Reports on the impacts of climate change, including those of the IPCC, usually describe small island states as ‘especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea-level rise, and extreme events’ (Mimura et al. 2007: 689). Over time, the threats posed by sea-level rise to the very existence of these states have been highlighted, and their inhabitants have often been described as the first potential ‘climate refugees’. Most media reports now describe small island states as ‘lost paradises’ and their citizens as ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of global warming, a view that has often been reinforced by official discourses in climate negotiations. Though the reality of environmentally-induced population displacements in small island states cannot be ignored, describing islanders as climate refugees in the making, left with no other choice than fleeing abroad, fail to capture the complexity of environmental changes and migration flows. Migration, by nature, is a multi-causal process, which does not have to epitomize the failure of local adaptation strategies. Furthermore, portraying small island states as disempowered victims of climate change might affect their resilience and resourcefulness, ultimately hindering their adaptation efforts. Community-based adaptation strategies, in particular, could be hindered if the inhabitants see themselves as doomed. This paper highlights the detrimental effect of the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ rhetoric on the inhabitants’ adaptive capacity, and makes the case that small island states tend to be exceptionally resilient to environmental changes. An example of this resilience is the way small island states have organised themselves in order to weigh on the climate negotiations, through the formation of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The AOSIS'' strategies in the negotiations will be analysed and put into perspective with adaptation strategies implemented at the local level. Though many resort to the image of ''canaries in the coalmine'' in order to alert about the imminent threats of climate change, the paper makes the point that this image might actually do more harm than good to the citizens of small island states, as adaptation measures are urgently required. The paper shows why these citizens should not to be considered as the canaries in the coalmine, but as the miners themselves.
