Africa Bauza Garcia-Arcicollar recently completed her PhD thesis in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading looking at climate change and justice in the Maldives. Africa said:

My doctoral research was motivated by exploring what just climate futures might look like for small island communities in the context of climate change. I travelled to two islands in the Maldives, Thulusdhoo and Rinbudhoo, and spoke to young women about their hopes and aspirations, their experiences of movement, and their anticipation of loss were the islands to become uninhabitable. I found that islanders imagined their futures in the Maldives, in terms of a continuity of place and way of life, and so that climate-related migration and displacement signified an important disrupture to ‘island life’. Accordingly, a future elsewhere would constitute an unjust future that requires a justice response which embraces the non-material and symbolic dimensions of climate change and island life.