Small island communities contribute less than one per cent to global greenhouse gas emissions but suffer disproportionally from climate change effects and are struggling to adapt to the crisis. Their experiences underscore a critical need for solutions that cut across sectors to help address social inequities and enable a more climate-resilient future for everyone.
University of Waterloo researchers, in partnership with universities and key stakeholders in Mauritius, Maldives and Fiji, are co-creators of the Resilience to Climate Vulnerability and Environmental Risk (RECOVER) project. Together, they will identify each island’s exposure and risk to climate change and determine scalable strategies to address challenges that impede the availability of resources, materials and critical services, such as food, water, energy and health care.
“Working with vulnerable communities is not a right, but a privilege,” says Dr. Simron Singh, RECOVER project lead, professor in the Faculty of Environment and member of the Waterloo Climate Institute. “Witnessing firsthand the devastation experienced by a remote island community from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, profoundly impacted me, both personally and professionally. This event steered my career towards dedicating my research to the world’s most vulnerable areas threatened by climate change.”