Imagine living on a small island in the Caribbean, completely surrounded by water. You learn that your entire island is in the path of a Category 5 hurricane. First, you ask: how do we prepare? Then, if you survive, you ask: how do we recover? For those living in small island developing states, these situations emerge far too often.
Small Island Developing States are a group of 39 nations that share unique social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities. Most have low-lying land areas and are in the tropics, leaving them susceptible to extreme weather events and changes in rainfall and sea levels. These states usually have insufficient institutional capacity, high sensitivity to external shocks, and are isolated from major markets. Thus, to carry out climate adaptation strategies, they need funding from outside sources. One way these nations can acquire funding is through the Development Assistance Committee, a group of 32 developed countries who provides and monitors official development assistance, government aid that targets the economic development of developing countries. Small island developing states lack the international influence of larger, more powerful countries. Thus, a forum such as the United Nations’ General Assembly General Debate provides a unique opportunity for these countries to speak in front of an international audience filled with world leaders without interruption.
This led me to ask the question “Do small island developing states’ UN General Assembly speeches influence the amount of climate aid they receive from the Development Assistance Committee?” To answer this, I employed a document analysis of 220 speeches from 22 small island states during the years of 2010 to 2022. I assessed each speech for climate change and climate finance content, including certain persuasion tactics, to visualize speech trends over time. Using a regression analysis, I tested the relationship between speech content and the amount of official development assistance, in the general environmental protection sector, each country received from the Development Assistance Committee in a given year.
My first hypothesis was that over time, small island states will adjust the content of their speeches to advocate more for climate financing. I did find this to be true. Small island developing states increased the amount they mentioned issues with climate financing by nearly 22% (Graph 1) from 2010 to 2022, and increased how often they pressured the international community to act by 17% (Graph 2) from 2010 to 2021. I also find that they increased the number of climate-related words they used in their speeches through a pattern similar to Graphs 1 and 2, and that nearly every country makes it a point to at least mention climate change in their speech.
My second hypothesis was that the content of a speech will influence the amount of climate aid a country receives. However, I find that the relationship between climate aid and speech content is statistically insignificant. Average aid to small island states in the general environmental sector has actually decreased (Graph 3). Notably, there is a drop of one million USD from 2021 to 2022, despite these being the years in which nations discussed climate financing and pressured the international community to act the most. This trend is on par with climate-related official development assistance as a whole. Although climate-related ODA to small island developing states gradually increased within the past decade, and accelerated after 2019, it declined by 13% in 2022.
While I concluded that the need small island developing states express in their speeches does not impact the climate aid they receive from the Development Assistance Committee, I can assume that the amount of official development assistance small island states receive influences the content of their speeches. In the speeches I studied, multiple countries mentioned declines in official development assistance. The content of speeches indicates that the Development Assistance Committee is well aware of small island states’ urgent need for climate financing. Yet, they are still not providing enough assistance.
During 2024’s Conference of Parties, countries adopted a yearly $300 billion global climate finance target, but small island developing states say this is still inadequate. Thus, the most likely reason for a decrease in climate aid to small island developing states is because the committee does not take the need of recipients into account at all, and is more likely to be influenced by other social, economic, and governance factors.
But small island developing states simply cannot afford to be ignored. When another deadly hurricane blasts the Caribbean, when rising sea levels wash away properties and erode sands, they need to be able to prepare and recover. Developed nations need to allocate more climate financing and deliver on their commitments, and do so quickly.
Anjani Dent is a senior honors student from Avon, Indiana. She is studying Environmental Management and minoring in French at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. On campus, she works as an undergraduate teaching assistant for V365, Urban Development and Planning. After graduating in May 2025, she looks forward to pursuing a master’s degree in environmental policy.
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