Dear Colleagues,

The theme of this ‘call for papers’ brings into focus a relatively new term within the framework of climate change: “blue economy”. In addition, this Special Issue of Atmosphere emphasizes how the adverse effects of this environmental crisis affect ‘downscaled’ territories, such as islands. To be specific, we would like to bring attention to the impact of climate change on islands from the perspective of the blue economy. Not only are the traditional lines of research related to the impact of climate change on islands and the blue economy welcome, such as the examination of natural capitals, good business, developable territories, and small-scale spaces (Silver et al, 2015), but we also encourage prospective authors to submit other, more cutting edge papers with breakthrough reflections, findings, and innovations.

After all, how else does one come up with ground-breaking papers other than by considering what is lacking in the existing literature? In this respect, it is worth recalling that the predominant flaw in the research dealing with climate change has been neglecting certain approaches that should be further addressed. First of all, climate change research efforts have fallen more into the category of continents than islands, even though rising temperatures, rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, coastal erosion, the increase in extreme weather events, altered rainfall patterns, coral reef bleaching, and ocean acidification may indeed be more serious for islands (Baldachino and Kelman, 2014; Hanich et al, 2018). Furthermore, there has been a lack of comparative approaches that test similarities and differences between both types of territories (Kelman, 2018). Second, as far as climate change is concerned, researchers have paid little attention to oceans, with a far greater volume of scientific work stemming from the study of land and atmosphere. Third, there has been a greater focus on the meteorological phenomenon rather than governance and economics (Silver et al., 2015). Fourth, it is undeniably true that more multidisciplinary approaches are necessary since most research comes only from the perspective of a single discipline (Winder and Heron, 2017; Allison and Bassett, 2017). Fifth, there is a preponderance of investigations that focus on pinning down and pinpointing the physical causes related to climate change rather than to analyze the consequences for governance and economics (Hanich et al, 2018). Sixth, it is advisable to note that the study of climate change within the context of islands has conceived vulnerability and resilience more as a dichotomy than as complex and potentially transformative variables that might be handled for mitigation and adaptation (Bozzato, 2017; Hanich et al, 2018; Kelman, 2018). Finally, notwithstanding that climate change represents a global problem and threat, new studies should give more credit to it as a potential opportunity (Hanich et al, 2018).

Principal Lecturer Gonzalo Diaz-Meneses
Chaired Professor Carmelo J. León
Principal Lecturer Matías González Hernández
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Climate change
• Decarbonization
• Island economy
• Blue economy
• Coastal tourism
• Aquaculture
• Maritime transport
• Marine renewable energy