Launch Editorial: Advancing Island and Marine Studies Globally

Okinawan Journal of Island Studies, 2022

The Challenges of Island Studies includes six individual research articles and one panel discussion emerging from the international symposium titled "Prospects and Challenges for Envisioning Regional Science for Small Islands" organized by the Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability (RIIS). In the fi rst part, the individual research chapters, 1 through 6, offer visionary contributions from different perspectives in the current island study fi eld, covering society, politics, colonialism, culture, tourism, and sustainable development. The second part, the panel discussion, contributes to more transdisciplinary and trans-regional multi-directional dialogues. This book refl ects a growing recognition of the use of interdisciplinary and feminist lenses in the study of current issues in island studies. This book provides Asia-Pacifi c-centered case studies with multi-and interdisciplinary-based research perspectives and theoretical frameworks as well as theoretical discussions on island studies. A range of island issues is introduced from both contextualized and political perspectives, such as the establishment of the academic institution RIIS for island research, the perception of island safety in Guam, and US Militarism in the Pacifi c. The book shows current interdisciplinary development within and outside of the academic fi eld, the diversifi ed view of the cultural landscape, and island local language developed through human and cultural interactions. The fi nal part of the book also highlights current research challenges, such as the diversifi cation of different understandings and defi nitions of islandness and perceptions of the size of islands, their borders, and ownership, as evident in case studies including Guam, Okinawa, and Taiwan. Aiming to foster diversifi ed island study theories and trans-disciplinary methods development points of view, The Challenges of Island Studies covers a considerable range of island research-related questions, for example: How can we rethink island studies through an interdisciplinary research perspective through the emerging hub of RIIS? From whose perspective should island security and safety be considered? How can critical ocean studies connect perspectives arising from feminist, indigenous, and multispecies literatures? How, where, and who directs the evolution and future trajectory through the institutional framework of islands studies? What stands in between relics and the heritage landscape? How do historical Ryukyu migration and interaction shape language [Book Review]

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road: Islands Economic Cooperation Forum – Annual report on global islands, 2019

Islands may be defined by a particular relationship between land and water, but discussions of island development often focus on either land-based activities or on sea-based activities, with little attention to how the terrestrial and marine realms interact. This chapter argues that islands possess a number of spatial characteristics related to coast/area ratios, land scarcity, comprehensive coastlines, transport benefits, and territorial benefits that serve as drivers for the marine economy and that boost marine island economy competitiveness. Today’s marine economy is, however, dependent upon onshore infrastructure; labour; expertise; and healthy and stable ecological, social, and political environments, none of which can simply be taken for granted. The very factors that make islands ideal for hosting marine activities—such as an extensive land-sea interface and density-facilitated agglomeration economies—may be placed at risk by marine economy-oriented island development. It is thus that economic activities on the land-sea interface — whether port services or coastal tourism — can reduce islanders’ access to the sea as well as lead to environmental degradation that threatens the continued viability of the economic activities in question. Those pursuing island development should take care to balance short-term and long-term objectives while leveraging the very real competitive advantages that arise from island spatialities.

Island studies has developed into an established, interdisciplinary research field. It is important that island studies not only continue deepening its internal theoretical understandings but also reach out to other fields and regions that have received limited attention within island studies. It is also necessary for island studies to grapple with a number of problematic tendencies within the field and the wider scholarship, including by challenging the misuse of island spatiality to produce idealised visions of islands (for example in island sustainability research). Similarly, it is important to pursue a decolonial island studies that rethinks the ways in which island development research can end up marginalising Indigenous voices at the same time as it seeks to understand islands 'on their own terms'. Island studies, many say, is an emerging field. We live in an age that valorises dynamism and change, so it flatters our sensibilities to participate in a scholarly project that is not fixed, fusty, or static. If island studies is emerging, then we who contribute to it are at the vanguard, engaging in a new way of doing research. But this mantra of 'emergence', 'burgeoning', 'growth', 'institutionalisation' is also an apology―repeated across a range of important literature reviews and theoretical texts (e.g.,

Island Studies Journal, 2006

2007

Book Close to 10% of the world's population-that is, some 600 million people-live on islands today, covering some 7% of the earth's land surface. One-fourth of the world's sovereign states consist of island or archipelagic territories. The combined land area and exclusive economic zone of the world's islands covers more than one sixth of the Earth's total area. Islands have paved the way to the emergence of such disciplines as biogeography and anthropology; they are typical 'hot spots' for biological diversity, ecological conservation and international political tension. Islands may offer distinct identities and spaces in an increasingly homogenous and placeless world. This book provides a thoroughly referenced, comprehensive and pluridisciplinary overview of the study of islands. It should prove useful to a variety of aficionados, specialists and generalists, especially those living or working on islands. In particular, A World of Islands seeks to serve as a reference text and primer to those educators, scholars, researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, public policy officials and analysts who are keen to adopt an 'island imagination' to their work, study or specific inquiry. Over 40 contributors, from all over the world and from numerous disciplinary backgrounds, deploy their expertise and ideas to highlight insights from, and for, the study of islands and island life. Material is as jargon-free as possible to facilitate understanding across specializations. This book thus extends an invitation to place islands right in the centre of things. While some will certainly question the inclusion or omission of particular themes, this here is the closest thing to an island studies textbook.

2017

Graziani, the representatives of RETI member universities, and all the participants to our university. On behalf of the University of the Ryukyus, I would like to take this opportunity to extend a heartfelt welcome message to all the guests here today. As you know, RETI was established in 2010 to promote academic collaboration among island universities and currently consists of 27 member universities in 16 countries and areas all over the world. The University of the Ryukyus is the only member university in Asia. It is our great honor to host the RETI 2017 Symposium at our university as the first RETI conference held in Asia. We are most pleased that 85 participants in total are attending the RETI Symposium in Okinawa, including 47 participants from 12 countries and areas. We sincerely hope you will have the opportunity to enjoy the rich culture and nature of Okinawa during your stay here. The University of the Ryukyus was established in 1950, under the U.S. Military Government after World War II, as the first institution of higher education in Okinawa. At present, the University consists of 7 Faculties and 9 Graduate Schools, and has more than 8,200 students in total. Based on the philosophy of a "Land Grant University," the University of the Ryukyus aims to help create a prosperous future society in collaboration with local communities. The University also aims to serve as an outstanding international hub of education and research in the Asia-Pacific region by taking advantage of its academic strengths in research, especially in the new academic fields "TIMES": Tropical, Marine, Medical, and Island Sciences. Our university has established academic collaboration mainly with universities on islands in the Asia-Pacific region, such as New Caledonia, Palau, Guam and Taiwan. We share various common characteristics and issues, such as biodiversity, coral reefs, island disaster management, public health, island economics, inheritance of culture, and promote collaborative research in such fields. We are aiming to expand our academic collaboration to island universities in Europe and the Atlantic region, by taking advantage of the RETI Network, and to island universities all over the world in the future. To pursue our aims, it is truly meaningful to host the RETI Symposium at our university and share research findings related to common issues in islands among researchers. We sincerely hope that this symposium will provide us with various opportunities to enhance our academic collaboration among researchers on island studies and in island universities. I sincerely hope for a fruitful and productive symposium.

Postmedieval, 2016

Epeli Hau‘ofa’s essay on a ‘sea of islands’ was intended to offer a bottom-up, corrective, and holistic view of Oceania. Instead of colonial images of the Pacific as a vast ocean with tiny isolated islands in it, he included the sea as part of what can constitute a home and reimagined Oceania as historically inflected ‘networks . . . integrated by trading and cultural exchange systems’ (Hau‘ofa, 1993, 7–9). From a perspective on the sea, a large landmass can be a haven, danger, or obstruction. Smaller islands might not only block travel, but they can also offer the interactive space of a shore combined with a more accessible interior. Islands may also reticulate in a variety of forms, sometimes presenting series of lands that offer waystations for sea travel. Seas additionally narrow and transition to rivers that can lead far inland. Although an idealistic strain in Hau’ofa’s and others’ visions of Pacific and other maritime networks has been criticized, the point remains that while some oceanic expanses can present a barrier, they tend instead to facilitate travel.

2018

The international community is keen to engage all states in the global agenda to protect and preserve marine habitat and ocean eco-systems. Building on the strategic goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Aichi Target 11 is for 17% of terrestrial and inland water and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas to be protected by 2020. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 is to conserve oceans, seas and marine resources and in 2016 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature advocated for 30% of the world’s oceans to be protected while the Nature Needs Half Movement is advocating 50%. At the same time, it is recognised that indigenous peoples have a right to development and a right to determine their own form and pace of development. For Pacific island people that increasingly means developing a blue-green economy in which terrestrial and marine resources are utilised to advance the wealth and health of island people. Building on research looking at the declaration ...

Sustainability, 2013

While island biogeography and modern economics portray Pacific island nations as isolated, ecologically fragile, resource poor and barely viable economies forever dependent on foreign aid, Pacific island history and culture conceives of their islands as intimately inter-linked to the surrounding ocean and of that ocean as an avenue to expanded resource bases, both terrestrial and aquatic. Pacific Islanders live in the most aquatic human zone on Earth, with the highest territorial ratios of sea to land. Recent studies are revealing the continuity and success of traditional near-shore guardianship of maritime resources in a number of Pacific islands. Sustainable development of seabed minerals and pelagic fisheries may offer enhanced income potential for small island nations with limited terrestrial resources. As offshore ecosystems are poorly policed, sustainable development is best realized through comprehensive planning centred on partnerships between local communities, their governments, marine scientists and commercial enterprises. The success or failure of Pacific Islanders in reasserting their maritime guardianship is now a matter of global significance given the decimation of most fisheries beyond the Pacific and the vast, but uncertain, medicinal, mineral and food resource potential of this huge area of the planet.

2019

Once again, I am very pleased to have the occasion of addressing you, this time on the Regime of Islands. Even though it occupies only one of the 320 Articles of UNCLOS III, Article 121, the topic of islands is an important issue of the law of the sea, as evidenced by the extensive discussions in the early stages of the UN Conference (1973-82) and in the preparatory stage preceding it (1970-73) in the Seabed Committee, as outlined in the DOALOS publication “Regime of Islands – Legislative History”. It is very much a live issue today, especially in the Pacific Ocean, but also in several other parts of the world.