Introduction: The Metabolism of Islands

Simron Jit. Singh, Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Marian Chertow
Additional contact information
Simron Jit. Singh: School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), University of Waterloo Environment, Waterloo, ON N2L3G1, Canada
Marina Fischer-Kowalski: Institute of Social Ecology (SEC), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), 1190 Vienna, Austria
Marian Chertow: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-8

Abstract: This editorial introduces the Special Issue “Metabolism of Islands”. It makes a case why we should care about islands and their sustainability. Islands are hotspots of biocultural diversity, and home to 600 million people that depend on one-sixth of the earth’s total area, including the surrounding oceans, for their subsistence. Today, they are on the frontlines of climate change and face an existential crisis. Islands are, however, potential “hubs of innovation” and are uniquely positioned to be leaders in sustainability and climate action. We argue that a full-fledged program on “island industrial ecology” is urgently needed with the aim to offer policy-relevant insights and strategies to sustain small islands in an era of global environmental change. We introduce key industrial ecology concepts, and the state-of-the-art in applying them to islands. Nine contributions in this Special Issue are briefly reviewed to highlight the metabolic risks inherent in the island cases. The contributors explore how reconfiguring patterns of resource use will allow island governments to build resilience and adapt to the challenges of climate change.

Keywords: island metabolism; island sustainability; island industrial ecology; socio-metabolic research; metabolic risk; socio-metabolic collapse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9516/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9516/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9516-:d:445564

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().