Alliance of Small Island States

Member countries

AOSIS is made up of 39 member countries and four observing countries and territories.  These countries comprise one-fifth of the UN's membership.³ Listed below are the member nations, grouped by ocean region:⁴

Pacific: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu

Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago

Atlantic Ocean: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Sao Tome and Principe

Indian Ocean: Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, and the Seychelles

Mediterranean: Cyprus and Malta

South China Sea: Singapore

The non-member observers of AOSIS are American Samoa, Guam, the Netherlands Antilles, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  (AOSIS member nations are marked red on the map above, while non-member observers are marked yellow.)

Background

The Alliance of Small Island States was established in 1990 during the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva. Early in its history it played a major role in helping craft the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a major piece of the Earth Summit which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992.⁵

AOSIS does not have a formal charter, a regular budget or a secretariat. It functions as a deliberative forum and all decisions are made by consensus. Major policy decisions are made at ambassadorial-level plenary sessions, with most discussions carried out through the UN delegations based in New York. ⁶

The chairmanship is rotated among ambassadors of representative countries. AOSIS's first chairman was Ambassador Robert Van Lierop of Vanuatu (1991-1994). Subsequent chairmanships have been held by dignitaries from Trinidad and Tobago (1994-1997), Samoa (1997-2002), Mauritius (2002-2005), Tuvalu (2005-2006) and Saint Lucia (2006 to present). The chairman since 2006 has been Ambassador Julian R. Hunte.⁷

Climate change activities

At the climate talks in Vienna in August 2007, AOSIS called upon the international community to use the avoidance of climate change impacts on small island developing states (SIDS) as a key benchmark in the design of the agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. AOSIS cites scientific consensus that a 1°C increase in temperature above current levels will result in significant coral bleaching, increased flooding, and loss of biodiversity. To prevent this, AOSIS has called for a global effort to prevent atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to rise above 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent.  They and others have stated that doing so would likely keep increases in global mean temperature below 2 °C, which could help avoid the most serious potential impacts of climate change. ⁸

AOSIS has proposed plans for coping with climate change that include an insurance component, a rehabilitation component, and a risk management component. The insurance component addresses extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, and droughts by supporting risk sharing and transfer schemes funded by developed nations. The rehabilitation component seeks to obtain compensation for AOSIS members for likely effects of climate change, including sea level rise, ocean and air temperature increases, ocean acidification and resulting coral bleaching. The risk management component promotes the adoption of risk assessment and management tools and facilitates the implementation of risk reduction and management measures, as well as measures to support efforts that include data collection, hazard mapping, and risk assessments.⁹

AOSIS has called for substantially greater investment in mitigation measures by developed countries, beyond 0.12% of GDP per year. Beyond the benefits to the climate, AOSIS members are highly interested in cheap renewable energy and energy efficient technologies for their own development.

Footnotes

1.  AOSIS Official Webpage. Retrieved on: 30 June 2009.

2.  Ian Fry, East Timor, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(pdf) (Proceedings from the 1st National Workshop on Climate Change, Dili, 19 November 2003), Government of East Timor website, p.1

3.  AOSIS Official Webpage. Retrieved on: 30 June 2009.

4.  AOSIS Official Webpage: Members and Observers. Retrieved on: 30 June 2009.

5.  UNESCAP. Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific 2000. Climate Change and Small Island States: AOSIS 

6.  Mauritius, Permanent Mission to the United Nations. Alliance of Small Island States.Retrieved on: 30 June 2009.

7.  AOSIS Official Webpage. Retrieved on: 30 June 2009.

8.  MJ Mace. Small Island States Seek Equitable Post-2012. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2007. p. 1

9.  AOSIS, Risk management and risk reduction strategies, including risk sharing and risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance(pdf), presentation, UNFCCC In-session Workshop: 4 December 2008, Poznań, Poland. p. 4-6. Accessed July 16, 2009.

Resources

• UNFCCC, Dialogue on long-term cooperative action to address climate change by enhancing implementation of the Convention Fourth workshop(pdf) Vienna, 27–31 August 2007. Submission from AOSIS.