But the reality is more like environmental peril, unreliable tourist income and a remoteness that makes foreign markets inaccessible to some four dozen island states.
‘We associate our thinking with their idyllic natural beauty but not with how vulnerable they are to natural disasters, how fragile they are,’ said Mr Anwarul Chowdhury, the United Nations High Commissioner for Small Island Developing States (Sids).
‘We need more global attention for these problems.’
The former Bangladeshi UN ambassador, who will head a meeting of island representatives, donors and non-governmental organisations in the Bahamas next week, expects help with some of these problems to come from Singapore.
‘Singapore has been one of the better endowed small islands,’ he told The Straits Times on Tuesday.
‘Its per capita income is way ahead of many industrialised countries.
‘We consider Singapore as having an opportunity to help other small island developing states.’
The Republic has a good training and technical assistance programme that is well organised and efficient, noted Mr Chowdhury.
‘I hope Singapore will share its knowledge and know-how with other small islands, share its resources, and support their programmes and projects.’
Singapore is a member of the Sids group even though it does not share the poverty and isolation that plague other islands.
Mr Chowdhury acknowledges the quixotic membership of the association, which also includes Cyprus, as well as island territories that are not actually states at all.
He said he inherited the alliance and does not want ‘to tilt the hornet’s nest’.
The Republic, he said, is probably a member because it is still in the Group of 77.
And, according to the World Bank, although it is difficult to define what ‘small’ means in Sids’ context, it does not have to mean ‘poor’.
A programme of action was drawn up a decade ago to help Sids to integrate into the world economy and to attract investors.
That document, which also calls on industrialised nations and NGOs to pitch in, will be reviewed at the Bahamas conference next week.
Mr Chowdhury believes that small islands need extra care and attention to overcome their inherent disadvantages, as well as the social and economic problems that are natural by-products.
The governments of Sids must make priorities and fulfil their obligations to their citizens, he said, making it possible for them to live a better life.
That includes luring investment, winning development funds and wooing the kind of technical assistance that will generate tangible returns.
‘The message is that you need to get it together,’ said Mr Chowdhury.
‘You are too small to help country by country.’
By Betsy Pisik, The Straits Times
