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Marketing systems, while being pivotal to contemporary progress, have been linked to multifaceted global challenges, notably increasing inequalities and accelerated climate change repercussions. These challenges are not natural phenomena, but rather, human-induced crises, emerging predominantly from flawed systems of perception and action. Unfortunately, these flawed perspectives are also embedded within research and theoretical practices, leading to overly simplistic and disjointed results. This paper champions the introduction and application of corrective metatheories, specifically targeting these tendencies of reductionism, to bring coherence to the various domains of existence – be they subjective, intersubjective, interobjective, or objective. Using Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of critical realism, this paper elucidates how this particular metatheoretical approach can address the complexities inherent to marketing systems. Through Critical Realism, the paper aims to challenge reductionist narratives, critique societal shortcomings, and promotes both individual and collective potentials to support overall flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As communities around the world grapple with the impacts of climate change on the basic support systems of life, their future climate imaginaries both shape and are shaped by actions and material realities. This paper argues that the three globally dominant imaginaries of a climate changed future, which we call 'business as usual', 'techno-fix' and 'apocalypse' – fail to encourage actions that fundamentally challenge or transform the arrangements that underpin systemic injustices and extractive forms of life. And yet, to meet the challenges associated with food production, energy needs, and the destruction of ecosystems, people are coming together, not only to take transformative action, but in doing so, to create and nurture alternative imaginaries. This paper presents empirical findings about how communities in north and south India and south-east Australia are pre-figuring alternative futures, locally and in most cases in the absence of broader state support. An analysis of communities' actions and reflections indicates that their praxes are altering their future imaginaries, and we consider how these local shifts might contribute to broader changes in climate imaginaries. At the heart of the emerging imaginaries are a set of transformations in the relational fabric within which communities are embedded and how they attend to those relations: relations within community, with the more-than-human, and with time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on research ethics in social sciences by focusing on the concept of vulnerability. We unpack the current conceptualisations of vulnerability and their limitations and argue for the need to reconceptualise vulnerability as multidimensional, consisting of both universal and contextual dimensions, as well as their dynamic interplay. Multidimensional vulnerability is inspired by and relevant to social science research during the pandemic but can also be useful in other contexts such as climate change or conflict. The paper puts forwards several considerations about how this revised concept of vulnerability may be useful when evaluating ethical dimensions of social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Review of Radical Political Economics is calling for papers for a special issue on climate change and capitalism. The journal is seeking manuscripts that provide a range of critical political economic perspectives on the topic, as well as a variety of methods, approaches, and geographic focuses. They particularly encourage submissions from climate activists, scholars in the Global South, early career researchers, and scholars from historically excluded groups. The journal provides a list of possible subjects for the special issue, including theoretical and empirical interventions, historical or contemporary analyses, critiques of economic analysis, and models of climate justice and anti-capitalist struggles. Submissions must adhere to the journal's guidelines and will undergo peer review. [Extracted from the article]

The magnitude of water-induced disasters is projected to increase in the coming decades. Yet, there is a substantial gap in the understanding of how local knowledge and Indigenous knowledge are employed to respond to climate change water-induced disasters. We examine this gap through a meta-review of literature published between 2014 and 2019 yielding 39 scholarly papers. The meta-review indicates that the literature highlights that marginalized people are facing multiple risks that threaten their ability to produce enough food for consumption, secure water for irrigation, live in sustainable communities, and maintain their health and well-being. Responses are largely incremental, autonomous adjustments, such as livelihood diversification, flood-proofing homes, and soil moisture conservation. Our findings show that there is a clear need to more closely attend to the processes by which local knowledge and Indigenous knowledge can be meaningfully integrated into adaptation to move toward transformative change for long-term climate resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare contributes to environmental harm. Trainee-led Research and Audit in Anaesthesia for Sustainable Healthcare (TRA2SH) is an Australasian network focused on sustainable anaesthesia practice. TRA2SH hypothesised that trainee-led audits alongside education presented on a scheduled national day, called Operation Clean Up, can improve engagement with sustainability initiatives. This paper aims to describe the first two years of Operation Clean Up in terms of goals, achievements and data collected so far. Environmental themes for Operation Clean Up were chosen based on available evidence (life cycle analyses and observational studies). The first Operation Clean Up (OCU 2020) focused on reducing the unnecessary use of single-use disposable absorbent pads (known as 'blueys' in Australia, 'greenies' in New Zealand). OCU 2021 included: refuse desflurane, reduce bluey use, reuse drug trays, and recycle paper and cardboard. TRA2SH provided an information pack to trainees who presented educational material to their department and fed back procurement figures to quantify each item. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse de-identified pooled data submitted to a centralised database. Eight departments submitted data for OCU 2020 and six provided follow-up data. Bluey use was reduced from a median of 37 to 34 blueys per ten surgical encounters. Fifteen departments submitted pre-campaign data for OCU 2021 with follow-up data to be collected during OCU 2022. Baseline data showed a median bluey use of 31 per ten surgical encounters. Volatile-related emissions were calculated; desflurane's proportion was 70% of these emissions yet was 11% of volatile procurement. Two participating departments removed desflurane from their formulary following OCU 2021. Operation Clean Up is a practical model for implementing sustainability initiatives using trainees as eco-leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological innovation is needed that actively engages a range of policy makers in policy learning to address the climate and biodiversity crises. We developed Walkable Floor Map Policy Workshops (WFMPWs) as a way of engaging policy makers in policy learning towards NBS innovation in their local context. This paper examines WFMPW methodology for NBS through an analysis of three WFMPWs in three European urban case study sites. We find that implementation of WFMPWs facilitated policy learning through group discussion and experience sharing amongst participating policy makers. The WFMPWs added greater spatial contextualisation and the futures workshop elements facilitated discussions of future opportunities and barriers, leading to questioning of common approaches and assumptions and 'thinking outside of the box'. The data provided in-depth, comparative, nuanced, and locally contextualised qualitative insights of interest across multiple disciplines. The findings provide a different way of understanding political and decision-making processes around NBS, including problem framing and shifting policy debates. The WFMPW approach enabled participating policy makers to describe and critique the current situation; imagine/visualise a preferable future situation; and explore ways of moving from the actual situation to the preferred one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked radical changes in the way life was lived around the globe. With the rapid reduction in human mobility, short-term environmental improvements were seen across the world. Work and social routines were altered, and political action to reduce case numbers seemed to open a window of opportunity for socio-environmental change in a post-pandemic world. Inspired by conversations around the "COVID-19 Anthropause," this paper probes the lived experiences and reflections that emerged in the pandemic pause. Three years after the onset of the pandemic, many initial environmental gains have been limited. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 Anthropause has brought human–environment relations into new light, sparking introspection and forms of broader social critique surrounding what kinds of socio-political courage and structural change is necessary to achieve new post-pandemic realities. Our research shows the heterogeneity of experiences of the Anthropause, highlighting the ways that uncritical engagement with the concept can obscure overlapping structural inequalities, and reinforce harmful binaries around the presence and absence of humans in nature. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative data from Latin America and Europe, we enrich debates over the implications of the pandemic for human–environment relations and underscore the need to attend to radical forms of difference amid any global environmental concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As climate change (CC)-related adversity has become more evident, physical CC impacts and the need to respond to it are now a prominent topic in the political agenda in multiple countries. Accordingly, businesses have begun to adopt strategies to seeking to respond to CC. Recently, strategy and general management scholars have produced a growing number of articles examining the factors that increase the adoption of CC strategies, and, in a few cases, the environmental and financial performance implications of these strategies. Our review indicates that: (a) business research tends to dismiss CC-related adversity, with much of the research on drivers of responses highlighting a clear anthropocentric bias; (b) many papers discuss either adaptation or mitigation without much examination of synergies and tradeoffs between strategies; and (c) we know little about what and how physical climate conditions affect firms and their ability to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the climate-development interface, research for development gained a strong interest in climate-smart agriculture and sustainable forms of intensification. Moreover, the urgency to respond to climate change stimulates a strong and sometimes exclusive focus on mitigation, driven by research-based agricultural practices. In the livestock sector, this materialises in strategies to lower emissions from livestock, which centralises the adoption question: what can we do to stimulate the use of best practices by smallholder farmers? This paper flags the risk that this outlook may overlooksmallholder farmers' capacities to navigate sub-optimal conditions of drought or scarcity. The paper applies an alternative lens for understanding 'agriculture-as-performance' and highlights smallholder cattle owners' agency and resourcefulness. It aims to create a conceptual space to examine how adaptive capacities are grounded in the rhythms of agriculture under suboptimal conditions. Empirically, the study focuses on the cattle-feeding practices of five farming households evolving through seasons and lifetimes in a sedentary agricultural system in Kenya. Our frame identifies diverse affordances, conceptualised as opportunities for actions, emerging and disappearing in the immediate material environment, and we portray cattle feeding as a networked response anchored in practices of giving, sharing, and receiving. We use our insights into the dynamics and performance of entangled socio-technical practices to sketch the contours of an alternative pathway for agriculture for development. We argue in favour of a shift from an exclusive focus on the adoption of predefined optimal solutions to a diagnostic and catalytic approach integrating situated adaptive performances through which farming households respond to action opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to climate change conditions, natural ventilation potential may reduce over the years and increase dependence on HVAC systems. Moreover, occupants' behaviour regarding natural ventilation is a significant parameter affecting the thermal-energy performance of residential buildings as people tend to occupy their homes differently depending on their life, work and cultural routines. Therefore, in this study, the thermal-energy performance of a Global South (GS) housing case study located in Brazil was assessed in a future weather context. This paper included two major steps: (1) Optimization procedure to create optimized models based on different occupancy patterns; and (2) Parametric analysis to explore the building's thermal-energy performance for a given constructive design option, occupant behaviour and weather data. The optimization procedure included a multi-objective optimization based on the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) to minimize discomfort hours and cooling energy demand, while parametric analysis explored the occupants' behaviour varieties derived from alternative occupancy patterns, ventilation availabilities and HVAC operation modes. The obtained future context simulation results indicated an increase in discomfort hours and cooling energy demand, while the most appropriate architecture design might vary depending on the occupancy behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosquito-borne diseases are a public health concern. Pharmacists are often a patient's first stop for health information and may be asked questions regarding transmission, symptoms, and treatment of mosquito borne viruses (MBVs). The objective of this paper is to review transmission, geographic location, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of MBVs. We discuss the following viruses with cases in the US in recent years: Dengue, West Nile, Chikungunya, LaCrosse Encephalitis, Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus, and Zika. Prevention, including vaccines, and the impact of climate change are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study examines the exclusion of Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, from a group photo published by the Associated Press (AP) during the 2020 World Economic Forum. Using the muted group theory, it explores the implications of Nakate's omission as the sole Black individual in the image, shedding light on the broader issue of symbolic annihilation faced by Black women activists in Western media. Through visual and textual analysis, the study reveals the power dynamics and biases behind AP's decision to crop Nakate, fueling subsequent controversy. Furthermore, the paper examines AP's response to the backlash, analyzing their strategies to rebuild their reputation, including issuing an apology and releasing the original photograph. Plain language summary: Erasure of Black women activists from media: A review This paper looks at a photo from the 2020 World Economic Forum where a Ugandan climate activist named Vanessa Nakate was cropped out. The paper uses "muted group theory" to explain how this might have happened and what it means. It argues that Nakate was left out because she's a Black woman and that this is part of a bigger problem where the media often ignores or overlooks Black women activists. The focus is on the broader issue of symbolic annihilation experienced by Black women activists in Western media. Using visual and textual analysis, the study uncovers the power dynamics and biases influencing AP's decision to crop Nakate, sparking subsequent controversy. Additionally, the paper scrutinizes AP's response to the criticism, examining their strategies to rebuild their reputation, which include issuing an apology and releasing the original photograph. Overall, the paper is about how powerful media organizations can be and how important it is to be aware of the biases they might have. It is also about the importance of giving Black women activists a voice and making sure their stories are heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how global climate mitigation policies articulate with urban political–ecological transformations. It focuses on South African waste-to-value projects as case studies, exploring how local processes of urban ecological modernization combine with global climate finance through the now largely defunct Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Whilst it is generally recognized that waste-related CDM projects in South Africa (and elsewhere) have been an unmitigated failure in terms of climate and socio-economic benefits, we demonstrate that landfill-to-gas/energy projects have functioned effectively as geographical–discursive dispositifs through which particular knowledge systems are enrolled, specific 'solutions' are projected, and singular imaginaries of what is possible and desirable foregrounded, thereby crowding out alternative possibilities. This not only nurtures the commodification and marketization of non-human matter with an eye towards sustaining capital accumulation but, rather more importantly, successfully installs state-orchestrated private property relations around common resources, thereby deepening the dispossessing socio-ecological relations upon which expanded capitalist reproduction rests. We argue that whilst the formal outcome of the CDM is a failure, its success resides precisely in how it permitted local and global elites to create administrative and regulatory practices that solidify and naturalize a neoliberal market-based framework to approach the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition ecologies, namely ecotones, are where life started. Deltas, estuaries, bayous, and wetlands are places where different ecosystems merge and evolutionary processes take place. This paper explores three time periods in four coastal cities to look at the relationship between environmental values and urban expansionist paradigms through reclamation projects. It argues that these thresholds, occurring contemporaneously in expanding metropolitan regions, correspond to changing conceptualizations of urban–nature relationships, in other words urban core's changing relationships to fringe ecosystems. The metropolitan regions used as case studies for this piece are Mumbai, Amsterdam, New York, and Tokyo. Each has used reclamation as a grand expansion strategy during political or economic transitions. During each grand alteration attempt in these regions, the developers, reclamation enthusiasts, or urban planners revisited the city's immediate ecological fringe for expansion, and following these revisitations, a new geographical order formed in their subsequent regions. The urban fringe has become the socio-spatial zone where new and experimental ideas about urban development encounter complex natural systems. The land-use negotiations and reclamation's role in shaping the urban–nature relationships are missing pieces of the planning field. Any future looking climate resiliency plan today should build on the reading of this palimpsest and understand how these environmental values were traded and how global expansion narratives transformed the urban–nature gradient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw insights from a 15-year qualitative research program exploring catastrophe insurance and gaps in insurance protection as risks escalate within a world impacted by a climate emergency. We suggest that the ebb-and-flow of our research team's composition and activities through time was inextricably linked with our ability to have a sustained impact on such a large-scale societal issue. The essay situates itself within the research impact and team literature, narrates the trajectory of our research program and team development, and develops a framework for effectively managing impact-oriented qualitative research teams over time. Our framework illustrates key aspects of this process including team (re)forming, building team and individual stickability, performing, and managing team flux. We also present 10 practical takeaways for how these aspects can be managed effectively to produce long-term impact work to address grand challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the close interaction between environmental hazards and non-environmental factors inducing people to leave their areas of origin, augmented by the struggles they face and their urban survival strategies. Focusing on Aila-induced migrants in a slum in Khulna city, the study questions the conventional notion that environmental hazards singularly propel coastal inhabitants' migration. Instead, it asserts that migration results from a convergence of multi-causal factors, notably, the interplay between environmental hazards, socio-political and economic vulnerabilities, and proximity to ecologically fragile regions. Initially driven by subsistence needs, migration has transformed into something greater for many marginalized individuals. These migrants develop strong bonds with specific locations and location-specific networks, which facilitate their transition to urban life and allow them to mitigate the challenges associated with urban living. This study sheds light on the nuanced dynamics of climate-induced migration, emphasizing the necessity for comprehensive policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the fiscal impact of natural disasters in the U.S. states. The focus is on state spending, state revenues, and federal transfers for the period from 1970 to 2015. Results show that a broad definition based on dollar damages from all emergency events and major disasters has a small effect on state-level fiscal conditions, which stands in contrast to prior studies. On the other hand, a narrower definition based on the occurrence of major disasters is associated with increased spending and transfers alongside spending effects that grow with disaster severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land is not a commodity, and dominant western society is unsustainable. Examples of unsustainability include severance of peoples from lands and waters; separation of peoples from centers of decision-making; and dispossession of the lands, and traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). IPLCs at the frontlines of the climate crisis are often excluded on vital decisions regarding land management and protection. Taking an emic interpretation by means of lived experiences and auto-ethnographic responses to question prompts, this paper explores the international implications of Anishinaabek Giikendaaswin and Dùthchas nan Gàidheal as concepts that can (re)center IPLC place-based knowledges, sustainable governance, and lands in times of climate crisis. Anishinaabek Giikendaaswin is about the learning from the lands, N'ibi (the waters), and the sky world. It is a lived knowledge that has guided and continues to guide Anishinaabek Peoples. G'giikendaaswinmin informs Anishinaabek interconnectedness and interrelationality to the lands, all beings, and the sky world. Dùthchas is a millenia-old kincentric concept, informing a Gàidheal (Gael) way of life and traditional land governance that predate the formation of the United Kingdom. Dùthchas transmits a sense of belonging to, not possession of the land, and stresses an interconnectedness and ecological balance among all entities. The authors (Anishinaabe and Gàidheal) respond to critical questions, such as How do Giikendaaswin and Dùthchas center knowledges that can ensure collective continuance of life? Through a common theme of interconnectedness and what this means for reconstitutive real-life practice, they demonstrate how Indigenous concepts and science based on the expertise of IPLCs can address continued colonial atrocities and current crises. Giikendaaswin and Dùthchas have international and transnational implications as discourses of resistance not only to the Anthropocene, but also to ongoing processes of dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the urgency of problems related to climate change, studies on the framing of this issue have flourished in recent years. However, as in framing research overall, a lack of definitions complicates the synthesis of theoretical/empirical insights. This systematic review contrasts trends of framing in climate change communication to those observed in reviews of communication research overall and harnesses framing's power to bridge perspectives by comparing frames across different frame locations (i.e., frame production, frame content, audience frames, and framing effects), as part of the wider cultural framing repository. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches of content analysis, this review draws on 25 years of peer-reviewed literature on the framing of climate change (n = 275). Among the findings, we observe that research has not made use of framing's bridging potential. Hence, the conceptual (mis)fit between frame locations will be discussed, and directions for future research will be given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories about the end of the world continue to pile up daily. There isn't any sense of respite from the litany of horrors we are presented with. The eerie atmosphere of ecological catastrophe colonises our political imaginations. Understanding how we collectively imagine the end of the world, and thus how we understand what is happening, why and how, as well as what we must and can do, is politically crucial. The vast tapestry of environmental crises makes the role of the imagination central; not only in terms of being able to know the crises, but in setting out what is concretely possible and what is cruel fantasy. This paper sets out to map the imaginary of ecological catastrophe as drawn from the body of non-fiction literature that fuels much contemporary environmental activism in the Global North. Taking up the work of a series of environmental writer-activists in order to outline the various refrains that comprise the core of the eco-catastrophic imaginary, I aim to sketch how the slow violence of the present is being narrated as a political event, and what possibilities for averting disaster appear possible. It is the argument of this paper that how we collectively imagine the cacophony of environmental disasters presently unfolding shapes the field of political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and contextualises Climate Futures, an experiment in which AI was repurposed as a 'co-author' of climate stories and a co-designer of climate-related images that facilitate reflections on present and future(s) of living with climate change. It converses with histories of writing and computation, including surrealistic 'algorithmic writing', recombinatory poems and 'electronic literature'. At the core lies a reflection about how machine learning's associative, predictive and regenerative capacities can be employed in playful, critical and contemplative goals. Our goal is not automating writing (as in product-oriented applications of AI). Instead, as poet Charles Hartman argues, 'the question isn't exactly whether a poet or a computer writes the poem, but what kinds of collaboration might be interesting' (1996, p. 5). STS scholars critique labs as future-making sites and machine learning modelling practices and, for example, describe them also as fictions. Building on these critiques and in line with 'critical technical practice' (Agre, 1997), we embed our critique of 'making the future' in how we employ machine learning to design a tool for looking ahead and telling stories on life with climate change. This has involved engaging with climate narratives and machine learning from the critical and practical perspectives of artistic research. We trained machine learning algorithms (i.e. GPT-2 and AttnGAN) using climate fiction novels (as a dataset of cultural imaginaries of the future). We prompted them to produce new climate fiction stories and images, which we edited to create a tarot-like deck and a story-book, thus also playfully engaging with machine learning's predictive associations. The tarot deck is designed to facilitate conversations about climate change. How to imagine the future beyond scenarios of resilience and the dystopian? How to aid our transition into different ways of caring for the planet and each other? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most pressing contemporary social problems result from the amalgamation of a mass of actions that are not intentionally coordinated. Although these essentially aggregative harms are foreseeable, it is unclear what moral duties individuals have with regards to them. This paper offers a new analysis of these problems and uses a nonideal contractualist approach to argue in favour of two kinds of duties for individuals. Collectivization duties that require individuals to act responsively with a view to ensuring that there are effective governance agents that reliably, fairly, and efficiently prevent these outcomes in the long-term and duties of restraint that require individuals to avoid action of a kind that is likely to come together with other actions to cause serious EAH in the immediate future when restraint with regards to actions of this kind could help prevent the outcome from occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that we should radicalize managerial climate change education given that incremental and accommodative forms of responsible management learning and education (RMLE) are at odds with the urgency, nature, and magnitude of the climate crisis. I argue for three practices to radicalize RMLE, and illustrate them through examples from a degrowth context. First, management educators should engage in anti-paradigmatic performative politics to disrupt the reality-making of climate damaging theories, and "realize" better alternative theories. Second, as management educators, we should engage ourselves, our students, and wider stakeholders in anti-paradigmatic thought that transcends and challenges problematic mainstream management paradigms. Third, we should explore what and how we and our students can learn from radical climate movements' civil disobedience, in order to disrupt climate-damaging practices. In this paper, I aim to provoke and facilitate urgently needed discussions about the radicalization of RMLE for climate change education and beyond. Therefore, I close this essay with an invitation for rejoinders and suggest salient implications for educational practitioners and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current calls for deep societal transformation stress the need to go beyond green consumption and aim for the reduction of material consumption. Such a shift is enacted by grassroots initiatives around reuse, repair and sharing. However, the possibility of postconsumerist perspectives and practices to reach a broader audience is affected by discursive opportunity structures (DOS) formed in public debate. To understand the DOS it is relevant to pay attention both to the continuous normalisation of consumption and to the ways in which alternatives are represented. To develop new analytical tools for examining what postconsumerist initiatives are up against, we introduce the concept of banal consumerism : mundane, habitual expressions that reproduce consumer culture. Through an empirical study of Swedish daily newspapers, we construct the basis for a typology of different expressions of banal consumerism. We find several expressions, of which the massive advertising of consumer goods is the most common but editorial material also plays an important role. This largely disabling DOS is then put in relation to the potentially enabling opportunities entailed in the existing media coverage of postconsumerist initiatives, practices and perspectives. The results show that postconsumerist initiatives and practices are newsworthy and presented as commendable. The fact that high levels of material consumption negatively impact the environment and life on the planet is widely accepted. To argue for degrowth or criticise consumerism is, however, controversial. Thus, support for postconsumerist practices coexist with massive expressions of banal consumerism, creating a complex set of DOS for the postconsumerist initiatives to navigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the climate crisis requires social and economic innovation—because climate change is a symptom of patriarchal capitalist systems that are concentrating—rather than distributing—wealth and power. Despite the need for social and economic innovation, technological innovation continues to be prioritized in climate policy and climate investments. This paper reviews the dangers of technological optimism in climate policy by exploring its links to patriarchal systems and masculinity. The disproportionate focus on science and technology emerges from and reinforces “climate isolationism,” a term that I use to refer to the common framing of climate change as an isolated discrete, scientific problem in need of technological solutions. This framing stems from assumptions of patriarchal white-male conceptions of privilege and power that evolve from a colonizing and controlling mindset. Masculine technological optimism is dangerous because it is exclusive, it minimizes the need for social change and social innovation, and it is ineffective in catalyzing inclusive societal transformation. This paper argues that embracing feminist, antiracist values is necessary for transformative climate policies, economic justice, and climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out a research agenda for a political theory of climate displacement, by critically examining one prominent proposal—the idea of a normative status for 'climate refugees'—and by proposing an alternative. Drawing on empirical work on climate displacement, I show that the concept of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. I argue that, because of this complexity and heterogeneity, approaches to climate displacement that put the concept of the climate refugee at their centre will fail to treat like cases alike and relevantly different cases differently. In response to these failings, I outline an alternative—the pluralist theory of climate displacement—which confronts the specific challenges that climate displacement poses in different practical and institutional contexts, whilst also treating climate displacement as a unified phenomenon at the second-order level of burden-sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we highlight climate change pedagogies within the context of an Indigenous Summer Encounter for Latinx and Indigenous children led by Miakan-Band Elders, members of a Central Texas Coahuiltecan community. We focus on anticolonial cartographies activated through movement, sound and performance that enacted Indigenous fugitivity, futurity, and relationality; pedagogical attunements that remain undertheorized as approaches to climate change education. In engaging with these pedagogies as climate change education, we are interested in contributing to recent work that resists the disciplinary boundaries of what typically counts as climate education and invites expansive and interdisciplinary approaches to climate change education. This includes approaches that inquire into how climate change education can be a site to nurture reciprocal relations with the more than human world. In particular, we highlight the Summer Encounter as illustrating possibilities for anticolonial climate education that engages creative pedagogies in foregrounding Indigenous relational onto-epistemologies with young people. We discuss the potential of this work as climate change education that actualizes and dreams more livable futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Communist Party and its supporters are increasingly using social media platforms to shape China's public image. This online image is a means of strengthening domestic nationalism and of projecting "soft power" abroad. This paper examines various forms of anti-Westernism that are central to this image-making. It analyzes several recent topics—the Belt and Road Initiative, climate change, the COVID-19 vaccine, the Beijing Olympics, and the conflict in Ukraine—on the r/Sino subreddit page of Reddit and compares them with two online news outlets, the South China Morning Post and China Daily. The paper focuses on how these media frame the contest between a rising China and a failing West, so creating a discourse that competes with the negative portrayals of China outside the country. The paper contrasts the aggressive strengthening of China's image against the West on social media with more sober accounts of the same topics in China's official media and in commercial news outlets. The contribution of the paper is to document an emerging online anti-Westernism that is playing an increasing role in the changing geopolitical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insights into the interdisciplinary response to scientific collaboration remain scarce in interdisciplinary fields. The present work focuses on the effect of scientific collaboration on disciplinary diversity in the field of climate change using multiple statistical methods. The results show that research collaboration at the author and country/region levels has significantly positive effects on variety and DIV (an integrated diversity indicator), although these effects are limited. Additionally, the associations between the values of variety, disparity, and DIV and the number of departments are significantly positive, and similar results are found regarding relationships between these indicators and the number of countries/regions at the country/region and integrated levels. However, scientific collaboration has a negative effect on the balance of references at all levels. This study can improve our understanding of how scientific collaboration affects the multidimensional aspects of interdisciplinary research, and facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how politicians respond to the public salience of policy issues when determining which topics to publicly address. Using new data and state-of-the-art methodology, our study provides a fresh perspective on this fundamental question. We focus on a multi-party parliamentary system, specifically the Canadian House of Commons, with a specific emphasis on the issue of climate change. To assess the attention given by political parties to various policy issues, we analyze transcripts from the Question Period spanning from April 2006 to June 2021. To gauge the public's level of concern for these issues, we incorporate data obtained from Google Trends. Employing an instrumental variable estimation strategy, our study causally estimates the extent to which the public salience of climate change influences elite attention. Our findings reveal that the public salience of climate change significantly influences the attention given to this issue by parties, albeit with noticeable partisan variations. Moreover, our research highlights the effectiveness of the Question Period in compelling the government to address challenging or potentially embarrassing issues. Lastly, we uncover evidence suggesting that the Liberal Party of Canada successfully increased the public salience of climate change during its tenure in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data on heating bills to study the distribution of energy efficiency outcomes in the German multi-apartment residential building stock. To uncover the underlying energy efficiency of buildings, we estimate the causal response of heat energy demand to variability in heating degree days. We examine the heterogeneity in temperature response using both fixed effects regressions and causal forests, and pay close attention to the regional socioeconomic distribution. Our results suggest that the distribution of energy efficiency is not equitable in the West of Germany. We show that although the newer and more energy-efficient buildings are located in the South of Germany, the older building stock in less prosperous East regions of Germany are surprisingly energy efficient, likely as a result of large investments in renovations post-reunification. Finally, we show that the regional distribution of energy efficiency reflects, in part, differences in heating needs - thus, the poorer energy standards of buildings in the North-West should be weighed against the warmer climatic zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal capitalism has extended the use of markets to address climate and energy issues. Carbon trading characteristically exemplifies the neoliberalization of climate policy. This paper discusses the workings of the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in the European Union (EU) with a focus on its application in crisis-ridden Greece. Beyond environmental effectiveness and distributional effects, the paper explores the interactions of the EU ETS with crisis, austerity programs, energy poverty, and uneven development. Despite adjustments and changes, the EU ETS continues to indicate limited environmental effectiveness and unjust distributional effects. Moreover, by forging a centralized neoliberal transition to a low-carbon economy without consideration of the issues faced by unevenly developed and crisis-stricken EU members such as Greece, the EU ETS leads to additional disturbances and problems for the Greek economy as a whole, its pauperized working people, and its energy and climate options to reduce emissions on its own potential, needs, and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the climate crisis accelerates, consumers, lawmakers, and activists demand transparent supply chains in industries that form the material backbone of cultural fields such as fashion. Consequently, new apps have emerged that promise to make supply chains transparent by translating opaque production data into easily comprehensible product ratings. Integrating the literature on transparency, cultural intermediaries, and digital consumption apps, this article asks: how do these apps, which I call transparency apps, afford politics in cultural fields and new political ways of consumption? Using fashion as a strategic case of a cultural field with strong material underpinnings, this paper combines a walkthrough analysis of Good On You, Retraced, and Renoon with interviews of employees of the first two. I found these apps to afford a politics of transparency consist of eco-progressive values embedded in ideologies of consumer rights and self-optimization, which elevates the technical-material logic of fashion at the cost of its aesthetic logic. This politics is usually offered in a personalized form resembling platformized cultural production. Transparency apps are thus politicizing cultural intermediaries that simultaneously enable and limit the political contestation of fashion. This article demonstrates how transparency apps bring politics to cultural fields, upsetting usual logics in the process, carrying implications for any cultural field that faces demands for supply chain transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under neoclassical assumptions, this paper develops a model to illustrate the effects of government use of carbon allowances for carbon emission control. We find that control using the instrument of issuing long-term carbon allowances does not produce the same good results in the Decentralised Equilibrium as in the Planning Problem. Thus, while Coase's Theorem ensures that the Pareto optimum is maintained in an economy with multiple agents, it does not align the social development with the economic optimum of the planner. We believe this is due to the that the price of carbon allowances is determined by asset profiles of investors rather than externalities. The steady-state under the special pathway shows that consumption is determined by the rate of technological progress, the total amount of carbon dioxide at steady-state, the level of technology at which steady-state is reached and the total amount of carbon allowances remaining. The comparison with the optimal tax path reveals that the price of carbon allowances has increased too quickly, leading to excessive consumption of fossil fuels in the early stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including research-creation, practice-led approach to visualizing biodiversity loss, climate change education, Caribbean literatures in English education, and creative climate change pedagogies.

This paper introduces the concept of infrastructure into discussions on climate change and education. We focus on the links between the increased use of digital data and the central role of data infrastructures in education, and the energy infrastructure needed to support their growing use in schools and school systems. We elaborate a need for a greater accounting of the climate and related social costs of these interwoven digital and energy infrastructures of schooling. We suggest this is part of the 'disposition' of the infrastructures of schooling that should be weighed into decisions on whether and how to continue with digital technologies in schools. By acknowledging the climate and environmental incommensurability of digital infrastructures, education leaders and young people can more fully understand their dispositions and their costs. We propose three implications for education governance that entail greater consideration of the limits of current school climate change infrastructures such as 'eco school' programs and EdTech 'AI for good' initiatives, pushes for 'computing within limits' without substantial changes, and current school governance practices which unnecessarily rely on digital infrastructures. Instead, what is needed may be a reversal of the extensive use of digital infrastructures by schools and education governance bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living climate change. The unchecked acceleration of globalisation, colonisation, and extractivism create a world in dire need of change if we are to survive. Crucial now, are critical, geopolitical, and biopolitical discussion and an urgent need for diverse methodologic and pedagogic strategies for action across micro to macro scales. Research-creation, practice-led approaches to action, that work across and with artistic practice, scientific data, and critical and cultural theory can spark activist pedagogic experiences for change. The effective potential of such methodologies is explored via inefficient mapping; a counter-mapping, methodologic protocol, and its use in 'Mapping Extinction', a project into the catastrophic biodiversity loss due to the 2019/2020 Australian bushfires. The protocols and visual works produced facilitate discussion on creative practice as educational research into the real impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's ongoing, necessary confrontation with painful and distressing realities exacerbated by ecological precarity in diverse contexts has profound implications for formal education systems. Additionally, educational policy in many contexts has been slow to respond to the urgency of addressing climate change, nor has most policy robustly conceptualized a vision for climate justice education. Centering the voices of three young climate justice activists (ages 16–20) in Canada through a qualitative study, this paper explores possible educational responses that recognize the embodied consequences of climate injustice and inaction on youth mental health and well-being. Through their encounters with activism in collective, justice-centered movements, these young people articulate how their commitments to creating more life-affirming and equitable realities by challenging current economic and political structures and discourses are integral dimensions of their efforts to be and feel well (hopeful and purposeful) in a context of pronounced uncertainty and distress. Despite these possibilities, youth participants describe the overwhelming and complex emotions they are grappling with as they face dispiriting projections for the future. These growing challenges are an opportunity to reconsider common "apolitical" and individualized approaches to citizenship, climate and environmental education. Findings suggest that supporting youth to act thoughtfully and impactfully in transforming cultural, economic and political structures and systems that reproduce harm can be a way to nurture meaning, purpose and hope. Additionally, youth participants advocate for integrating robust resources and support within formal education institutions to assist in collectively processing the emotional and psychological impacts of climate injustice. At the same time, findings suggest that the participating youth did not yet integrate conceptions of ecological interrelationship or interconnection in their approaches, offering possible avenues for further pedagogical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this position paper, we use the example of The University of Texas at Austin's Planet Texas 2050 (PT2050) to argue that the Grand Challenge (GC) framework for ambitious research initiatives must create meeting grounds for transdisciplinary integration of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), arts, and humanities, along with community perspectives. We trace the historical trajectory of GCs, and reframe GC initiatives within the literature of inter- and transdisciplinarity. We present PT2050 as a case study of the infrastructural supports and imaginative process for creating level meeting grounds for transdisciplinarity. We demonstrate the benefits of these meeting grounds through projects, products, and funding generated. We contend that engaging arts, humanities, and community in co-design from the beginning is critical because complex, urgent challenges such as the climate crisis are embedded in human societies and demand solutions based in understanding of social, cultural, and historical contexts as well as STEM applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centuries of settler-colonial capitalist hegemony have deeply embedded violent paradigms of separation and hierarchy in our societal structures and internalized ideologies, ultimately manifesting in global climate justice crises. We argue, therefore, that addressing the socio-ecological catastrophes we currently face necessitates an inclusive engagement with a diversity of ways of knowing often overlooked or actively repressed by dominant epistemologies. Dismantling oppressive structures begins with critically examining how they manifest within our habits of mind so we can then see beyond them—to capture what was lost, what is hidden, and what could be. Drawing on a diversity of theories, this largely conceptual paper calls for the (re)introduction of pedagogies that engage our creativity and extrarational senses to help transform our perspectives toward environmental justice. Extrarational pedagogies provide space to challenge dominant paradigms, empathetically experiment with creative alternatives, increase learners' sense of agency, and overturn the notion that we are powerless to change our circumstances. Such pedagogies promote perspective shifts toward solidarity, compassionate accountability, and an increased awareness of the interconnectivity of our collective survival and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of Community-engaged research (CenR) has faced many challenges in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when researchers are based in another part of the country or the world. This paper presents a researcher's initiative for implementing CenR in partnership with local universities, particularly engaging local students to become part of the communities and bridge the gap between researchers and communities. The project aims to engage local communities working in tourism services in assessing their adaptive capacity (AC) to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). Notably, this study was conducted with the researchers being located in Taiwan while the research area was situated in the VMD. Methods used include field trips, in-depth interviews (IDIs), focus group discussions (FGDs), local workshops, and people participation geographic information system (PPGIS). Two groups of students at Kien Giang University (KGU) and Dong Thap University (DTU) (Vietnam) were involved. The article provides the process of engaging with local students, from searching and selecting them, to obtaining consents, engaging and building trust, training and guiding them in field trips, engaging with local communities, collecting and analyzing data, and developing future projects in those communities. The study offers a novel approach that can be extrapolated in the context of global system crises such as climate change, disasters, or emergency situations in remote areas that often experience limited connectivity with the outside world. By encouraging the creativity of students and researchers, this study promotes the continuity of research efforts even in times of uncertainty and crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalisation of higher education has diverging implications for climate change, on the one hand entailing greenhouse gas emissions through mobility, but also contributing to climate action through international collaboration. These apparent contradictions and resulting trade-offs present significant challenges to universities. This paper puts forward a framework for understanding the combination of impacts, the interactions between them and implications for the climate crisis. It distinguishes between three dimensions of internationalisation: actors (movements of students and staff), practices (integration of the international into curriculum and research) and influence (the global reach of the various impacts of the university). Internationalisation in these three dimensions can have positive or negative implications for climate action and sustainability, through direct impacts (greenhouse gas emissions) and indirect ones (changes in individuals, societal structures, knowledge and technologies). Implications are drawn out for the actions and strategies of universities, as well as for the global system of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is often characterized as a rejection of scientific expertise and a key obstacle to societies' ability to address the climate crisis today. I challenge this account, arguing for a more inclusive conception of populism and a more critical account of expertise. Consistent with this, I delineate a range of responses to the challenges of climate politics in populist times. In doing so, I have two primary aims: first, to highlight limitations of "anti-populist" responses among proponents of climate change action, and, second, to lean into populist criticisms of elite expertise, by delineating how some challenges to dominant forms of science and elite power are themselves expert knowledge and integral to promising movements that address climate change. This can allow expertise to be distinguished from elitism and to be recognized in caring relations to the subjects of knowledge. Here, expertise is not manifest as separation from the common world, but as immersion in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the authority of investors to speak about climate change with corporations is established. Leveraging the 'communication as constitutive of organisations' (CCO) perspective, we analyse who speaks on behalf of whom (or what) in shareholder engagement on corporate carbon emissions. Based on access to private dialogues between an engager acting on behalf of a pool of investors with 20 utility corporations, we identify how three authoritative personae—that of diplomat, advocate, and coach—convey climate change concerns. We find that the mirroring of these authoritative personae by corporations may lead to deliberation, evasion, or rejection of the suggested courses of action. We theorise how relational authority is communicatively constituted in shareholder engagement through a process of mirroring and switching between authoritative personae. Our framework contributes to the study of CCO and relational authority by highlighting how meta-figures are used by external actors in an attempt to author appropriate corporate actions. We discuss the implications of our framework for the role of shareholder engagement in current attempts at greening financial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting a flat ontology, we discuss how phenomena of societal concern are connected to organizational routines. We conceptualize grand challenges as large patterns of actions to overcome the micro-macro divide prevalent in existing research. We introduce spatial, temporal, and agentic relations as three interrelated aspects of scale that are of particular interest and demonstrate how social phenomena may be approached through these relations. Focusing on the situated enactment of routines allows us to identify weakening and strengthening between actors and their actions as important processes that reflect the continuous patterning of grand challenges. We contribute to the literature by highlighting the consequentiality of mundane actions and by questioning the dominant approach to change in research on grand challenges. Our insights offer several practical implications for intervening on grand challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]