Abstract/Summary

The future of island communities has been declared finite, predicting that climate change will result in the uninhabitability of many small island developing states (SIDS). As a result, islanders are left with few options but to move or to drown. This thesis attempts to challenge this pre-determined future by deconstructing the idea of future foreclosure to gain a comprehensive understanding of what is required in relation to justice in the context of climate change and SIDS. In particular, it focuses on the potential scenario of climate-related migration and displacement from a variety of standpoints. First, it explores islanders’ future hopes, aspirations, and imaginings, considering the role of climate change and mobility within those. Second, it analyses the implications of leaving the islands behind by examining movement and loss. Third, it investigates justice considerations for the potential scenario of climate-related migration and displacement on both empirical and normative grounds. By researching these themes with a range of qualitative methods and a focus on the non-material and symbolic dimensions of climate change and life on the islands, this thesis argues that the only future that might be considered just is a future on the islands and any form of a future that takes place elsewhere constitutes a moral wrong and results in an unjust climate future. In building this claim, the thesis sets out the following findings. Islanders’ think of their futures in terms of continuity of place and way of life. Further, movement represents a rupture to such way of life and climate-related migration and displacement would carry a set of incommensurable losses that go well beyond material and economic properties and encompass a range of practices and meanings of considerable value to affected populations. Thus, if a future on the islands is impossible, then some form of justice-based response will be needed. This thesis outlines a form of a reparation effort that foregrounds satisfaction measures in attempting to repair non-material and symbolic loss.