55 ISLANDS AT THE PERIPHERY: INTEGRATING THE CHALLENGES OF ISLAND SUSTAINABILITY INTO EUROPEAN POLICY STEFANO MONCADA MARGUERITE CAMILLERI SAVIOUR FORMOSA ROBERTA GALEA Abstract 1 Sustainable development is a fundamental objective of the European Union and the global community. The considerable sustainability challenges faced by small islands are recognised at UN level, however the sustainability challenges faced by EU islands are not well reflected in EU policy, where the approach to island issues has been incremental and fragmented. After identifying EU islands and their main sustainability issues, this paper argues for a stronger awareness of islands issues in EU policy processes. It notes in particular three issues that needed to be addressed before this is done. These relate to the current restrictive definition of islands, which excludes island states, and the fact that the island issues of peripherality and insularity do not fit into any of the categories provided in the EU’s impact assessment guidelines, a key tool for internalizing sustainability concerns in EU policy. Third, since European islands are found at various administrative scales, there is a lack of harmonized statistical data on fundamental factors necessary for monitoring sustainable development in EU insular regions. The role of Malta in highlighting challenges and concerns faced by European islands is also explored, vis a vis the European Union policy-making and policy- designing mechanisms. 1. Introduction Sustainable development (SD) is a fundamental objective of the European Union, as elaborated in the renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy (CEC, 2001). At a global level the commitment to sustainable development is enshrined in the Rio and the Johannesburg (UN, 2002) processes. Within the Johannesburg process, islands have been identified as a ‘special case both for environment and development … that are increasingly constrained by the interplay of adverse factors’ (UN, 2003). However the sustainability challenges faced by EU islands are not well reflected in EU policy, which has tended to be incremental as various types of islands became incorporated within the community, and fragmented by sector, with island policy featuring mostly in cohesion, agriculture and fisheries policy. This is despite the recognition that these regions face particular challenges due to their isolation and generally small size (Eurisle, 2002; Planistat, 2002; CEC, 1994), which demand particular attention when operationalising sustainable development. This is even more relevant five years after two small island states, Cyprus and Malta, joined the EU in 2004. In order to investigate these concerns, this paper first reviews the EU and international policy framework for island sustainability. It then identifies the location of EU islands based on a spatial dataset, and elaborates a set of European island sustainability issues that are identified through expert interviews. Since one of the principal tools for institutionalising SD thinking within EU policy process is the practice of impact assessment, the sustainability issues were then compared with the impact issues identified in the EU Impact Assessment Guidelines (CEC, 2005) 2 . In order to assess the dimensions of European island sustainability issues, these are then associated with a set of indicators, which are quantified and reviewed. The paper closes by identifying a number of issues that need to be addressed if EU policy is to reflect a stronger awareness of island sustainability issues within EU policy processes. The role played by Malta in raising island issues within the complex EU policy-making mechanisms is also highlighted 1 This research was carried out within the framework of the European FP6 project SENSOR, on science-based ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) to support decision making on policies related to multifunctional land use in European regions (‘Sustainability Impact Assessment: Tools for Environmental, Social and Economic Effects of Multifunctional Land Use in European Regions’ (SENSOR), Contract Number 003874). 2 http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/docs/SEC2005_791_IA_guidelines_main.pdf .