Effectively addressing the vulnerabilities and development needs of small island developing States

International support to the sustainable development of SIDS has been on the international policy agenda for a long time, whereas challenges are intensifying. Stabilizing global economic and financial markets and international measures to reduce climate changes are indispensable to reduce vulnerabilities of SIDS, as is scaling-up of existing support measures at the national level in areas such as climate change adaptation. This paper also performs cluster and other statistical analyses of SIDS vulnerabilities to explore new approaches to SIDS support. The heterogeneity among SIDS is substantial even if only sub-groups of SIDS are considered. Therefore, a differentiated approach has merits, as uniform support would neither be effective nor efficient.