, the presence of democratic institutions is also likely to increase the effectiveness of adaptation finance. The following presents two such instrumental reasons in favour of the democracy criterion.

First, the incorporation of local knowledge in the planning of adaptation increases its effectiveness. While vulnerable people will often benefit from financial, technical, and informational support, their knowledge and awareness are important for effective adaptation (Khan & Roberts, 2013, p. 183; Biagini, Bierbaum, Stults, Dobardzic, & McNeeley, 2014, p. 105; Heyward, 2017, p. 482). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even observes that support by local actors and community engagement constitute a prerequisite for successful adaptation (Mimura et al., 2014, p. 881). Otherwise, there is the risk that activities are funded "which suit the interests of more powerful stakeholders, but struggle to bring benefits to the most vulnerable communities" (Fenton, Gallagher, Wright, Huq, & Nyandiga, 2014, p. 391; similarly Duus-Otterström, 2016, p. 665). There is a consensus in the literature that local adaptation governance should be democratised in order to prioritise the predicament of the poor and the marginalised (Mikulewicz, 2018, p. 26). Therefore, robust democratic decision-making increases the likelihood that local citizens affected by adaptation can incorporate their knowledge, ideas, and concerns into the decision-making process on how to adapt.

Second, democratic institutions and procedures make corruption and misuse of funding more difficult and these phenomena in turn undermine effective adaptation. As Paavola and Adger (2006, p. 606) put it: "Where democratic structures are absent, planning for climate change is little more than a rhetoric within a landscape of unsustainable development".

According to Transparency International (2011, xxvi), the extent to which policy development and decisions are participatory, accountable, transparent, and respect the rule of law will determine how serious corruption risks are. The risk is lower if democratic institutions ensure working checks and balances between branches of the government and include effective non-governmental watchdogs, from the media to civil society organisations and independent academic institutions (Vogl, 2012, p. 153). Disclosure of information and participation in decisionmaking are especially crucial (Horstmann, 2011, p. 249), since they enable the general public and entitlement-bearers to retrace inappropriate capture of resources.

While the relationship between democracy and corruption is complex, recent empirical studies generally support the claim that democracy reduces corruption (Kolstad & Wiig, 2016) but also highlight that mere formal equality in the form of 'one person one vote' in regular elections is not enough: media freedom (Bhattacharyya & Hodler, 2015), income to meet basic needs (Neudorfer, 2015; Jetter, Agudela, & Hassan, 2015), limited economic inequality (You, 2016), availability of information (Boehm, 2015), and well-functioning checks and balances (Boehm, 2015; Saha, Gounder, Campbell, & Su, 2014) are additional conditions for democracy to curb corruption. Regarding the definition of democracy as equality in collective decision-making mentioned above, these results suggest that the degree of equality must be sufficiently high: that is, it requires that most citizens can make use of certain rights and have access to information, that material inequality is limited, and so on. Thus, the higher the degree of equal opportunities for political participation, the less likely is corruption and misappropriation of public funding.

So far, our argument has linked non-democratic decision-making with corruption. We further assume that corruption hampers effective adaptation because part of the money is not used for adaptation at all and because it supports corrupted practices, possibly leading to a vicious cycle increasing both corruption and vulnerability (Transparency International, 2018, p. 2). In addition, corruption might also distort public decision-making towards the interests of those with the ability to bribe – and we assume that these persons are usually not those whose human rights are most threatened. We are not aware of empirical studies on the relationship between corruption and adaptation effectiveness. However, in this respect adaptation finance is very similar to development aid and the literature on corruption and aid effectiveness indicates a negative correlation: While some studies suggest that corruption increases desirable outcomes in certain settings, e.g. by alleviating the distortions caused by ill-functioning institutions (Méon & Weill, 2010), the bulk of recent contributions arrive at the opposite conclusion (e.g. Winters, 2010; Lee, Yang, & Kang, 2016; Smillie, 2017). To what extent these results accurately describe the corruption-effectiveness relationship and apply to the adaptation context remains to be seen (and investigated), but we consider this to be plausible.

In sum, we have argued that democracy makes corruption and bad policy making less likely (we have not argued that it safeguards against such problems). Also note that even if non-democratic governments allow for effective adaptation, the intrinsic argument that stresses the non-instrumental value of political participation remains valid. Citizens are to be recognised as equally worthy moral agents who must be allowed to speak for themselves. The misrecognition of its citizens is an injustice which undermines a government's role as a legitimate trustee of adaptation finance. For these reasons, the extent of democratic decision-making should be considered in the prioritisation of adaptation finance.

### 4.2 Specifying and 'measuring' democracy in SIDS

Just like vulnerability and cost-effectiveness, democracy is a complex concept. To be of use in the distribution of adaptation finance, the degree of democratic decision making somehow needs to be 'measured'. And here one may expect problems very similar to those of measuring vulnerability and cost-effectiveness. This subsection offers a first, tentative discussion of one way to operationalise the criterion via the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Indicators, a rather new approach to conceptualising and measuring democracy.

In the 2018 V-Dem report, the authors develop what they describe as the largest democracy database, with 450 indicators and indices of democracy covering 201 countries from 1789 to 2017 by relying on the expertise of over 3,000 scholars and country experts (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2018; Lührmann et al., 2018). They define democracy according to five core elements, each of them being measured by a different index: the electoral principle, the liberal principle, the egalitarian principle, the participatory principle, and the deliberative principle.

Following our definition of democracy and our justification of this criterion in the adaptation context, we focus here on the egalitarian and the participatory principles. Without some participation in decision-making and basic equality among citizens, citizens cannot voice their interests and concerns as equals in policy discourses (intrinsic reason) and cannot incorporate their ideas and values in the planning process (first instrumental reason). The lack of both aspects also makes corruption more likely, which will hinder planning and implementation of projects and programmes that protect those whose human rights are (most) at risk (second instrumental reason). Participation and basic equality might prevail even if national, regional, or local modes of decision-making in SIDS differ from those in Western liberal democracies. Thus, by focusing on the egalitarian and the participatory principle, the indicators are correlated with the key ideas behind the criterion.

The V-Dem Egalitarian Component Index measures to what extent social groups enjoy political participation according to their ability to make informed voting decisions, to express their opinions, to demonstrate, to run for office, and to influence policymaking. It is particularly interested in the degree of equality of protection of individual rights and freedoms from the state as well as the degree of equality in the distribution of resources to ensure that individuals can have access to the basic necessities enabling them to exercise their rights and freedoms (Sigman & Lindberg, 2015, p. 1). Each component of the index strives to capture these two theoretical dimensions of the egalitarian principle. Indicators used in the Equal Protection subcomponent include equal access to justice, social class equality in respect for civil liberties, and social group equality in respect for civil liberties (Sigman & Lindberg, 2015, p. 10). These measures reflect the extent to which rights and freedoms are applied equally across the population of a given country. Indicators used in the Equal Distribution of Resources subcomponent include educational equality, health equality, and the power distribution according to social groups and gender (Sigman & Lindberg, 2015, p. 11).

A challenge is potential trade-offs between components within the egalitarian index. As Coppedge and colleagues (2018, p. 14) explain, contradictions between and within principles are unavoidable because of democracy's multi-dimensional character. However, strong correlations among the indicators show that there are good grounds for the robustness of the egalitarian index. High degrees of equal distribution of resources and high levels of equality in participation are mutually

reinforcing dynamics, which suggests that the index does measure accurately the egalitarian principle and avoids insurmountable contradictions between its indicators (Sigman & Lindberg, 2015, pp. 14–17).

The V-Dem Participatory Component Index measures active participation by citizens in political processes by focusing on civil society organisations, mechanisms of direct democracy and participation, as well as representation through local and regional governments. The index relies on three arenas of participation: the electoral arena, political parties, and civil society. Each arena is measured by indicators from three dimensions: the institutional context, which refers to the procedures and structures allowing citizens to have opportunities to participate in elections, political parties, or civil society organisations; the organisational context, which asks whether citizens embrace these opportunities; and the cultural dimension, which asks how citizens make use of participation. For instance, indicators measure the degree to which elections are free, fair, and multi-party (first arena), the existence of bans on political parties and the autonomy of opposition parties (second arena), and the freedom to join and exit civil society organisations, the extent to which civil society is repressed, and its role in public policy consultation (third arena). Here again, although the degrees of correlation vary, there are strong correlations among indicators, especially between participation in political parties and in civil society (Fernandes, Cancela, Coppedge, Lindberg, & Hicken, 2015, pp. 21–25).

Despite these strong correlations that contribute to the robustness of the egalitarian and the participatory indices, one should keep in mind that the set of indicators used by V-Dem is not exhaustive. It is comprehensive, but the complex nature of equality and participation resists closure (Coppedge et al., 2018, p. 14).

Having introduced the V-Dem project and two of its indices, we next offer exemplary results on the level of political equality and participation in selected SIDS, briefly discuss how decision-makers can use this information, and comment on limited data availability in the case of SIDS.

Political diversity among SIDS is well illustrated by different levels of democracy. The V-Dem ranking is based on a scale from 0 (very undemocratic) to 1 (very democratic) and there is no threshold for a country to be considered as democratic or undemocratic. For 2017, SIDS that ranked the highest in the egalitarian index were Mauritius (0.67), Cape Verde (0.65), Barbados (0.63), Trinidad and Tobago (0.63), and Suriname (0.62), while SIDS that ranked the lowest were Cuba (0.25), Dominican Republic (0.24), Maldives (0.22), and Papua New Guinea (0.22). Regarding the participatory index, SIDS that ranked the highest were Jamaica (0.56), Suriname (0.53), Mauritius (0.51), and Cape Verde (0.48), while those that ranked the lowest were Maldives (0.2), Fiji (0.17), Singapore (0.14), Cuba (0.07), and Bahrain (0.04).<sup>11</sup>

 <sup>11</sup> We used the "Variable graph" to generate and compare these data: https://www.vdem.net/en/analysis/VariableGraph/.

Equality and participation correlate strongly, indicating that these two essential components of democracy tend to be mutually reinforcing. Countries that score high in the egalitarian index, such as Mauritius, Cape Verde, and Suriname, also score the highest in the participatory index. Likewise, countries that score low in the egalitarian index also tend to score low in the participatory index, as the cases of Maldives and Cuba illustrate. Since the levels of equality and participation have risen since the 1950s in Mauritius, Cape Verde, and Suriname and have kept relatively constant since the 2000s (between 0.62 and 0.72 for the egalitarian index and between 0.48 and 0.56 for the participatory index, if we take into account all three countries), the V-Dem indices also show that there is a certain form of stability in relatively high levels of equality and participation in these countries that cannot be found in countries that are less democratic, such as Maldives and Cuba.

Instead of going into further detail regarding these data, we comment on how to make use of the information provided by the indices in the context of adaptation finance. On the one hand, with V-Dem a sophisticated and robust tool to measure democracy in recipient countries is available. On the other hand, contradictions between and within V-Dem indices remain possible and some arbitrariness in the choice of indicators cannot be fully avoided. For this reason, and not surprisingly, the indices should not be turned into or become part of a distributive formula. But we do think that this information should be considered in decisions regarding the distribution of funding.

Basically, the democracy criterion can play two distinct roles in the context of adaptation finance: it can affect either the modality or the amount of funding provided. In the case of the former, the conditionalities attached to the funding should increase with a decreasing level of democracy. The fewer opportunities for political participation there are, the higher the need to specify and to monitor how funding is used. In the case of latter, funding is reduced as levels of democracy are lower or even withheld in the case of very undemocratic countries. This might be justifiable by reference to highly insufficient available funding and in cases where confidence is low that imposed conditionalities can safeguard effective adaptation. However, poor governance is a driver of vulnerability and many people that are particularly vulnerable to climate change are governed in non-democratic countries. Withdrawal of funding would mean that these people would not benefit from adaptation finance. There are no easy answers on how to deal with this trade-off, unfortunately, and we further investigate the matter in a separate research paper under development (Bourban & Baatz, 2019). How this question is answered also affects whether level of democracy should influence the modality or the amount of funding provided, or both. Therefore, we remain agnostic here regarding which of the two roles the democracy criterion should play.

One problem that V-Dem shares with many other indices is low availability of data. Since comprehensive data are required for measuring its components, and despite its broad coverage of more than 200 countries, many SIDS are not yet covered by V-Dem (see Table 1). This research gap should be closed as soon as

possible to make full use of the democracy criterion and V-Dem respectively. As long as the gap persists, it may be possible to draw on other indicators that have data for these countries, such as the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), especially the "Voice and Accountability" and "Control of Corruption" indices (World Bank, 2018), that cover almost all SIDS. This can make sense if these indicators exhibit strong correlations with V-Dem indices in countries covered by both. Also, if funding agencies have reliable information on the extent of democratic processes, they can use that information, for instance, to tie funding to additional conditionalities or provide more funding to another region/country. When only inconclusive data is available, the democracy criterion needs to be ignored. Whether and how to fund what kinds of adaptation projects in a given region, is then based on all other relevant considerations. For a multi-criteria, non-formulaic approach used by all bi- and multilateral funding agencies, such data gaps are not a fundamental drawback to our argument that considering democracy levels is desirable and in many cases possible.

**Table 1: V-Dem's Coverage of SIDS: UN member SIDS are marked with an asterisk; SIDS eligible to receive official development assistance (ODA) according to UNFCCC (2018) are highlighted in italics.**

Finally note that operationalising democracy as understood here is less difficult than operationalising cost-effectiveness (and possibly even vulnerability). We argued that adaptation benefits are diverse and that avoided DALYs losses and relative income only capture certain types of benefits. Perhaps a comprehensive approach of measuring cost-effectiveness comparable to the V-Dem project might remedy this shortfall. However, a universal cost-effectiveness criterion entails comparisons of things that are difficult to compare (improvements in, say, education, health, and ecosystems) and must rely on predictions of the (long-term) effects of adaptation measures, which are usually marked by substantial uncertainty. In contrast, the democracy criterion requires no such predictions for it checks whether desirable conditions predominate at present. Moreover, while we acknowledge that participation and equality are not easy to 'measure', these notions are less heterogeneous than the concept of adaptation benefits. That is to say, a comprehensive operationalisation of cost-effectiveness would require collecting and aggregating more, and more diverse data than required for the egalitarian and the participatory indices. Thus, although many questions on how to operationalise the democracy criterion are yet to be settled, the task seems less daunting than operationalising the cost-effectiveness criterion and possibly even the vulnerability criterion.

### **5 Conclusion**

International funding to support adaptation projects in SIDS is scarce. To determine who is most entitled to adaptation projects, prioritisation criteria are needed. The most prominent criterion, vulnerability, faces drawbacks and should be complemented by further criteria. Cost-effectiveness could be such a criterion but so far indicators proposed to operationalise it are not suitable and/or are insufficient. Absolute or relative economic savings and avoided losses of DALYs do not capture important adaptation benefits and may reinforce the problematic bias towards hard adaptation measures. Rather than comparing adaptation benefits across projects, universal criteria and associated indicators should show whether the conditions that allow for effective adaptation are present or can be facilitated via funding. The criterion of democracy highly fulfils this function because equal opportunities for participating in collective decision-making increase the likelihood that local knowledge is incorporated into adaptation decisions and reduce the likelihood of corruption and misuse of funding. Moreover, such opportunities enable those entitled to adaptation projects to participate in making decisions about how to adapt, which is intrinsically valuable. In terms of the operationalisation of the criterion, the V-Dem indicators – especially the egalitarian and the participatory indices – seem to present a viable path, although whether and to what extent this claim holds requires more detailed investigation. We want to start rather than close this debate.

### **Acknowledgments**

We would like to thank Michael Fink, Carola Klöck, Andrea Klonschinski, and two anonymous reviewers for their many valuable suggestions on how to improve this paper. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by the Cluster of Excellence 80 "The Future Ocean" (Project CP1771). The Future Ocean is funded within the framework of the Excellence Initiative by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on behalf of the German federal and state governments.

### **Bibliography**

*ruption report: Climate change* (pp. 246–254). London and Washington, DC: Earthscan.

*adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: Global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change* (pp. 869–898). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

## **Sustainable development and climate change adaptation: Goal interlinkages and the case of SIDS 5**

*Michelle Scobie*

The international climate and sustainable development agendas are of particular significance for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are especially vulnerable to climate change impacts. SIDS' government departments are small in size with very limited financial, administrative, and technical resources. Policymakers must manage multiple national and international sustainable development and climate change forums, commitments, and policies. This chapter therefore asks: what framework can be used to integrate and simplify international sustainable development and climate policies? How can SIDS' national policies be integrated into such a framework? And what are the areas where fragmented or disconnected policies exist and (how) can policy fragmentation be reduced? The chapter thus makes three novel contributions to the literature. First, it proposes the use of interlinkages as a tool or framework to integrate climate and sustainable development goals. Second, it tests this approach with St. Lucia's national policy as a case study, finding commonalities but also identifying important differences between international and national goals. Third, it provides empirical evidence of the multiplicity and complexity of climate and sustainable development goals and targets that policymakers of SIDS must attempt to implement. This linkages framework and empirical example can help government agencies and development partners that work with SIDS on sustainable development and/or climate change to more efficiently use limited resources through integrated policy interventions.

Cite this article: Scobie, M. (2019): Sustainable development and climate change adaptation: Goal interlinkages and the case of SIDS. In: Klöck, C. & Fink, M. (eds.): *Dealing with climate change on small islands: Towards effective and sustainable adaptation?* (pp. 101–122). Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1213

### **1 Introduction**

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are located in the Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, and Caribbean Oceans. They share many development challenges. These include small size, remoteness, narrow resource and export base, lack of economies of scale for export industries, economies highly exposed to global markets, heavy dependency on imports, food and energy insecurity, extremely high levels of national debt, high levels of poverty and inequality, and climate change impacts including more frequent and intense natural hazards (CARICOM, 2013). SIDS must manage sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation agendas with limited financial, administrative, and technical resources. Government departments traditionally implement these policies in separate agencies but joint policy development and execution could bring savings to the public purse (Scobie, 2016).

This study examines the problem of thematic and action areas of complexity and fragmentation between the United Nations' 2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs) in general and those related specifically to climate change (SDG13) in relation to SIDS. It offers a helpful framework to locate areas of conceptual and practical convergence between international, regional, and national climate change and sustainable development policies.

SIDS' national sustainable development and climate change policies are formed in part by several international agendas. Beyond the 2015 United Nations SDGs (17 goals and 169 targets) and the 2015 Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), SIDS as a group have had their own sustainable development agendas. Barbados hosted the first UN Global Conference on SIDS' Sustainable Development in 1994 where SIDS developed the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA) – the first SIDS sustainable development roadmap that outlined several development policy areas of special concern for SIDS: limited resources, climate change impacts and sea-level rise, coastal and marine resources, energy resources, freshwater resources, human resource development, management of wastes, capacity building for national institutions and administrations, natural and environmental disasters, regional institution building and technical cooperation, science and technology, tourism, transport, communication, and biodiversity. Since the Barbados Conference, the SIDS' sustainable development agenda has been developed in subsequent UN SIDS conferences. The most recent UN SIDS summit, held in Apia, Samoa in 2014 produced an outcome document, the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway, that highlighted 17 sustainable development thematic and implementation goals and areas, ranging from climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR) to gender equality and sustainable transportation.

SIDS in the BPOA also identified what they considered as pathways or actions for implementing sustainable development goals: capacity building; cooperation in the transfer of environmentally sound technologies; finance; institutional development at the national, regional, and international levels; trade; and economic diversification. SIDS also highlighted the need for partnerships and improved monitoring and accountability (UNGA, 2014).

In addition to this broad level of cooperation across diverse regions, SIDS have region-specific goals and implementation agendas. In 2013, CARICOM, the regional economic integration and functional cooperation organization for fifteen Caribbean SIDS, produced the Kingston Outcome Document – a region-specific preparatory document for the 2014 Samoa summit (CARICOM, 2013). CARICOM also has a 2015-2019 Strategic Plan that addresses areas and action items related to sustainable development and climate change. Perhaps recognising the problem of having a plethora of goals and targets, and in an attempt to rationalise the implementation of multiple priorities, the CARICOM Strategic Plan sought to target, "a narrow range of specified outcomes within specified timeframes, focusing on a few practical and achievable goals" (CARICOM, 2014, p. i). However, even these lists of policy priorities are daunting especially in the context of SIDS' capacity constraints.

Using St. Lucia as a test case, this chapter illustrates where international and regional policy areas intersect with national ones. St. Lucia is an Eastern Caribbean state with a population of about 183,000. Like many Caribbean Islands, St. Lucia suffered a worsening fiscal balance during the 2007/2008 financial crisis. The average fiscal balance for 2004-2013 was -4.9% of GDP. It has a high public debt and a large fiscal deficit. For example, its debt to GDP ratio exceeded the internationally accepted 60% debt sustainability benchmark in 2013. Unemployment is high among youth, who account for over 56% of its population (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a). St. Lucia depended heavily on the export of bananas, and since 2006 that industry has not recovered from the loss of preferential treatment for its bananas in the United Kingdom market after the United States' banana company Chiquita successfully challenged that preferential regime at the World Trade Organisation (Ferguson, 1998; Moberg, 2005).

St. Lucia experiences climate change through increased frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events: higher amounts of rainfall, flooding, extensive landslides, strong winds, drought, rising sea levels and temperatures, damage to infrastructure and housing, loss of life and livelihoods, and increased vector borne diseases including dengue, chikungunya, and zika. The 2009/2010 drought (Taylor, Jones, & Stephenson, 2016) was not an anomaly and the country will face future water deficits that are already a concern for tourism establishments, small farmers, and food security (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. viii). Annual storms and hurricanes affect the private sector, which suffers losses caused by logistical interruptions, resource constrains, and so on (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a). In October 2010, Hurricane Tomas caused damages in excess of US\$ 350 million, or "43.4 percent of Saint Lucia's GDP – nine times its agricultural GDP, three times its tourism GDP, 62 percent of exports of goods and services, 19 percent of its gross domestic investment and 47 percent of its public external debt" (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. viii). St. Lucia will have to adapt to these extreme events and other climate change impacts and climate adaptation policy is integral to the state's development policy.

Climate change mitigation is also part of St. Lucia's climate and development policy. At the time of this study, St. Lucia's climate change and sustainable development goals were contained in the St. Lucia 2015 Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) (of November 17, 2015) and the 2015 Saint Lucia Climate Change Adaptation Policy (Adaptation Policy). Although the island contributes approximately 0.0015% to global emissions (per capita rate of 3.88 tCO2 eq) (Government of St. Lucia, 2015b), it has ambitious climate goals and is committed to lead by example to reduce global emissions (St. Lucia Renewable Energy Roadmap, 2016). Mitigation policies will have important economic co-benefits for St. Lucia's economy: clean energy alternatives can reduce its fuel import bill since it is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To date, however, its climate goals have been difficult to achieve and renewable energy deployment uptake is slow. Renewables are still very costly and the regulatory framework needed to give potential investors security of integration of sustainable energy into the existing power grid is still to be implemented (Scobie, 2019). The expected investment cost (capital finance) of the mitigation targets for 2030 are US\$ 218 million and the government costs (planning, research, policy making, implementing regulations, enforcement, capacity building, public education) are estimated at US\$ 23 million (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. vii).

How do SIDS' policymakers, faced with limited resources and acute economic and environmental vulnerabilities, integrate multiple goals and targets into national policy in a coherent and efficient manner to facilitate policy integration and efficient policy implementation? This chapter addresses this research question in three stages. First, it develops a framework to simplify, integrate, and link the SDGs with SDG13 on climate change. Second, it determines how far international climate and sustainable development policies, as exemplified by the SDGs, accord with national policy for SIDS. Third, it finds the goals and policy areas now framed as standalone action points that facilitate and entrench fragmented or disconnected goals.

Recent studies have sought to find pathways to link policy areas. Some have highlighted linkages between water- and the health-related SDGs (Hall, Ranganathan, & Raj, 2017) or SDG14 for oceans (in particular to avoid overfishing) and the other SDGs (Singh et al., 2018). This paper continues this line of research and makes three novel contributions. First, it identifies the linkages between the SDGs in general and the climate goal specifically and proposes this model of associating the two policy realms as a way to facilitate policy integration. Second, it offers the framework as a lens to relate the international goals to regional and national policy agendas for climate and sustainable development with St. Lucia as a case study. Third, the study provides empirical evidence of the overwhelming multiplicity and complexity of climate and sustainable development goals and targets that policymakers from SIDS must integrate and makes the case for better integration of sustainable development and climate targets in international and national development policy and projects.

### **2 Interlinkages approach to SDGs and climate change**

Finding synergies is important for good governance. The environmental governance literature has sought to understand the synergies, interlinkages, or interconnections between actors, actor interests, and contexts (Ruiz-Mallén, Fernández-Llamazares, & Reyes-García, 2017), goals (Griggs et al., 2014; Måns Nilsson, Griggs, Visbeck, Ringler, & McCollum, 2017; M. Nilsson, Lucas, & Yoshida, 2013), agendas (Roberts, Andrei, Huq, & Flint, 2015), and policy domains or approaches (Boas, Biermann, & Kanie, 2016a; Reed, Van Vianen, Deakin, Barlow, & Sunderland, 2016). Interlinkages, interconnections, synergies, and so on refer to the relationships between factors, their overlap, similarity, and causational elements. Studies that try to highlight the interlinkages or areas of commonality between policy areas are useful to identify, for example, possible compatibility (Ribas, Lucena, & Schaeffer, 2017), or co-benefits (von Stechow et al., 2016), or to avoid unwanted impacts from actions in one sector or by one group of actors. Several studies have set the foundation for this chapter through the analysis of specific SDGs from thematic and implementation perspectives. Thematic studies have explored commonalities between related goals (Griggs et al., 2014; Måns Nilsson et al., 2017), examining how particular goals relate to or are integrated with each other (Le Blanc, 2015), such as water, food, and energy (Ringler et al., 2016; Yillia, 2016); nutrition and agriculture (Shingirai & Happy, 2017); water and health (Hutton & Chase, 2016); health and development (Janardhan, 2016); and women's empowerment and education (Zhang, Prouty, Zimmerman, & Mihelcic, 2016). Others point to the apparent dissonance and trade-offs between development goals and climate change mitigation in specific areas such as energy security (Wagner, Ross, Foster, & Hankamer, 2016), sustainable energy (von Stechow et al., 2016), poverty alleviation (Nelson, Lemos, Eakin, & Lo, 2016), dependence on fossil fuels and carbon neutrality and economic growth (Schandl et al., 2016), and climate and development policy (Reed et al., 2016; von Stechow et al., 2016).

Some studies have focused on implications for implementing the SDG goals: climate adaptation and development policy in developing states (Lamb, 2016; Sherman et al., 2016); the SDGs' transformative power for economic, climate, and social justice policy (Koehler, 2016); and the reduced effectiveness of SDGs implementation processes because of insufficient focus on ecological and relational inclusive development when compared with social development (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016). Others have focused on specific actions, such as landscape approaches to social and environmental goals (Reed et al., 2016); the use of economic growth and technology as tools for SDG implementation (Salleh, 2016); global governance approaches to integrate the SDGs development agencies with the global financial

system (Radermacher, 2016); reform towards a common agenda for global institutions through a nexus approach that mirrors the interrelatedness of the SDGs (Boas, Biermann, & Kanie, 2016b); the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships in sustainability policy domains such as climate change, health, and biodiversity (Pattberg & Widerberg, 2016); or the relevance of household-level interventions for food, energy, water, or health (Toole, Klocker, & Head, 2016). Finally, some studies have questioned the value of related actions: regarding whether an integrated sustainable development multi-sectoral approach could achieve desired outcomes (Nordbeck & Steurer, 2016) and the unwanted consequences of maladaptive responses to climate change for sustainable development (Magnan et al., 2016). States should be wary of implementing climate policy independently of other sustainable development policies. The SDG and climate agendas have cobenefits but may also lead to unwanted consequences. In some cases, 2 °C pathways for emission reduction that include, for example, increased use of bioenergy may not be socially optimal since those pathways may negatively affect local food security, some types of livelihoods, water security, biodiversity, and so on (von Stechow et al., 2016). Similarly, adaptation measures such as building sea walls to protect low-lying areas against storm surges caused by rising sea levels may be maladaptive actions that destroy coastal ecosystems, swamps, marshlands, and biodiversity (see also Nunn & McNamara, this volume). Other papers have addressed ways towards effective climate policymaking and implementation such as my own studies on policy coherence and on accountability in climate policy in Caribbean SIDS (Scobie, 2016, 2017).

This study follows along the lines of earlier environmental governance research, by searching for interlinkages between goals, but is geographically broader since it addresses international to national scales, as well as thematically richer, since it examines the climate change goal in the context of all the SDGs, as well as the implementation pathways chosen by states to achieve these goals. This is arguably the first study that focuses on SIDS and the complex universe of climate and sustainable development policies at the international, regional, and national levels that SIDS' policy implementers manage. It is the first or among the first to use the interlinkages approach to find areas of thematic compatibility between SDG13 on climate change and sustainable development goals more generally. With SIDS as its context, its premise is that the resource constraints of small states make policy integration more of an imperative. The intention of the study is to help remedy climate policy coherence weaknesses by identifying points of compatibility (and dissonance) between two related agendas. It is a good framework to help policymakers and implementers avoid fragmentation in policy development. This may reduce the problem of overlaps and duplication of financial, administrative, and technical resources – particularly acute in development policy in SIDS (Scobie, 2016).

### **3 Methodology**

This chapter highlights the areas where there are thematic interlinkages between the SDGs in general and specifically those related to climate change – a subset of the SDGs. The analysis also highlights what states have considered to be means or pathways to implementation, detailed in the international and national policy documents listed above and illustrated in Figure 1 below. Admittedly, several of the areas that states have listed as "means of implementation" for climate and sustainable development policy can also be found under the list of goals or targets either in the same or other documents. This division between goals and means of implementation used by states is replicated in this paper because it is this framework that national policymakers apply for their own policy formulation.

St. Lucia is used as a case study for the second stage of the research: how far does international policy accord with regional and national policy for SIDS. A content analysis was undertaken of four of the main SIDS' climate change and sustainable development agendas as well as St. Lucia's national policy documents. These documents include the 2014 SAMOA Pathway, the 2013 Kingston Outcome Document (regional outcome document for the UN Samoa summit), the 2014 CARICOM Strategic Plan, the CARICOM Climate Change Implementation Plan, and finally St. Lucia's climate and sustainable development policies. Data on the policies for St. Lucia was obtained from the 2015 St. Lucia Adaptation Policy and its 2015 INDC submission to the UNFCCC. Caribbean climate change implementation plans were taken, for the purposes of this study, from two key documents: the Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change (CCCCC, 2009) and its Implementation Plan (CCCCC, 2012).

One of the challenges of governance research in the global south and the Caribbean in particular, is the limited publicly available data on government policy and on project implementation. To address this gap in data, interviews were conducted in 2016 and 2017 with St. Lucia's experts directly involved in climate change and sustainable development policy. These interviews, conducted with ten senior government officials and five leaders of the private sector in St. Lucia, were conducted on the condition of anonymity. The open-ended interviews were helpful for providing guidance on how policies were being conceived and implemented. The small sample size is proportionate to the population (approximately 183,000). Respondents knew each other and reported similar challenges in policy formulation and implementation.

Finally, the research uses the interconnections or interlinkages approach as a pathway to overcome the problematic fragmented or disconnected goals in policy documents. To do this, the framework was used to identify the areas where goals in international, regional, and national policy documents could be integrated (see Figure 1, Table 1, and Table 2). The tables were created using a content analysis of the documents in Figure 1. First, the study found the areas of possible policy synergies between the targets of SDG13 and all the goals and targets of the other 16

###

###

 ' –– Lucia's policy and where the latt not prominent in the international frameworks. Obviously not all international goals have local relevance but where SIDS national goals are not aligned with the international agenda, there may be less attention and funding available from the international institutions for those local goals. Where possible, and for this reason, it is in the interest of SIDS to align their national agendas to global ones.

**Table 1: Thematic links between SDG13, the other SDGs, and regional and national policy**

*Notes*: \*\*References to similar policies and goals are absent.

Table 1 illustrates the thematic interconnections between SDG13 and the remaining climate and sustainable development policy documents that form the basis of SIDS' policy: the SAMOA Pathway, the 2013 Kingston Outcome Document, and the CARICOM Strategic Plan. Highlighted with the two asterisks (\*\*) are the areas where references to similar policies are missing when comparing international, regional, and national goals and objectives.

All SDGs and 55 of their targets are related to SDG13 and its targets. For example, the climate goal is linked to SDG1 on poverty alleviation, specifically targets 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, and 2. Although the study produced a detailed mapping of the SDGs' interlinkages with SDG13, this was not reproduced here in the interest of space. While the SDGs divide objectives into "goals" and "targets", the CARICOM Strategic Plan refers to multiple "goals" and "objectives" for each of its strategic priorities. At the national level, St. Lucia's adaptation and mitigation targets are linked to at least ten of the SDGs including improved quality of life and poverty alleviation – two areas most affected by hurricanes. St. Lucia's INDC highlights six policy goals or areas, all linked to sustainable development: energy demand and electricity generation; transportation; agriculture and fisheries; waste; land use/land use change and forestry; industrial processes; and a wide general category (including governance, education, and national policy development).

St. Lucia's INDC recognises the close connection between climate change mitigation and sustainable development: "the best way to address climate change impacts is by integrating adaptation measures into sustainable development strategies", and "adaptation [disaster risk preparedness] measures are conducive to sustainable development, even without the connection with climate change" (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. 5). The majority of SIDS' development goals are related to the international SDGs and climate change agendas, with a few exceptions. Notably, SIDS did not directly address SDG10 (equality between countries) or SDG11 (cities). SIDS thematic goals are strongly weighted towards attention given to the impacts of natural hazards, waste management, and organisational and institutional efficiency. SIDS view sustainable development as directly related to reducing and managing environmental vulnerability. Natural hazards affect the economy, the environment, and the society. The high levels of poverty mean that limited resources are available to address basic needs. SIDS' economies take longer to recover since the infrastructure and sectors upon which SIDS' narrow export bases depend are usually destroyed. Institutional change and comprehensive infrastructure and waste and water management in these contexts require sustainable financing but most financed projects are pilot projects that operate on time scales that are short compared to what these islands need to make the projects sustainable. The war on crime, which may be linked to SDG16 (peaceful societies), has become one of the Caribbean SIDS' development hurdles. Climate change impacts contribute to unemployment, poverty, and weakened social services, which leads to social exclusion, youth unemployment, and higher incidence of crime. Caribbean SIDS are particularly vulnerable to crime since they are geographically located between the southern suppliers and northern consumers of illicit drugs and are affected by the illicit narcotics trade of transnational crime (UNODC, 2012).

### 4.2 Implementation policies

The previous section illustrated the thematic interlinkages between the sustainable development and climate change agendas at international to national levels. This section does the same for the implementation agendas as defined by states. Although it is difficult to draw a clear line between key sustainable development and climate change goals and their implementation pathways, states have often separated goals from implementation pathways, either as sections of a single document, as in the SAMOA Pathway, or in two separate international processes and outcome documents, as with the SDGs and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA). The linkages are illustrated in Table 2. Highlighted with the two asterisks (\*\*) are the areas where references to similar policies are missing when comparing international, regional, and national agendas.

*Note*: \*\*References to similar policies and goals are absent.

The AAAA was the outcome document of the 2015 Addis Ababa Third International Conference on Financing for Development. It is a global framework for financing sustainable development that aligns financing flows and policies with economic, social, and environmental priorities. At the level of SIDS, the 2014 SAMOA Pathway outlined SIDS' action agenda for sustainable development just one year earlier and some of these pathways were also reflected in the AAAA. SIDS focused on seven areas: partnerships, financing, trade, capacity building, technology, data and statistics, and institutional strengthening. The 2013 Kingston Outcome Document includes a roadmap entitled "Strengthening the Implementation Framework", with 21 action areas related to sustainable development and climate change that overlapped in some areas with the SAMOA Pathway. Interestingly, Caribbean states also include some different implementation priorities: debt management, expansion of concessionary financing for SIDS, and the importance of financial agencies' reclassifying Caribbean SIDS (many now classed as high- or medium-income countries) to low-income countries. Caribbean SIDS argue that existing classifications ignore their levels of income inequality, economic and climatic precariousness and vulnerability and bars their countries' access to development financing.

The 2013 Kingston Outcome Document identified five implementation pathways towards sustainable development – all are linked to the region's climate change agenda. St. Lucia's national policy documents did not distinguish between goals and actions. The Adaptation Policy outlines three adaptation pathways that it calls "measures" or future outputs: facilitation, implementation, and financing.

Understandably SIDS' implementation pathways focus on financing for climate policy and sustainable development policy. Sustainable financing for environmental projects in SIDS has lacked continuity for several reasons. A policy may be terminated when a new political party is elected and discontinues a programme or when political will wanes (Scobie, 2016). Many SIDS continue to depend upon external project funding often available only through pilot or time-limited projects. Development programmes are often shaped by the requirements of external funding agencies and interventions lapse when the funding is exhausted. St. Lucia notes this funding trap: "There is a gradual recognition that the current situation of financial support for climate change action in Saint Lucia – characterized by a large number of international funds with complex administrative processes, minimal transparency or accountability, and conflicting mandates that do not always address or respond to Saint Lucia's concerns or priorities – is untenable" (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. 18). To remedy this problem, the Adaptation Policy focused on local and sustainable funding by involving the private sector in adaptation financing. All policy documents in Table 2 address the need to mobilise domestic resources. SIDS also continue to emphasise international support (partnerships, private investment, funding from developed states) as a *sine qua non* for policy implementation. In the SAMOA Pathway this is framed in the language of "partnerships" between the state and other (wealthier) actors. The Kingston Outcome Document suggests that private funding is helpful for "encouraging investment" in technology development.

Table 2 also highlights areas of notable disconnect between international and SIDS agendas. SIDS' access to concessionary financing is contentious and while addressed in their policy documents, this issue is not reflected in the AAAA. Although international goals and action agendas do not have to incorporate all priorities of particular states or groups of states, it is remarkable that the international or global agenda is silent on an issue that Caribbean SIDS consider central to achieving their climate and sustainable development objectives.

### 4.3 Discussion on interlinkages

The overview of climate and sustainable development goals and targets – from international to national – shows many areas of convergence, but also some areas of divergence in the case of SIDS. The interlinkages approach is helpful for uncovering the thematic links between international, regional, and national climate and sustainable development goals. The climate SDG13 is linked to all of the remaining 16 SDGs and to 55 of the 169 SDG targets. Several (at least 18) SIDS development goals are also linked to SDG13. At the Caribbean level, there are links between at least 11 of the regional development priorities and SDG13 (6 of the Kingston Outcome Document and 5 of the Strategic Plan goals) (CCCCC, 2009, 2012). This framework or interlinkages approach also reveals areas of divergence where international goals have no related area of focus for SIDS, such as DRR and crime.

There are many commonalities between what states have identified as implementation agendas. At least eight action points for the AAAA are linked to goals in the SAMOA Pathway. Perhaps the most striking point of divergence is the issue of access to finance. Caribbean SIDS share a "twin resource mobilization problem": limited possibilities to mobilise both domestic and external funding (Bourne, Alexander, Conrad, & Jhinkoo, 2015) and Caribbean SIDS struggle to attract regular flows of foreign direct investment. St. Lucia's Adaptation Policy states that its execution is in part predicated on external financing: "the success of the CCAP will be dependent on national budgetary contributions, as well as support from regional agencies and programs and international donor and financial institutions" (Government of St. Lucia, 2015a, p. 17). Most Caribbean SIDS are now classed as upper-middle-income countries although they continue to struggle with the vulnerabilities and challenges that all SIDS have to achieve social and economic development and to adapt to climate change. Their debt service obligations reduce fiscal capacity for capital investment and economic growth. The Kingston Outcome Document prioritises the reclassification of SIDS to low-income states so that they may have access to concessionary financing. The World Bank's allocation to Caribbean States is small and has been decreasing. Overseas development assistance has also decreased as aid has shifted to low-income and post-conflict nations (Bourne et al., 2015). Within this context, it is understandable that Caribbean SIDS would include their reclassification to low-income countries, for the purpose of concessionary financing, as a priority and it is significant that the issue is not reflected in the international action agendas.

Another notable finding from the table is the way SIDS have framed some of their traditional challenges to suit new international agendas. Policymakers interviewed for this paper lamented but confirmed that SIDS have had to reframe their development priorities in the language of, or to concord with, the international goals, in order to tap into the international funding streams associated with these international goals. For example, SIDS' tourism and agricultural sectors have always suffered from natural hazards such as flooding or storms that predate climate change. For these states, DRR and resilience have greater national priority. However, framing DRR as climate resilience concords better with the international climate adaptation agenda and allows SIDS to tap into climate funding. Similarly, St. Lucia's climate policy includes mitigation although the island's carbon footprint is minimal. Specifically, St. Lucia's economy will benefit from reduced fuel import costs and lower economic exposure to fluctuations in global fuel prices. This economic policy is framed, also for the purposes of obtaining international funding and technical support, as a mitigation goal related to clean energy production and an SDG related to energy security.

SIDS do not mention equality between countries (SDG10) among their sustainable development targets. Their references to comparisons between countries refer to their special needs for financing and capacity building for sustainable development. In addition, SIDS have not addressed safe, resilient, and sustainable cities (SDG11) and this may be because of scalar realities: few SIDS have the sustainability challenges of larger urban populations (Mycoo & Donovan, 2017). Urbanisation for SIDS can relate to a small town connected by villages along the coast, or on a single island state and SIDS need not separate urbanisation as a separate sustainable development challenge (UN-HABITAT, 2015). Singapore's entire population (5.1 million) and most of Puerto Rico's (3.7 million out of 3.74 million), for instance, are urban. Of the 49 remaining SIDS, few have urban populations over 1 million people: Dominican Republic (7.0 million), Cuba (8.5 million), Bahrain (1.2 million), Haiti (5.4 million), and Jamaica (1.4 million). In each case, all major cities within the state are included in this calculation of urban populations (UN-HABITAT, 2015). Also on the point of divergence, SIDS generally gave less priority to SDG16 (peaceful and inclusive societies), although, as discussed above, crime and regional security were mentioned in the CARICOM Strategic Plan (UNODC, 2012).

### **5 Conclusion**

This study points to the links between several areas of international and national climate and sustainable development policy, goals, and targets. The implementation strategies are listed in policy documents as separate goals and action items that are then the responsibility of separate international and national agencies responsible for implementation. The UN's 34 funds, programmes, and specialised agencies reflect these thematic goals or targets and institutionally entrench them through their streams of development cooperation to SIDS. In practice, SIDS' national agencies, structured around the goals and targets of the SDGs, compete for an always shrinking pot of development funds. Separate implementation of goals by agencies when, as this study exemplifies, the goals are interlinked, leads to a duplication of efforts and the inefficient use of scarce resources that SIDS can ill afford (Helgason, 2016; Scobie, 2016).

Alternatively, and using this framework, any action, for example on SDG1 (poverty alleviation), should involve departments in government working on poverty alleviation (Kingston Outcome Document goal), poverty reduction (CARICOM Strategic Plan), DRR (SAMOA Pathway), and climate change (SDG13). Projects should be co-created and jointly implemented by public and private stakeholders in the related areas (Scobie, 2016) – always linking these goals and the many sub-goals and targets under each heading in the framework table (detailed in the documents mentioned above). Similarly, departments working on SDG8 (inclusive economic growth) should work with all departments and stakeholders working on climate change, but also with those working to reduce the impacts of extreme events (St. Lucia Climate Policy goal) on innovation and entrepreneurship and sustainable economic growth (CARICOM goal), tourism (Kingston Outcome Document), and decent work (SAMOA Pathway).

There is also scope, using the table, to link some of these policy and implementation areas to departments and stakeholders working on other SDGs related to SDG8 and climate change. There are linkages between the inclusive economic growth goal (SDG8) and equitable and universal energy access (Kingston Outcome Document goal), and departments working on energy can develop joint projects with those on inclusive economic growth. In the cases where the national or regional goal is not also a goal at the international level – like the CARICOM goal on the need to address crime and regional security – to obtain international funding and technical assistance, departments working on that goal, would then have to find ways to link that goal with other related SDGs. Since SDG16 (on peaceful and inclusive societies), to which the CARICOM goal on crime may be linked, is also linked to climate change, CARICOM states can then leverage the importance of climate policy to help to avoid some of the societal weaknesses exacerbated by climate impacts – such as poverty and poor social services – to SDG16 to leverage funding associated with climate change and SDG16 for the CARICOM goal on crime.

More recently, St. Lucia created an institutional structure to facilitate collaboration on climate change and the framework of this paper can assist in establishing areas of joint interest and action among agencies. Saint Lucia's National Adaptation Plan (NAP) 2018-2028 (published after the study was completed) signalled the creation of a National Climate Change Committee – comprised of representatives from ministries of sustainable development, agriculture, physical planning, health, education, tourism, finance, infrastructure, national insurance, national conservation, electricity, solid waste management, air and sea ports, water and sewage, and the bankers association – to improve institutional coordination between the government agencies that manage climate related goals. Interview partners noted that the success of such cross-departmental efforts depends on the willingness of departments to share information and resources and to allow other agencies to lead on international financing projects. According to Caribbean policymakers, although in some government departments such a collaborative culture exists, in many others it is lacking unless specific funding and performance targets are introduced (Scobie, 2016).

This chapter illustrates where there are linkages between climate goals and the SDGs at international to national levels with St. Lucia as an example, while showing areas of convergence and divergence and the challenging complexity and multiplicity of goals. In doing so it responds to calls in the literature to identify nexus points in development approaches (Boas et al., 2016a). By identifying the areas of connection between the SDGs and climate change, the study offers policymakers a framework to approach international, regional, and national climate change and development policy more holistically in policy formulation.

International funding and development assistance are managed through separate UN agencies that are structured along the lines of the SDGs. SIDS policymakers struggle to implement multiple targets and goals that they have committed to at international and regional forums. They have limited resources and the handicap of economic and environmental vulnerability that reduce their control over future income and future expenditure. The national ministries or agencies of government often replicate the thematic divisions of the SDGs and independently implement policies that have the potential to achieve several SDGs. It is up to policy implementers to recognise the interrelationships if they are to use resources more efficiently and St. Lucia's National Climate Change Committee is a promising example of an institutional structure that may facilitate this. For SIDS policymakers and their development partners and committees like the St. Lucia Climate Change Committee, the frameworks presented in the tables of this chapter are tools for policymaking and implementation since they immediately signal the otherwise separate development goals and potentially can more readily help identify how several sustainable development and climate goals can be achieved though one policy intervention.

### **Bibliography**

Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Ferguson, J. (1998). A case of bananas. *Geographical Journal 70*(1), 49–52.

Government of St. Lucia. (2015a). *The Saint Lucia climate change adaptation policy*. Castries, St. Lucia: Government of St. Lucia.

## **Adaptation planning in Caribbean Small Island Developing States: A literature review 6**

*Adelle Thomas*

Planned adaptation has been recognised as essential to address the implications of climate change for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Many SIDS have developed national, sub-national, and sectoral adaptation plans. The Caribbean Climate Risk and Adaptation Tool (CCORAL) has been developed and utilised broadly throughout the region to guide practitioners in adaptation planning. This chapter utilises the CCORAL framework of adaptation planning to develop the concept of an adaptation planning cycle. It uses this conceptualisation as a framework to assess academic literature focused on Caribbean SIDS that aligns with different aspects of the adaptation planning cycle. Through this exercise, the strengths and gaps in existing peer-reviewed literature are identified in order to inform future research needed to assist in adaptation planning for the region.