Islands and islanders are often misrepresented in the climate change discourse, oversimplifying their experiences and interactions with climate change. In reality, islands and islanders have far more complex relationships with climate change. This special thematic section presents eight papers that highlight local responses and localized impacts of climate change on islands, reiterating the importance of considering local community perspectives in small island contexts to overcome simplistic viewpoints. Such perceptions and perspectives are increasingly being recognized as offering a valuable contribution to climate change adaptation, particularly to counter the misrepresentation of small islands as vulnerable or passive, and the disregard for the fact that climate change is a global, as well as continual process. This special thematic section further demonstrates that island research is well placed to address the disproportionate concentration of perspectives and opinions of climate change from the Global North and adds to the calls for increased efforts to give a voice to island communities of all kinds.