Climate change and islands’ ecosystem services: a global meta-analysis

Islands are hotspots of biological and cultural diversity, which, compared to mainlands, are more vulnerable to environmental degradation, climate change, uncontrolled land use changes and financial or societal crises. Particularly when combined, these factors can increasingly impact the environmental and socioeconomic services in many of such isolated ecosystems and communities. Atmospheric warming, ocean acidification or other abrupt climate changes can directly impact the biodiversity of islands and surrounding water bodies, the associated Ecosystem Services and, in turn, the well-being of islanders. Although existing techniques can adequately predict climate-induced ecological changes over the continents or in the larger islands, this is not the case for smaller islands, where refined climate information is typically not available. The primary objective of the present review is to better understand the linkages between Ecosystem Services and climate change on islands from the global to regional and local scales. This is not limited to the direct positive or negative impacts of changes in environmental and climate conditions but also includes the potential of ecosystem services to provide nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Non-climatic drivers, e.g., land use changes, that may augment or alleviate the effects of climate change on islands’ Ecosystem Services are also explored.