ABSTRACT
Two words are now habitually used to represent positive goals for which humanity should aspire, from local to planetary scales: sustainability and resilience. This chapter synthesises and critiques research on resilience and sustainability from an island perspective, exploring island futures beyond this flavour-of-the-decade labelling. Island lessons in the context of resilience reveal particular limitations in the ecological definition, in terms of taking 'resilience' to mean that a system has a specific state which it should retain or to which it should return or bounce back after a disturbance. Neo-liberalism has used resilience to explain that people must learn to help themselves, because neither government support nor migration can be guaranteed. The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) category arose based on an assumption of common sustainability threats and opportunities across their widely varying human, physical and economic geographies. SIDS exerted their influence prominently with respect to climate change through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.
