Turning the Tide: Climate Change, Social Change, & Islandness

This collection of essays from islanders around the globe offers a complex understanding of the intersections of climate change and social change on islands. How are the effects of climate change and catastrophic weather experienced and narrated by islanders? What stories need to be told? How do local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge practices facilitate the capacity to improvise, innovate, and adapt to volatile weather events? How do social relations on climate stressed islands continue to flourish? How do governance structures and issues of sovereignty support and/or inhibit climate and social justice? This interdisciplinary approach foregrounds island storytellers as they convey worldviews, knowledge, and cultural values, beliefs, and emotions that are often missing from climate change discourses

Language ideologies and policy in Aruban secondary education: A qualitative analysis

Aruba’s sociolinguistic landscape comes with many challenges and opportunities for language-in-education policy. One point of contention is that there is a discrepancy between the most common home language (Papiamento) and the language of instruction throughout most of the education systems (Dutch). The central objective is to analyze existing policy documents, assessing their presence, absence, and implications. The focus of the analysis is on the underlying language ideologies and their implications for institutional practices. It considers how current language policies relate to colonial and decolonial influences, partly in relation to the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the European Union. The study then explores how monolingual ideologies perpetuate linguistic hierarchies. As such, the main research question is, “How are Aruban language-in-education policies indicative of underlying (colonial and decolonial) language ideologies?” The study is conducted as part of the Horizon Europe Pluridentities project.https://doi.org/10.3030/10117891

Multi-scale biophysical modelling explains contrasted coral connectivity and genetic structure in the high-relief basin of the Aruba–Bonaire–Curaçao islands.

Coral connectivity plays a fundamental role in the persistence and resilience of reef ecosystems, yet remains challenging to quantify due to the complex interplay between poorly-quantified larval traits and the ocean dynamics. This challenge is amplified in physically intricate regions such as the Aruba-Bonaire-Cura¸cao (ABC) islands, where sharp bathymetric gradients and fine-scale hydrodynamics strongly influence larval transport and recruitment. In this study we apply the multi-scale, GPU-accelerated ocean model SLIM3D to simulate several years of hydrodynamics in the ABC basin, enabling the fine-scale (∼100 m) representation of coastal circulation in reef areas. We then use SLIM’s Lagrangian Particle Tracker (LPT) to simulate the dispersal of millions of virtual larvae including species-specific biological traits, such as competency acquisition/loss, mortality, and settlement behaviour, thereby providing a robust assessment of connectivity pathways at the regional scale. Sensitivity analyses on the LPT’s physical and biological parameters further help us identify the most influential factors shaping connectivity. We analyze dispersal patterns for the broadcast spawner Diploria labyrinthiformis (Dlab) and the brooder Favia fragum (Ffra) and find very contrasted results. While Ffra shows very limited inter-island exchanges due to rapid larval settlement, resulting in largely isolated reef populations, Dlab exhibits broader dispersal enabled by longer pelagic larval durations and advection by the strong northwestward Caribbean Current. Additionally, the formation of (sub)mesoscale eddies in the lee of the islands also promote larval retention and self-recruitment, leading to lower genetic differentiation for the broadcaster than for the brooder. Our findings align with in-situ genetic measurements, revealing numerous distinct genetic groups for Ffra, and only two major groups for Dlab. This study underscores the role of coral larval early-life history traits in self-recruitment and long-distance dispersal, giving insights into how dispersal potential varies with reproductive mode and local hydrodynamics

Pionier in inclusief viertalig onderwijs binnen het Koninkrijk

Na eeuwenlange discussies over de keuze van de onderwijstaal voor het onderwijs, die steeds uitgingen van eentalig onderwijs en die steeds verzandden in de keuze tussen het koloniale, weinig gehoorde Nederlands en de lokaal dominante taal, het Papiamento, heeft de Status Aparte het mogelijk gemaakt dat Aruba het roer om kon gooien, door te kiezen voor meertalig onderwijs dat recht doet aan de karakteristieken van de samenleving. Achterhaalde discussies over hoe groot of klein de ene taal is ten opzichte van de andere, of wat de status is of zou moeten zijn van de ene taal ten gunste van de ander, verdwijnen in Aruba op de achtergrond. Deze eentalige benaderingen doen geen recht aan de veelzijdige kleurrijke meertalige leefwereld waarin de kinderen opgroeien en leren. De focus wordt daarom verlegd naar deze inclusieve meertalige realiteit, en naar de ontwikkeling van onderwijs dat tegemoetkomt aan de brede competenties die de Arubaanse bevolking in zich draagt en nodig heeft