Oral presentation: Eric Mijts

This collection of essays from islanders around the globe offers a complex understanding of the intersections of climate change and social change on islands. How are the effects of climate change and catastrophic weather experienced and narrated by islanders? What stories need to be told? How do local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge practices facilitate the capacity to improvise, innovate, and adapt to volatile weather events? How do social relations on climate-stressed islands continue to flourish? How do governance structures and issues of sovereignty support and/or inhibit climate and social justice? 

This interdisciplinary approach foregrounds island storytellers as they convey worldviews, knowledge, and cultural values, beliefs, and emotions that are often missing from climate change discourses. This volume emerged from the 2023 international conference entitled "Turning the Tide: Climate Change, Social Change and Islandness", organized by the Universities of Aruba and Prince Edward Island and held at the University of Aruba. Scholars from the Caribbean, Pacific, Mediterranean Sea, as well as continental Europa and North America contributed to this collection.