Where are the small island states? Raising their visibility through vignettes on global maps

Small islands are globally distributed in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, not to mention those found in the polar regions.Islands are facing sustainability challenges decades ahead of the rest of the continental world.Factors that exacerbate their sustainability challenges include small land areas, limited natural resources, diverse and complicated colonial histories, remoteness, economic reliance on external markets (often tourism), and population concentrati on along coasts (Rattner 2018).Small islands contribute the least to anthropogenic forcing of climate change, yet are the first to feel the negative effects due to these vulnerabilities (Nurse & Moore, 2005).Due to these challenges, they are also the first to find creative and appropriate sustainability solutions.Islands are knowledge leaders in climate change adaptation and resilience and sustainability hubs for innovation (Ratter, 2018;Singh et al., 2020).