Who can forget the image of Tuvalu's Foreign Minister, Simon Kofe delivering a powerful address to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021, all whilst standing knee-deep in front of a lectern sat in the seawater of a Pacific Island lagoon? The image remains compelling, and primed this editor, another Islander originally from another hemisphere, to expect contributions to the special issue to focus, perhaps somewhat stereotypically, on climate change. To be sure, they include it, and they respect it - but they also focus on other, perhaps more controllable everyday applied settings, in and on their island nations. Foci include (for example) community trust and solidarity, leadership (political in the main), and diasporas, who form global communities in local settings as disasters and other challenges to sustainable living, and livelihoods, arise.

The contributions in this special issue are both diverse and thought-provoking, challenging and inspiring by turns, and have interconnecting sinews. Leadership looms large, along with corruption, applied political psychology, securing of livelihoods, tackling precarious work and wage injustices, diasporic mobilisation. There is a strong emphasis on context, which differs even from one island to its neighbour (I can relate personally to that). Distinctiveness and connectiveness. Two things can be true at the same time. To find out more about squaring that circle, check out the following amazing blend of diversity and connectivity, theory and application, challenge and opportunity.

The contributions themselves span Islands of the Caribbean, South China Sea West and South West Pacific (including from Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia). We have perspectives from Antigua, Barbuda, Trinidad, Guam, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Philippines. The final article is not focused on Small Island Nations, but rather on an issue which is often reflected inside them, outside of them, and across the articles in this issue: Diaspora. 

And therein lies a sinew to the final article in this issue – which makes the case for a diaspora of senior retired scholars, who have much to give by way of experience and capacity in applied psychology, to the world. After all, diasporas are functional connectors between communities of applied professional and socially responsive practice.

On the personal note of island life, and having grown up on a very small island (in my case, Jersey in the Channel Islands), I can identify with at least some of the key issues and ideas articulated so eloquently and sensitively in this special issue. They range from the dislocations that some forms of inward investment and expatriate workforces can fuel, to the need for good local leadership and governance to be supported by bringing research evidence and everyday realities into local, council chambers. Applied psychology has legs in such small island settings, just as it does in the chambers of the UN.

Applied psychology in Island Nations also has so much to offer to the wider world of applied psychology as a whole (Crookes & Warren, 2022; Gibson et al, 2020; Kelman et al, 2021; Orbán, 2024). The same might be true in the opposite direction (ILO, 2025; Walker et al, 2022), including by supporting people who are displaced by climate change (Rudoren & Fairfield, 2017). In the end, ‘Island-ness’, and Islanders’ experiences, and relatedly applied psychology in, by and from them, matters for all of us (Matheson, Pawson & Clegg, 2024).

References

Crookes, A. E., & Warren, M. A. (2022). Building a global psychological science through research in the Pacific Island nation of Fiji: A systematic review of the literature. Discover Psychology, 2, 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-022-00029-3 

Gibson, K.E., Barnett, J., Haslam, N., & Kaplan, I. (2020). The mental health impacts of climate change: Findings from a Pacific Island atoll nation. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 73, 102237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102237

ILO (International Labour Organisation). (2025). Minimum wage systems and wage-setting practices in the Pacific Island countries. Geneva: ILO.

Kelman I, Ayeb-Karlsson S, Rose-Clarke K, Prost A, Ronneberg E, Wheeler N, Watts N. A review of mental health and wellbeing under climate change in small island developing states (SIDS). Environ Res Lett. 2021 Mar;16(3):033007. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/abe57d. Epub 2021 Mar 3. PMID: 34149865; PMCID: PMC8208624.

Matheson, K., Pawson, C., & Clegg, P. (2024). Social psychological perspectives on Islandness: Identities, vulnerabilities and precarities. Island Studies Journal, 19, https://doi.org/10.24043/001c.92155

Orbán, L.L. (2024). Principles to guide research and policy on psychological well-being in remote island developing states in the South Pacific. Frontiers in Psychiatry, March, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1325292

Rudoren, J., & Fairfield, H. (Eds.). (2017). Collections: Climate refugees – how global change is displacing millions. New York: New York Times. https://static01.nyt.com/packages/pdf/tbooks/Climate_Refugees_NYTimes_050317.pdf

Walker IF, Asher L, Pari A, Attride-Stirling J, Oyinloye AO, Simmons C, Potter I, Rubaine V, Samuel JM, Andrewin A, Flynn J, McGill AL, Greenaway-Duberry S, Malcom AB, Mann G, Razavi A, Gibson RC. (2022)/ Mental health systems in six Caribbean small island developing states: a comparative situational analysis. Int J Ment Health Syst., 12;16(1):39. doi: 10.1186/s13033-022-00552-9. PMID: 35962382; PMCID: PMC9372926.