Under the motto, Charting the course towards resilient prosperity, the meeting in the islands of Antigua and Barbuda aims to assess the capacity of SIDS to achieve their development, an aspect that encompasses the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals.

These nations, which occupy less than 0.5 percent of the global land surface, are distributed in the following three regions: the Caribbean area, the Pacific and Atlantic areas, and the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea regions.

Environmentally, while the vast marine areas surrounding SIDS serve as vital resources for their communities and economies, they also add to their fragility.

With population densities higher than the global average, SIDS are susceptible to the catastrophic effects of natural disasters, which generate annual damage costs estimated at one to eight percent of their gross domestic product.

These hazards make their fragile terrestrial and marine ecosystems prone to biodiversity loss and the impacts of climate change.

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