Sustainable Development Across Pacific Islands: Lessons, Challenges, and Ways Forward [Hardcover]

This timely and ambitious volume - a product of close research collaboration with the United Nations Multi-Country Office for Micronesia - is conceived as a holistic journey across various domains of progress in a region that, despite fundamental common traits, remains vast and diverse. Pacific island countries and territories (PICTs) have (too) often been identified with elements of vulnerability, whether these be social, economic, or environmental in nature. While these factors cannot be overlooked, this volume aims to showcase not only the long-standing and emerging challenges but, perhaps more importantly, the opportunities, the resilience, the resourcefulness, and the ambition that local socioeconomic development patterns in the Pacific already encompass. Beyond PICTs themselves, we hope that the analyses collected in this book will contribute to highlighting the global significance of the humannature nexus in the current Anthropocene. Often captured in the concept of small islands, big oceans, the importance of the region and its islands and peoples transcends the geographical remoteness and small size of many PICTs.

Migration among the freely associated states in Micronesia: Trends, drivers, and implications.- Current issues and challenges affecting gender equality and sustainable development in Federated States of Micronesia.- Training the I-Kiribati to care for older Australians: A model for labour mobility, recruitment, and sustainability.- The negative secondary impacts of climate change on Pacific islanders mental health.

Edoardo Monaco is an Asia-based international development and sustainability specialist. He currently serves as Associate Professor and Acting Head of the Department of Social Sciences (DSS), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS), at the Beijing Normal UniversityHong Kong Baptist University United International College (BNU-HKBU UIC) in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China. Hl3¢