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The policy brief discusses key principles for economic re-development in island contexts after a natural disaster, drawing from extensive experience in the U.S Virgin Islands. 

The transportation sector is a major contributor to the global release of greenhouse gases. Electric vehicles have been widely accepted in the automobile industry, and will continue to become more popular. Island societies are the perfect locations to try to entirely transition to EVs. Their small surface area gives for less range anxiety, while their smaller population allows for the entire population to accept EVs more quickly. There is also higher potential for renewable energy on islands. In order to successfully carry out this type of major transition, there must be some proactive policy in place. Encouraging people to buy EVs through incentives and avoiding any negating policy is essential to convince the population to make this transition.

Mauritius – a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean – has faced its first major ecological disaster in 2020 with an oil spill catastrophe. In 2019, another similar disaster occurred in Rennell Island in the Pacific. In this policy brief, we document the oil disaster in Mauritius and discuss the lessons learnt for SIDS.

This Policy Brief follows the discussions of two online workshops the Island Policy Lab conducted in 2020. The webinars received speakers from different fields – academics, think-tanks, governmental officials and analysts from intergovernmental organizations – and discussed innovation and technology acquisition and implementation issues in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as well as ways to improve efforts for SIDS to get access to newer technologies.

Small island jurisdictions present unique circumstances and challenges to designing and implementing environmental regulatory systems to protect their ecological, geophysical, and natural resources. These systems, initiated over the last two decades continue evolving from their base legislative mandates, to accommodate increasingly complex environmental challenges such as climate change and pressures from physical development, population growth, and industrial intensification. Central to these systems are the executing agencies that implement, monitor, and enforce regulations. These agencies face manpower and technical capacity challenges, transparency questions, and more recently increasing legal challenges as they operate. Few deliberate regulatory analysis studies have been undertaken in islands so it is difficult to ascertain how effective they actually are. That said, many studies do allude to aspects of regulatory effectiveness by way of recognizing if intended environmental outcomes are realized and if measurable inputs to the regulatory effort are made. In large part, our understanding of how to design and implement formal regulatory systems in small islands is weak because it is masked within broader constructs of governance and institutions. Regulatory theory and practice, therefore, have much to gain from future studies in this area.

This study uses the LEAP–OSeMOSYS modeling tool to examine exploratory decarbonization scenarios in the U. S Virgin Islands (USVI). The method combines quantitative modeling of data gathered from utilities and power generators with qualitative information gathered through engagement with experts and diverse business and civil society stakeholder. The results show the effects of two utility scale energy systems – on the islands of St Thomas /St John and St Croix – and future optimized capacity addition with solar, liquefied petroleum gas and wind, whereby renewable energy targets can be achieved over time. Results are also modelled for electric vehicle deployment over time, on the islands. The models take into consideration the effects of extreme weather event impacts on electricity demand; and electric vehicles deployment on the grid, where grid destabilization is a potential risk. These findings can serve as inputs for updating comprehensive island energy strategies in the USVI to meet carbon emissions reduction goals.

Tourism resembles an indispensable source for financing national development and securing local livelihoods in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with their sun-sea-sand tourism. Related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions counteract sectoral development as climate impacts have begun to severely reduce the attractiveness of destinations. This is valid especially for disaster-prone SIDS where slow and rapid onsetting phenomena and severe, frequent weather events are already experienced, increasingly putting tourist assets, infrastructure, local livelihoods and unique biodiversity under pressure. Against this background, this review synthesizes the recent climate change and tourism literature relating to main SIDS regions, highlighting what is at risk. The authors provide latest evidence of the role tourism plays for these islands and elaborate the peculiar climate risks, impacts and consequences for tourism development. The current state of adaptation is explored and research priorities in SIDS regions are highlighted. Whereas SIDS show high mitigation ambition, the significance of CO₂emissions along the value chain and especially related to the transport to SIDS destinations remains a problem that developed nations must address in their national emission reduction plans. Further research at the interface of climate change and tourism is needed, contributing to the decarbonisation of tourism and successful adaptation in SIDS.

Small Island States present features, such as compact road networks, low com- muter distances, and often large tourism service sectors, that could make the adoption of electric vehicles for transportation which is an attractive way to reduce their costly dependence on imported fossil fuel and their greenhouse gas emissions. Through the transition theory lens, we review the national pol- icy measures and broad clean transportation targets that small island countries are implementing to encourage electric mobility deployment. From informa- tion compiled for 18 small island countries, we find a growing trend in electric vehicle and infrastructure development incentives among broader clean trans- portation transformation policies and nationally determined contribution tar- gets; and large country-to-country variations in enabling conditions to smoothen EV transition. Small island countries are not uniform but instead are very dispersed across the transition S-curve. The review, therefore, finds that the mobility transition requires island-specific approaches and solutions that will accentuate critical policy and management elements for fostering transitions.

The Eastern Caribbean chain of islands is commonly known to exhibit high-enthalpy systems for geothermal energy exploitation. The northernmost Caribbean Community member state of Jamaica possesses physical manifestations of 12 hot springs across the island. Previous investigations indicate that of the potential 12 hot springs, Bath, Windsor and Milk River springs have cogent geothermometry of their thermal fluids with estimated temperature ranges of (80–102°C), (128–156°C), and (158–206°C), respectively. The paper provides numerical findings for each geothermal system of interest and performs Monte Carlo simulations to optimize calculated findings. The determined quantitative findings are considered under the context of environmental savings and policy regime conditions for driving geothermal energy development. The three areas of interest are situated within the Rio Minho Basin, the Dry Harbour Mountains and the Blue Mountain South Basin. Through the consideration of a 25-year lifetime for production, a collective total of 94.81 MWe of geothermal power reserves can be absorbed into the national energy mix, displacing an estimated 0.38 million barrels of oil imports, resulting in approximately 0.44 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions being avoided per year.

Energy efficiency and conservation policy continues to take the proverbial “backseat” to energy access and renewable energy policy discourses in small island developing states (SIDS). In this study, we intend to motivate the energy efficiency policy agenda to encourage more action. To do so, we review the current energy challenges in SIDS and the role of energy efficiency in addressing those challenges, discuss the trends in the rate of improvement in energy efficiency in SIDS, exhibit an updated list of energy efficiency programs and initiatives being implemented in SIDS, consider barriers to energy efficiency implementation and set forth a policy-focused plan to accelerate action. Barriers for the adoption of energy efficiency policies continue to be institutional and policy- and governance-oriented; economic and financial; informational; and technical. A four-pronged policy advancement approach tackling initiation, incentivization, information and investment is recommended to tap the potential gains from energy efficiency. We attempt here, based on our findings, to offer a more practically executable plan of action, focusing squarely on combining institutional arrangements, policy requirements and current energy efficiency affairs in SIDS.

The energy security of each Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member state is a key issue specifically addressed based on the energy demands of each nation. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has the potential to strengthen its energy sector through the exploitation of immense untapped natural geothermal resources. Currently, SVG is planning to integrate base load power through a 10 Megawatt-electric (MWe) geothermal power plant (GPP1). The paper aims to highlight a detailed resource assessment profile of the renewables across SVG and the projected benefits of the proposed 10 MWe geothermal power potential, such as the positive economic development (displacing 149,000 bbls of crude oil), and the transition to a more climate-sensitive nation (displacing an estimated 0.172 million tCO₂e/year). In addition, a volumetric method (Monte Carlo simulations) has been applied to reveal that the geothermal reservoir can sustain a minimum of 31 MWe, 34 MWe and 92 MWe over the lifespan of 25–30 years, for well 1 (SVG01), well 2 (SVG02) and well 3 (SVG03) respectively. Given the findings of the assessment and simulations, several policy approaches are identified as potential means of enhancing geothermal resource development and leveraging the resource for the islands’ sustainable energy demands. These include incentivization for public-private partnerships, information certainty, regulatory processes, and strengthened institutions.

Environmental health departments in the Caribbean continue to contend with environmental determinants of health related to an increasingly complex array of challenges, including climatic change, disasters, pollution, bioterrorism, and global pandemics. Building the human resource capacity to meet these challenges requires access to modernized, context-relevant training, especially for environmental health inspectors who interface with the public. This study focuses on the standardized Three-Step training program delivered by education institutions across the Caribbean, which is the primary training required by ministries of health for entry into the environmental health inspectorate. A total of 22 focus groups were completed in five countries—Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago—with 94 participants drawn from the education institutions delivering training and the inspectors who have received the training. Findings suggest: program strengths in core academic content; weaknesses in faculty experts to deliver advanced subjects; opportunities for enhancing field-training experiences in collaboration with ministries; and threats to program survival due to bottlenecks in public sector hiring that reduce the attractiveness of entering the profession. Interestingly, academic trainers and practitioners differ on the importance of certain knowledge sets, such as legal and court procedural skills and epidemiological data analysis. As ministries of health in these countries contemplate ways to modernize the inspectorates, these findings can guide how ministries and education institutions work together to modernize the Three-Step training program.

The integrated regional energy policy and planning (IREPP) framework was devised to evaluate the feasibility of energy policies in meeting declared national targets. While the framework advances the comprehensiveness of the feasibility assessment by bringing in concepts like environment economic equity, the muted way in which institutional factors and capacity are addressed remains weak and ineffective. Here, we corrected this weakness by presenting an IREPP framework that is enhanced by integrating principles of the institutional assessment and design (IAD) framework. The IAD framework emphasizes the careful consideration of contextual factors, it draws attention to the full range of transaction costs, and does not presume a priori that one type of institutional arrangement. This IREPP-IAD framework was used to evaluate the feasibility of energy policies in three different island jurisdictions—Taiwan, Mauritius, and Trinidad and Tobago. With ambitious national targets, these islands are good testing grounds for this updated approach. Through qualitative comparative case study analysis, several institutional factors were found to play an influence if national energy policies are likely to meet set targets. These factors included: government/policy decision makers and the decision/policymaking environment; governance structure and commitment for energy policy; existing policy instruments and tools that are in play and those planned; polycentricity; stakeholder participation and community building; market dynamics; information transparency; pilot programs and technology innovations/research; compliance or responsibilities under the Paris Accord; grid connectivity and monitoring of the policy implementation progress. This study contributes in two ways. First, by providing a more robust framework for assessing institutional arrangements that moderate how energy policies are implemented and second, providing insightful assessments of the energy policies in three island jurisdictions, thereby increasing our understanding of island energy policymaking and implementation in these understudied geographies.

Island systems have limited geographical, ecological, and social capacity to metabolize waste materials produced by the economic activities of their growing populations. Conceptualized as a ‘wicked problem’, the faults and weaknesses in waste management systems on islands continue to cause acute and cumulative ecological and human health impacts. Trinidad and Tobago is one such island jurisdiction grappling with this situation, particularly being a petroleum-dependent economy. Through the lens of neo-institutional theory, this case study of waste management in Trinidad and Tobago unpacks the efforts, reactions, drivers and circumstances that have led to various successes and failures but no definitive solutions over time, especially regarding plastics and packaging materials. We identify three temporal phases of policy evolution that have altered the waste metabolism trajectory to date: (1) government led patriarchal approach of traditional landfilling combined with behavioral change campaigns to reduce, reuse, and recycle, (2) to a more democratic, shared burden, public-private partnership approach combined with attempts at incentive-based regulations, (3) to the present, more private sector-led voluntary bans on production and use of plastics. This study contributes to our understanding of the institutional factors that shape the search for solutions to the wicked problem of island waste metabolism.

Household-level food security in coastal wetland communities in Trinidad and Tobago experience increasing challenges in the face of climatic change. These communities rely heavily on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods. Household data were collected from 138 households in the Nariva and Caroni communities focusing on gender and socio-demographic structure, livelihood strategies and social networks; exposure to climate change and climate-induced extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts; and access to services and infrastructure. Using regression analyses, the influences of adaptive capacity to climate change on food security were analysed by gender, household and communities. Household socio-demographic structure and livelihood strategies were strongly related to food security and food security was reduced in the face of climate variability and disaster. Household social networks households had no significant influence. These conclusions offer directions for community and national planners and policy makers in Trinidad and in other similar country circumstances where climate change is significant.

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Small Island Developing States (SIDS), like many other places globally, are dealing with air pollution challenges. While not considered as expansive a challenge as perhaps the largest urban cities in the developing world, SIDS fragile economic and environmental conditions, limited technological and human capacities, small economies of scale, high vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change exacerbate the magnitude of stressors like poor air quality.

The electricity generation cost of a technology is often measured in terms of levelized cost of electricity or LCOE despite fundamental flaw is that it treats the intermittent and no-dispatchable renewable technologies equally with the fully dispatchable electricity generation technologies. The LCOE of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, has been rapidly falling over time as the capital costs that include not only the cost of equipment but also the entire installation of the plant is falling including balance of system (BoS) and soft costs. One would wonder why have the costs of renewable energy, particularly solar, falling down? A comparison of LCOE reported by various sources or studies is often misleading, and therefore such a comparison should be avoided. The objective of this article is to illustrate the levelized costs of electricity generation with the values of LCOE estimated from various sources. We also present the declining trends of renewable energy costs and try to explain the potential drivers of the decline. We also explain the factors that affect the LCOE and present renewable energy cost trends with the discussion of the potential drivers of the declining trend and how.