SISSTEM and MoI Symposium: Sustainable Island Futures 2021
A Symposium co-hosted by SISSTEM at the University of Aruba & the Metabolism of Islands (MoI).
Small island states are characterized by a strong dependency on external resources to meet their basic needs which highly contributes to the vulnerability of these territories. The approaches to increase resource security and self-reliance in small island states need to be carefully redesigned considering context-specific challenges and opportunities. At the same time, in order to achieve sustainability and build system resilience, wholistic approaches need to be favored over narrow agendas. Several research collaborations are ongoing to address these challenges, such as the Sustainable Island Solutions through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (SISSTEM) program at the University of Aruba and the Metabolism of Islands (MoI) research program. These bring together researchers from a dozen universities that are concerned about sustainable futures for small islands throughout the world. This multidisciplinary symposium aims to bring together emerging scholars to exchange ideas and approaches for a sustainability transformation in small island states and to foster interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaboration.
Symposium date: Tuesday, December 14, 2021.
5:00 – 8:00 PST
8:00 – 11:00 EST
9:00 – 12:00 AST
13:00 – 16:00 UTC
14:00 – 17:00 CEST
We invite graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, and post-doctoral researchers to submit abstracts for this online event. Proposals can center on research design, contextualization of methodologies, theoretical frameworks or research outcomes on resource circularity, island metabolism, industrial ecology, sociometabolic research, islandness or on threats and opportunities that hinder or further sustainable development and resilience of small island states.