Island Diplomacy
The Global
Context
Where the decisions that shape small island futures are actually taken: the negotiations, the finance reforms and the rooms the next ones will happen in.
Small islands have spent decades making the world recognise the interconnected challenges they face.
The decisions being made now will have profound consequences for the resilience of communities, the security of livelihoods and the opportunities available to future generations.
Through sustained diplomacy and coalition-building, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have helped drive significant changes in global policy: from putting 1.5°C at the heart of climate action to advancing new approaches to loss and damage, ocean governance and international financial reform.
Yet the global landscape is changing rapidly. Climate impacts are intensifying, international finance is under pressure, and the rules and institutions that shape development are being contested and reshaped. The decisions being made now will have profound consequences for the resilience of communities, the security of livelihoods and the opportunities available to future generations. For many island states, climate change and increasingly severe disasters pose an existential threat to the places people call home and the communities built around them.
SIDS are not simply responding to this changing landscape; they are helping to shape it. The question now is whether decades of diplomatic progress can deliver change at the scale required, and whether SIDS can use their growing influence to shape a global system capable of meeting the urgency of the challenges ahead.
From commitments to action
The Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS) is now the central international framework for SIDS, setting priorities for the decade to 2034.
Agreed by governments at the fourth UN Conference on SIDS in 2024, it sets out an ambitious agenda spanning climate resilience, sustainable economies, access to finance, technology, human development and international cooperation.
The focus is now shifting from agreement to implementation: turning these commitments into changes in national policy, international financing and global institutions.
ABAS builds on the SAMOA Pathway, while sitting alongside the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. These frameworks provide the architecture for international action, but it is through negotiations, financing decisions and political leadership that their ambitions become reality.
SIDS are shaping the climate agenda
SIDS have played an outsized role in international climate diplomacy.
Small island diplomacy was critical in establishing the global 1.5°C goal as a central benchmark of climate ambition by uniting through the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and SIDS have consistently pushed for greater action on adaptation, loss and damage, climate finance and justice.
Over the past two years, SIDS have also taken the climate debate into international courts. In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued a landmark advisory opinion following a request from the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), confirming that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions constitute marine pollution under international law. It was a significant reflection of the leadership of Caribbean and Pacific island states in bringing climate change, ocean protection and the obligations of states together.
The momentum continued at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), following a campaign led by Vanuatu, Pacific youth and a broad coalition of states. After public hearings in December 2024, the ICJ delivered its advisory opinion on states’ obligations in respect of climate change in July 2025. The opinion provides an important reference point for governments, courts and future climate litigation, including on the legal consequences of climate change for countries such as SIDS.
Small Islands are custodians of our oceans
As "Big Ocean States", small island nations were instrumental in negotiating the historic BBNJ Agreement (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction), which entered into force in January 2026.
SIDS successfully fought to ensure the treaty recognises the High Seas not as a global free-for-all, but as a shared heritage. Through cohesive diplomacy, SIDS secured critical provisions for mandatory and fair sharing of benefits from Marine Genetic Resources (MGR), robust environmental impact assessments, and dedicated capacity building.
Crucially, the BBNJ framework acknowledges the special circumstances of SIDS, giving them a legal mechanism to protect the migratory marine species and ecosystems that cross into their exclusive economic zones, further intertwining ocean conservation with climate resilience.
The focus now turns to what these opinions mean in practice: for climate negotiations, national policy, litigation and the wider question of responsibility for climate harm.
Reforming the systems that finance development
The progress made through climate diplomacy and international law has not yet been matched by the finance available to SIDS. Despite growing political recognition of their particular circumstances, the gap between recognition and material support remains wide.
For example, SIDS have long pushed for the international system to recognise that some climate impacts cannot be avoided through adaptation alone. Small island advocacy helped bring loss and damage from the margins of climate negotiations to the centre of the global climate agenda, culminating in the agreement to establish the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD). But the Fund’s reliance on voluntary contributions leaves a gap between political recognition and the scale and predictability of finance needed to deliver climate justice and resilience.
RESI argues that the ICJ’s advisory opinion on states’ legal obligations to prevent climate harm provides SIDS with new moral authority and legal footing to push for this gap to be addressed, including by reopening discussions on how the Fund is financed and ensuring it can deliver meaningful development outcomes for countries including SIDS with the most to lose from climate-induced harm.
The Bridgetown Initiative, led by Barbados, has helped put reform of the international financial system at the centre of global debate, including proposals to expand access to climate and development finance, improve emergency liquidity and address debt vulnerabilities. Growing recognition of vulnerability as a factor in determining access to finance also reflects priorities that SIDS have long championed.
The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Sevilla in 2025, provided another important opportunity to advance these reforms. The resulting Sevilla Commitment included measures on debt and development finance, including the first-ever inclusion of ocean finance. The next test is implementation, and whether reforms can deliver a financial system that better reflects the realities, priorities and financing needs of SIDS against a backdrop marked by geopolitical tensions, weakening multilateralism, waning donor commitment and declining development finance.
The question is no longer simply whether the international community recognises the special circumstances of SIDS, but whether that recognition translates into the resources and systems needed to act.