Initiative has helped country tap satellite data to improve its own agricultural statistics and drought and flood modelling capacities.

Climate Policy Integration (CPI) is key to mainstreaming and harmonising mitigation and adaptation in policy responses to climate change worldwide. However, little is known about how CPI can be applied in practice, beyond single policy areas, particularly in the integration of adaptation and mitigation responses. We investigate this in the context of responding to climate impacts such as extreme heat, a climate risk growing in international importance. Using the 2022 UK heatwaves as a case study, our paper explores: (a) the extent to which key stakeholders consider the integration of adaptation and mitigation to be important; (b) perceptions of the feasibility of integration; and (c) main enablers and/or challenges with integration of adaptation and mitigation. To do this, interviews (N = 38) and four focus groups (N = 21) were conducted with policymakers, first responders, utility providers, and civil society responsible for managing heat risks. Our findings reveal a tension that CPI is essential to achieving a “climate resilient net zero”, yet unrealised. To facilitate CPI, we present a new anticipatory narrative with international and multi-contextual significance, that considers the convergence of key elements integral to effective CPI decision-making in the context of heat risk: (1) ‘Challenges’ − that may hinder, undermine, or act as a barrier to the integration of mitigation and adaptation; (2) ‘Enablers’ − which support, or help to facilitate greater integration, or synergies, between mitigation and adaptation; (3) ‘Framings’ − different ways participants described, defined or interpreted the issue of integration; (4) ‘Importance’ – the extent to which participants thought that integrating mitigation and adaptation was important; and (5) ‘Feasibility’ – or how possible integration is. We conclude that unless all five elements are fully addressed iteratively by end-users when tackling and understanding heat risks, new problems may emerge.

There is evidence of increased links in media coverage between anthropogenic climate change and heatwaves, wildfires and flooding events. This usually pertains to major disasters, but that is a relative concept as the notion of disaster is contextual and disasters are devastating at smaller scales for the people impacted. Media reporting of the Alpha Road/Tambaroora bushfire in the central-west region of New South Wales (Australia), in March 2023, was analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse links between science, anthropogenic climate change and an extreme weather-related event. There was a focus on proximate causes, costs and impact on livelihoods. There was an absence of climate change discourse. Timely attribution science, especially rapid assessments that accurately connect climate change with significant weather-related events, not just large-scale disasters, may increase media salience and assist with science communication. The expectation that parts of Australia will burn, and therefore bushfires become newsworthy only when they are disasters, needs to be challenged in order to live in a changing climate.

Food insecurity is a perennial problem in much of the developing world, with gains against hunger backsliding in recent years and climate change predicted to accelerate this trend. Food insecurity is highly disruptive to rural livelihoods and can lead to dramatic shifts in food production strategies and resultant land use. However, studies to date have yet to outline the overarching patterns of land use change that can result from food insecurity. We elucidate the impact of food insecurity events between 2013 and 2020 in 25 low- and middle-income countries on resulting land use change and demographics. Using propensity score matching, we create a counterfactual and assess changes in forest cover, crop cover, population and nighttime luminosity between regions that experience food insecurity and comparable food-secure regions. Land use change theory, specifically the classical trajectories of agricultural intensification, land rent theory, and regime shifts help to explain observed land use trajectories. We find that food insecurity events lead to around a 4 % decline in population and a 3 % decline in cropped areas, alongside a 4 % increase in forest cover compared to control regions. Additionally, we show that drought-driven food insecurity drives impacts on land use and conflict-driven food insecurity shows greater impacts on population and nighttime luminosity. Food insecurity shocks result in an increase in population and crop cover in urban areas despite losses in adjoining rural land, suggesting that food insecurity drives local rural to urban migration. Furthermore, by assessing the impacts of discrete food insecurity events in three countries, we find that regional contexts mediate impacts by producing variable land use change trajectories.

Understanding trade-attributed greenhouse gas (GHG) inequality from a global value chain (GVC) perspective is essential for advancing global sustainability. This study examines the distribution and influencing mechanism of trade-attributed GHG inequality across 49 economies from 1995 to 2022. We integrate a GVC decomposition model with an optimized regional environmental inequality index to assess the trade-attributed GHG inequity. The gravity model is employed to explore the relationship between this inequality and different GVC trade types. Through a structural decomposition analysis, we further unveil the drivers of GHG emissions per value added in crucial GVC trade types to determine effective pathways for alleviating the inequality. Our analysis reveals the following findings: (1) Trade-related GHG emissions and value added are significantly unequally distributed among economies, with this imbalance being more severe between GVCs. (2) Trade-attributed GHG inequalities demonstrate widespread globally and exhibit a worsening trend, with particularly pronounced disparities emerging in trade between developing economies, notably China, India, and Russia. (3) Exports and imports through complex GVCs are the most crucial GVC trade types for exacerbating the inequality. Imports through traditional trade represent another crucial GVC trade type. (4) Reducing GHG intensity plays a vital role in alleviating the inequality. Efforts should focus on targeting specific drivers in crucial GVC trade types to reduce their GHG emissions per value added. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on trade-attributed GHG inequality and provides valuable insights for policymakers working towards more equitable and sustainable global trade practices within the context of GVCs.

Negotiations are ongoing but fraught for designing a new global science-policy panel for chemicals and waste pollution. In this Perspectives article, we challenge three assumptions guiding these negotiations. First, the new panel should resemble the existing panels of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Inter-governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Second, the creation of a new panel will automatically carry authority within policymaking. Third, the participation of industry is crucial without special consideration for its interests. Further, we identify three steps to enhance the panel’s relevance and influence.

This study aimed to examine the reasons behind the wait-and-see and resistant attitudes of local elected officials regarding energy transition projects. Although there is consensus on the importance of renewable energy in combating climate change, its implementation at the local level often encounters opposition from several actors, including elected officials. This study identified the internal, external, and personal factors that influence this opposition by conducting semi-structured interviews with the French officials and stakeholders involved in the energy transition and by analysing the local and regional press. Our findings indicate that political strategies, regulatory complexities, and personal beliefs play significant roles in shaping officials’ decisions regarding energy transition projects. Furthermore, by proposing a typology of elected officials according to their modes of opposition, we offer insights to promote effective and sustainable local energy transitions.

This article explores the relationship between political uncertainty and carbon emissions across 34 Global South countries from 2000 to 2023, uncovering key links between policy stability and environmental sustainability. By employing the year- and country-fixed effects model alongside generalized least squares with panel corrected standard errors, this analysis highlights the impact of political instability on environmental outcomes. Robustness checks—conducted via the generalized method of moments and a dynamic linear panel model—further confirm the consistency and reliability of the results. The findings reveal that political uncertainty significantly elevates carbon emissions and follows a nonlinear pattern: moderate political uncertainty tends to stimulate economic activity, resulting in higher emissions, while extreme uncertainty curtails economic activity, thereby reducing emissions. Moreover, a positive interaction between political uncertainty and mineral policy signals increased resource extraction in politically unstable settings. Conversely, interactions with technological innovation and energy transition display significant negative effects, suggesting that technological advancement and renewable energy adoption effectively counteract emissions growth under high political uncertainty. This study provides new insights into the distinct political and economic dynamics influencing environmental challenges in Global South countries, emphasizing the crucial role of technological innovation and energy transition in mitigating the environmental impacts of political instability.

In June 2019, the UK government legislated a net zero target by 2050. This will directly impact the UK oil and gas industry. This study reports perceptions of key oil and gas professionals regarding the impact of transitioning to net zero on impairment, values, write-downs, and going concern in the UK oil and gas industry, as well as required net-zero-related disclosures. Data were collected through 22 interviews, two written responses to our interview questions, and disclosures made by oil and gas companies in their annual reports. We use conservatism and stakeholder theory to inform our results. Our findings confirm there will be serious impacts of the transition to net zero on impairments, asset write-downs, and on the value and going concern of several oil and gas companies. However, these impacts will not fall equally across the industry, and it is likely therefore that stakeholders will be affected differently. Our results contribute, first, to the debate on the impacts of the transition to net zero on key accounting measures of oil and gas companies; second, we identify risks associated with the transition to net zero for these companies and their stakeholders, and we classify the at-risk oil and gas companies operating in the UK; third, we present a collection of disclosure items deemed necessary by our interviewees. Our specified disclosure items may complement those of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT).

Energy transitions are often studied using socio-technical transitions, just transitions and more recently, social-ecological tipping points (SETPs). While they can be important starting points for conceptualising large-scale systemic change, when applied within a regional context, they often fail to appropriately explain change. SETP concept is receiving increasing attention, but its heuristic value still requires further empirical validation. While many energy transitions are still in a pre-tipping point phase, the lack of empirically validated tipping points raises a question of applicability if these frameworks are unable to capture change at the regional scale. In this paper, we introduce a new inductive framework, Just Social-Ecological Tipping Scales (JSETS), based on cross-case analysis in coal and carbon-intensive regions (CCIRs). The framework helps understanding systemic change in regional contexts by identifying transition states. We then analyse traits in these transition states by assessing enablers and barriers of triggering factors and actors over temporal and spatial scales as well as justice dimensions. This analysis helps us to identify cumulate changes leading to four tipping scales, which can move a region from one transition state to another. By identifying both transition states and tipping scales, we can anticipate the potential traits needed for a CCIR to move towards a just transformation.