Intersectionality is gaining credence in explaining the complexities in rural women’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This study is framed on the assumption that rural women are likely to be affected differently by climate change due to cultural differences. The life history approach was utilised to conduct empirical research in the Bamenda Highlands Region, Cameroon on ethnicity and

Scholarship on gender in fisheries is not new. However, while there are many studies on the context and politics of gender and fisheries, understanding how power influences gender equality remains understudied, especially in the Western Indian Ocean. Based on evidence gathered from an interdisciplinary set of literature, including sectoral policies, this article provides nuanced insight at rethinking

The growing use of chemical herbicides for weed control has become a dominant feature of modern industrial agriculture and a major environmental and health concern in agricultural systems worldwide. This paper seeks to explain how and why glyphosate-based agricultural herbicides have become so entrenched in modern agriculture. It shows that a complex interplay among technological, market, and regulatory

Our carbon-intensive economy has led to an average temperature rise of 1 °C since pre-industrial times. As a consequence, the world has seen increasing droughts, significant shrinking of the polar ice caps, and steady sea-level rise. To stall these issues’ worsening further, we must limit global warming to 1.5 °C. In addition to the economy’s decarbonization, this endeavour requires the use of negative-emissions

This empirical and interdisciplinary study investigates the contribution of deeply enrooted social-political factors to the accumulation of exposure and vulnerability and amplification of cascading impacts of disasters, with implications on the creation and reinforcement of path dependency maintaining social-ecological systems on a maladaptive trajectory. Applying the Trajectory of Exposure and Vulnerability

Local governments have set highly ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets on a strategic level, in some cases influenced by intermediary networks. Yet, the quantitative impacts of climate strategies or the sharing of best practices on emissions still remain largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of an intermediary network on municipal greenhouse gas emissions.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly promoted as nature-based solutions to climate, environmental, and business challenges. While participation in PES schemes is mandated in countries such as China, Costa Rica, and Vietnam, it remains unclear how PES schemes emerge in countries devoid of national mandates. This article investigates how actors have attempted institutional change to

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable and low carbon form of getting from A to B. Yet the net effects of changes in active travel on changes in mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected longitudinal data on daily travel behavior, journey purpose, as well as personal and geospatial characteristics in seven European

Climate change denial is motivated in part by ideology, with research showing that a greater tolerance of social inequality is consistently linked to lower pro-environmentalism. We report findings from two mixed-methods studies. In Study One, we provide insight into how individuals with varying levels of social dominance orientation discuss environmental issues by analyzing 59 interviews. These analyses

Livestock grazing on natural rangeland vegetation is one of the most extensive land uses on the earth, with important implications for livelihoods, food security and the environment. Factors such as population growth and urban development, a shift from resource-based to service-based economies, and intensification in the livestock industry change the extent and practice of grazing worldwide. We investigated

Mountain communities in developing and transitioning countries are experiencing a period of rapid social, economic, and environmental change. While change has long been a feature of mountain life, the rate, magnitude, nature, and number of the transformations now taking place is unprecedented, with profound implications for the sustainability and welfare of mountain communities in the coming years

Secure property rights are widely understood as critical for socio-economic development and sustainable land management in forested areas. Policies and programs, ranging from devolution of specific resource rights to formal land titling, have therefore been implemented to strengthen forest tenure and property rights in countries around the world. Despite the prevalence and importance of these efforts

It is imperative that climate, energy, and sustainability policy researchers and practitioners grapple with the difficulty of decarbonizing heat, which remains the largest single end-use energy service worldwide. In this study, based on a comparative assessment of five original and representative national surveys in Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (N = 10,109), we explore public

How to share responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions between consumers and producers is a highly sensitive question in international climate policy negotiations. Traditional ‘Production-Based Accounting’ (PBA), which assigns responisibility to the region where emissions are released, has frequently been challenged by ‘Consumption-Based Accounting’ (CBA) schemes that suggest that greenhouse gas

Sea level rise and urbanization exert complex synergistic pressures on the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in coastal regions. Anticipating when and where both biophysical and cultural ES will be affected by these two types of coastal environmental change is critical for sustainable land-use planning and management. Biophysical (provisioning and regulating) services can be mapped using secondary

The carbon footprint (CF) has emerged as an important yardstick to understand the total contribution of countries, sectors and individuals to climate change. In contrast to conventional emissions accounting which captures only territorial or local production activities, the CF includes the emissions imposed by consumption across global supply chains for goods and services. Recent interest has grown

Role-playing simulations have gained in popularity in recent years as a novel method of engaging researchers and stakeholders in a variety of social and environmental issues. While academic interest has grown on this topic, knowledge remains sparse on the underlying theories that may guide the design of such games. Thsi article introduces a new game design framework - Com­pleC­Sus (Com­plex­ity-Co

As global environmental change continues to accelerate and intensify, science and society are turning to transdisciplinary approaches to facilitate transitions to sustainability. Modeling is increasingly used as a technological tool to improve our understanding of social-ecological systems (SES), encourage collaboration and learning, and facilitate decision-making. This study improves our understanding

Life in the Pacific is characterised by interconnected, fast and slow socio-ecological change. These changes inevitably involve navigating questions of justice, as they shift who benefits from, owns, and governs resources, and whose claims and rights are recognized. Thus, greater understanding of perceptions of environmental justice within communities will be crucial to support fair adaptation. We

Urbanization and climate change are among the most important global trends affecting human well-being during the twenty-first century. One region expected to undergo enormous urbanization and be significantly affected by climate change is Africa. Studies already find increases in temperature and high temperature events for the region. How many people will be exposed to heat events in the future remains

Climatic variability affects many underlying determinants of child malnutrition, including food availability, access, and utilization. Evidence of the effects of changing temperatures and precipitation on children’s nutritional status nonetheless remains limited. Research addressing this knowledge gap is merited given the short- and long-run consequences of malnutrition. We address this issue by estimating

Linkages between hydroclimate variability and economic development are often theorized to be present only in developing economies. Using spatially small-scaled data from multiple decades for European regions, we examine the relationship between precipitation anomalies and economic performance in highly developed economic systems. We conduct a disaggregated empirical analysis to mitigate the bias potentially

Modeling is a crucial approach for understanding the past and exploring the future of coupled human-natural systems. However, uncertainty in various forms challenges inferences from modeling results. Model-based support for decision-making has increasingly adopted an emerging exploratory approach. This approach addresses uncertainty explicitly through systematically exploring the implications of modeling

Following critiques of the global environmental justice paradigm, a ‘critical’ environmental justice scholarship is emerging. This article contributes to this important field of inquiry by interrogating project evaluation through a critical recognition justice lens that draws on political ecology. We use an embedded case study of the official donor evaluation of a REDD+ pilot project in Tanzania; comparing

The participation of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in regional fisheries management organizations has inspired optimism among many observers and researchers about increasing the effectiveness of these regional organizations in managing highly migratory and straddling fish stocks sustainably. Others claim that the attendance of ENGOs in meetings of regional fisheries management

As the world’s population continues to grow, agricultural expansion is expected to increase to meet future food demand often at the expense of other land uses. However, there are limited studies examining the degree to which forest cover will change and the underlying assumptions driving these projections. Focusing on food and forest scenarios for the middle to the end of the current century, we review

This article investigates the pathways linking environmental and economic drivers of rural-to-urban migration in Mozambique. Using examples from two rural-to-urban migrant communities located in the coastal city of Beira, we build on a generalizable migration framework (Black et al., 2011) in order to explore how perception and lived experience influence migration decision-making in contexts of environmental

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, global air transport demand was expected to triple between 2020 and 2050. The pandemic, which reduced global air travel significantly, provides an opportunity to discuss the scale, distribution and growth of aviation until 2018, also with a view to consider the climate change implications of a return to volume growth. Industry statistics, data provided by supranational

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have gained a prominent role in the climate science-policy interface. The article reconstructs the evolution of IAMs and their changing role in this interface, investigating how and why IAMs have become so prominent. Based on literature analysis, quantitative document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we describe the historic evolution of the interactions

Co-production between scientific and Indigenous knowledge has been identified as useful to generating adaptation pathways with Indigenous peoples, who are attached to their traditional lands and thus highly exposed to the impacts of climate change. However, ignoring the complex and contested histories of nation-state colonisation can result in naïve adaptation plans that increase vulnerability. Here

This perspective piece makes a case for a more rigorous treatment of managed retreat as a politically, legally, and economically distinct type of relocation that is separate from climate migration. We argue that the use of both concepts interchangeably obfuscates the problems around climate-induced mobilities and contributes to the inconsistencies in policy, plans, and actions taken by governments

Drawing on the adaptation, justice, and resettlement literatures, this study explores the prospects for procedural (who is involved, how they are selected) and distributive justice (how the outcomes are experienced by different groups) in a resettlement project in the coastal city of Iloilo in the Philippines. This project, which sought to reduce flood risks, required the resettlement of 3500 families

Recent advances in geotagging, sharing and automatically analyzing online content from Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer unprecedented opportunities for the analysis of human-nature interactions. Previous studies in this field, however, offer limited insights regarding the benefits of automated content analysis especially at large scales, biases arising from the selection of SNS sources, and the

National consumption of goods and services is met by domestic production and international trade. As a result, countries and sectors exert pressure on natural resources both within and beyond their national borders. Where this resource demand is imposed matters to the effective management of global resource insecurity. Although instructive, the ‘resource footprint’ of a country or sector – a common

Transitioning to more efficient and less carbon-intensive heating is a monumental policy challenge in the United Kingdom. However, very few households in the UK—and perhaps even elsewhere—have actual experience with state-of-the-art smart heating systems that may utilize enhanced control or feedback. Drawing from a unique sample of actual adopters of smart heating, this study closely examines the heating

Environmental and land defenders play a crucial role in attempts to slow down environmental change and address power inequalities in land-use and resource development. Yet, they frequently face repression, including defamation, criminalization, and assassination. Recent policy and media coverage initiatives have provided much needed attention to the protection and support of defenders, but there has

One of the major unresolved questions in the study of vulnerability to climate change is how human migration will respond in low and middle-income countries. The present study directly addresses this lacuna by using census data on migration from 4 million individuals from three middle-income African countries over a 22-year period. We link these individuals to climate exposures in their origins and

Aviation is a fast-growing sector, releasing more carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre than other transport modes. For climate change researchers, work-related travel – including for conferences and fieldwork – is a major carbon-emitting activity. At the same time, many argue that climate scientists have an important role in curbing their own aviation emissions to align their practices with their

In August 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg started to strike from school on Fridays to protest against a lack of action on the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a historically large youth movement, leading to a series of school strikes across the world. Over the course of one week in September 2019, striking school children, students and other grassroots movements, such as Extinction Rebellion

Changes in mountain landscape can affect avalanche activity, causing changes in risk, potentially enhanced by a transition of the socio-environmental system and its underlying dynamics. Thus, integrative approaches combining biophysical and social sciences are required to assess changes in risk in all its dimensions. This study proposes a holistic methodology combining land cover change detection using

Quantified flood risk assessments focus on asset losses, neglecting longer-term impacts to household welfare via income and consumption losses. The extent of welfare losses depends upon resilience – the ability to anticipate, resist, cope, recover and learn from a shock. Here, we use a novel welfare loss modelling framework and perform a high-resolution spatial analysis in coastal Bangladesh to quantify

Climate change is predicted to cause voluntary and forced internal migration on an unprecedented scale in the coming decades. Yet, research on host communities that will be on the front lines in receiving the climate migrants has thus far been a neglected area within climate change research. Inspired by previous research on psychological distance’s impact on people’s behavior and attitudes, this article

The carbon-dense peatlands of Indonesia are a landscape of global importance undergoing rapid land-use change. Here, peat drained for agricultural expansion increases the risk of large-scale uncontrolled fires. Several solutions to this complex environmental, humanitarian and economic crisis have been proposed, such as forest protection measures and agricultural support. However, numerous programmes

This study provides insight into the potential of experiment-based policy making to address complex environmental challenges. The investigation shows the usefulness of making an analytical distinction between incremental and synoptic policy experiments to understand successful change over time. Incremental refers here to gradual adjustment of policies in a specific context, synoptic to radical change

Climate change interacts with social, economic, and political forces in ways that can shape demographic behavior. Yet, the link between environmental stress and marriage has received limited attention. Using survey data from 615 Bangladeshi households, we examine the relationship between extreme weather in the form of heat waves and dry spells, and the risk of marriage over the period from 1989 to

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining traction in high-level, decision-making arenas as a response to global policy challenges. Claiming to be transformative and pluralistic, NbS aim to resolve societal problems through a focus on nature, which is understood to be a benign ally. This uncritical framing of nature may have unintended and inequitable consequences that undermine the emancipatory potential

Climate change is already affecting rural communities along the high Andean plateau, but it is just one of many stresses that Andean people experience on a regular basis. This paper examines the experiences of quinoa farmers in Southwestern Bolivia as they faced the overlapping crises of protracted drought and market disruption in 2017. Drawing on political ecologies of resilience, this paper argues

It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent

In recent years, the environmental problems associated with plastics have become a matter of global concern. Current responses seek to replace plastics with other materials, however it is not yet clear that these alternatives will deliver improved environmental outcomes. There remains an urgent need for more nuanced understandings of plastics, their role in society, and their environmental impacts

Global pet ownership, especially of cats and dogs, is rising with income growth, and so too are the environmental impacts associated with their food. The global extent of these impacts has not been quantified, and existing national assessments are potentially biased due to the way in which they account for the relative impacts of constituent animal by-products (ABPs). ABPs typically have lower value

Does water shortage incentivize cooperation? Case studies suggests that water scarcity can rarely, if at all, explain violence, instead such shortages rather facilitate cooperative actions around water. Another major argument from qualitative research holds that water scarcity and armed conflict often occur side by side. These insights have rarely been tested empirically across cases on a sub-national

As climate change intensifies, the need for large-scale transformations that reform vulnerable systems’ prevailing values and development pathways is increasingly recognized. However, there is limited understanding of the factors that underlie such changes. This study sheds light on these factors by examining the case of Israel – a largely arid to semi-arid country with highly scarce natural water

The drinking water sector is off track to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 with over a quarter of the world’s population lacking safe and reliable services. Policy approaches are shifting away from provision of access towards managing the multiple risks of water supply and quality. By considering how infrastructure, information, and institutional systems evolved in Bangladesh, this article

Scenarios describe plausible and internally consistent views of the future. They can be used by scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to explore the challenges of global environmental change given an appropriate level of spatial and sectoral detail and systematic development. We followed a nine-step protocol to extend and enrich a set of global scenarios – the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)

Feeling affected by climate change related disasters has the potential to mobilize belief in climate change, concern about the issue, and support for mitigation policies – even when accounting for the effects of physically living through a disaster. In this study we use a two-wave survey design where respondents in the United States were interviewed before and after Hurricane Florence to better understand