Law and Development in SIDS book launch for Sustaining...

You are warmly invited to the launch of Sustaining Development in Small Islands: Climate Change, Geopolitical Security, and the Permissive Liberal Order on 17 July from 6pm-8.30pm.

The viability of small island developing states (SIDS) is threatened by three distinct processes – a backlash against globalisation; rising geopolitical competition between powers; and accelerating climate change – which are pulling at the threads binding the liberal international order together. The authors suggest that this order has been kinder to SIDS than is often acknowledged because its underpinning norms – sovereign equality, non-interference, and right to development – are inherently permissive and thus provide SIDS with choices rather than imperatives.

Discussants: Dr Suliana Mone, University of Auckland

Panel:

Dr Emily Wilkinson, RESI, Dr Matt Bishop, University of Sheffield, Professor Jack Corbett, Monash University, Courtney Lindsay ODI, and Rachid Bouhia, Commonwealth Secretariat.

Chair: Professor Caroline Morris, QMUL

Speaker Bios

Dr Emily Wilkinson

Emily is a Principal Research Fellow in ODI's Global Risks and Resilience Programme and Director of the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI). She has 25 years’ experience as a researcher, analyst, journalist, lecturer and adviser to government, providing critical analysis and leading debate on climate and disaster risk governance and financing.

Emily is a specialist in Small-Island Developing States (SIDS), where she focuses on climate policy, access to finance and opportunities for long-term development in an era of accelerating climate change. She serves as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Climate Resilience Agency for Dominica (CREAD), supporting the nation’s ambition to become the world’s first climate resilient nation, and is an adviser of the Alliance for Small Island States (AOSIS) on adaptation.

Emily has led major research and learning programmes for the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters Programme (BRACED), and worked previously as a researcher at El Colegio de México, leading the first independent evaluation of Mexico’s National Disaster Fund, FONDEN.

Emily holds a PhD in Human Geography from University College London.

Dr Matt Bishop

Matt specialises in the political economy of development in SIDS and has taught at the University of the West Indies. He has published extensively on theorising smallness and vulnerability, trade and development governance, the politics of globalisation, regional integration, and drug trafficking and community violence. Matt leads the RESI thematic agenda on Equitable Societies.

Professor Jack Corbett

Jack has (co)authored or (co)edited 8 books and more than 60 articles and commentaries on politics and development issues in small states. He is currently editor of the Topics in the Contemporary Pacific book series with the University of Hawaii Press. Jack leads the RESI publications strategy.

Courtney Lindsay

Courtney Lindsay is a researcher whose interests lie broadly in the political economy of development in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). His research interests include trade and industrial policy in SIDS; micro-, small- and medium-enterprise development and private sector competitiveness; small states' strategies for norm entrepreneurship and norm advocacy; and resilience, sustainability and climate change adaptation in SIDS.

Prior to joining ODI, Courtney spent almost 10 years working as a researcher and project manager, designing, executing, and managing private sector development projects across the English-speaking Caribbean.

Rachid Bouhia

Rachid is an Economic Affairs Officer for the Division for Africa, Least Developed Countries and Special Programmes at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Rachid’s research focuses on debt sustainability and development finance in SIDS. He has previously worked as an economist in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and in the French Statistical Office (INSEE) in Paris. Rachid leads the RESI thematic agenda on Financial Sustainability.

Professor Caroline Morris

Caroline Morris is a legal academic at Queen Mary University of London. In 2015 Caroline founded the Centre for Small States, an initiative dedicated to research and analysis of the legal issues facing the world's small states and non-sovereign territories. She sits on the editorial board of the scholarly journal Small States and Territories and is a General Editor of The World of Small States book series.