Sustainable development of Small Island Developing States
- Submission status
- Open
- Submission deadline
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are a diverse group of developing countries recognized by the United Nations as being at the frontline of climate change. Due to their geographic location and concentration of population and human activities in the coastal zone, they are limited in developing indigenous solutions. SIDS are highly exposed to natural disasters and sea level rise, which can have devastating socio-economic consequences. This vulnerability is exacerbated by small economies that rely almost exclusively on agriculture, fisheries and eco-tourism, sectors that are themselves highly dependent on the environmental conditions. Because of their small land masses and populations, their remoteness, limited resources, and technical capacity, they are more vulnerable to economic, environmental and social shocks as they cannot benefit from economies of scale. Multidisciplinary solutions to promote resilience and the capacity to predict and mitigate the consequences of natural and manmade disasters are, therefore, of utmost importance for these populations.
This Collection invites original research supporting the sustainable development of SIDS, from agriculture and fisheries to biodiversity conservation, including digitalization of primary sectors and technological advances promoting growth and development of these states.
This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 1, SDG 8, SDG 9, SDG 10, SDG 11, SDG 14 and SDG 15.
Editors
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Swadhin Kumar Behera
Application Laboratory, Research Institute for Value Added Information Generation, JAMSTEC, Japan
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Hector Martin
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
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Hamed Moftakhari
The University of Alabama, USA
Swadhin Behera is a Director at the Application Laboratory at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth 
Science and Technology and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Ocean, Technology, Policy, and Environment at the University of Tokyo. Also, he is the chair of the West Pacific and Marginal Seas of South and East Asia Regional Team. He is well-known for his research in ocean and climate variations, especially for his discoveries and seminal works on Indian Ocean Dipole, Indian Ocean Subtropical Dipole, El Nino Modoki, and Ningaloo Nino. He has also done impactful research to show the impacts of these phenomena and developed global coupled models for their predictions and societal applications. Dr Behera has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2022.
Hector Martin is a Civil Engineer lecturing in Construction Project Management and 
Building Information Modelling at Queen’s University Belfast. His interest is in processes and practices to improve the built environment, small island developing states' resilience, and decision-making in Engineering. Dr Martin has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2023.
Hamed Moftakhari is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil, 
Construction and Environmental Engineering, in The University of Alabama. His research interests are in the area of coastal hydrology, and involves multi-hazard risk analysis, management and modeling. He explores how the interaction between inland hydrologic processes and coastal ocean processes would affect resources in the low-lying coastal regions, and how the response of affected communities would mitigate/intensify the impacts. Dr Moftakhari has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2020.
