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. 2024 Feb:152:103643.
doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103643. Epub 2023 Nov 23.

External vulnerability, local resilience, and urban-rural heterogeneity in the Marshall Islands

Hugh B Roland  1
Affiliations

External vulnerability, local resilience, and urban-rural heterogeneity in the Marshall Islands

Hugh B Roland. Environ Sci Policy. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Popular media often positions the Marshall Islands as especially vulnerable to environmental shocks and shifts. This framing overlooks sources of vulnerability, local resilience, and within country differences. To better understand relationships between social, economic, and cultural shifts and vulnerability and resilience in the Marshall Islands, this study draws on interviews with internal migrants and members of government and civil society to investigate perceptions of vulnerability and resilience in outer islands and Majuro. Findings reveal sharp perceived differences. Participants largely tied vulnerability on outer islands to increasingly variable environmental conditions affecting natural resource-dependent livelihoods and vulnerability on Majuro to the cash economy. In both urban core and rural outer islands, participants linked vulnerability to interdependencies far beyond the Marshall Islands. By evaluating historical and external influences and spatial heterogeneity, this study supports a nuanced understanding of vulnerability and resilience within archipelagic countries critical to policy development.

Keywords: Climate change; Marshall Islands; Pacific Islands; Resilience; Vulnerability.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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