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Collaboration is strongly promoted as an effective means for cities to respond to climate change. While collaboration is perceived to offer opportunities to progress climate action in cities, little is known about how collaboration can enable low‐carbon transformation in practice. Furthermore, while collaboration is largely framed as a positive endeavour, there is a need to more carefully explore the challenges and barriers that may arise. This paper explores the aims, processes, and outcomes of collaboration within urban climate governance. Drawing on a policy review and semi‐structured interviews, we present empirical findings from the case study of Hong Kong. This paper identifies three types of collaboration that are structured by regulations, oriented to policy goals, and emerge as everyday practices within the governance of climate change and the energy system. The forms of collaboration challenge the assumptions that collaboration always brings positive outcomes in mobilising action for climate change. While collaboration opens up different modes of governance within cities, the paper highlights significant barriers in terms of the diverse roles of actors, ongoing power imbalances, and shifting governance spaces for intervention. Given the prevailing interest in working together, it is critical to review carefully how collaboration facilitates cities to achieve their climate goals and create momentum for action. The paper explores the opportunities and challenges of collaborative climate governance. It draws on a case study of Hong Kong and identifies three modes of collaborative climate and energy governance: regulatory, consensual, and participatory. The paper challenges the assumption that collaboration brings positive outcomes for action on climate change and offers new insights into potential barriers for climate action in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather and climate‐related human mobility (climate mobilities) including displacement are often viewed as security concerns. The recent coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic adds yet another layer of complexity which calls for unpacking these connections. This paper explores how existing patterns of migration and displacement that are driven by climate change impacts are compounded by the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic. First, the paper outlines the links between extreme weather events and human mobility to then explore how the impacts from COVID‐19 interact, cascade and compound pre‐existing vulnerabilities of people on the move. Examining the ways in which climate change is potentially driving or shifting patterns of climate mobility allows a shared understanding of this complex issue to be gained. This paper contextualises the compounding impacts with a geographical focus on Bangladesh, a well‐known climate hotspot. The paper contributes to the debates on impacts and human responses to climate change and concludes with a set of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Earth is currently undergoing a sixth global‐scale ecological crisis. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2021 highlighted a need to curb global heating at 1.5 degrees above the pre‐industrial baseline, and outlined a range of likely impacts of climate change on global societies should no action be taken, particularly in relation to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Despite this need, policy‐based action at a nation state level is lacking, with talks at COP25 failing to reach necessary agreements. In response to this, and as we approach COP26, a significant global youth movement has been activated, with children and young people taking it upon themselves to highlight a need for climate and environmental action, calling for others to follow. This paper follows the emotional journey of one of its co‐authors, 11‐year‐old environmental activist, Lucie. Through the innovative approach of co‐production with Lucie, in this paper we detail the role of emotion in one youth activist's journey. From her initial reactions watching BBC's Blue Planet II, to the multifaceted highs and lows that have followed as she strives for change, we illuminate the emotional implications such experiences may have on children and young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accelerating and intensifying dynamics of the Anthropocene are highly topical for island studies. Manifold effects of urbanisation, offshoring, migration and climate change become heightened in the context of island spatiality as global connections, fascination and conservation ideals produce tax havens, mass tourism, ecological enclaves and novel island ecosystems. The Anthropocene calls for a rethinking of relations between humans and nature. Recent research highlights the usefulness of islands in providing models of intensely coupled human–environmental systems. However, there is little research about where and how forces of the Anthropocene and natural dynamics physically intersect and how island spatiality intervenes. Contributing to a better understanding of island landscapes and seascapes, this paper explores how the scales and volumes of the Anthropocene shape spaces in small islands. In considering islands' characteristics of smallness, borders, isolation and littorality, the paper illustrates the distinct spatial developments on islands in the Anthropocene, such as resort sprawl, airports and artificial coastlines. The observations demonstrate how forces of the Anthropocene challenge island isolation, stretch and reshape island borders. They manipulate islands' smallness and congest small island spaces, and intervene in the manageability of island systems. Furthermore, developments of the Anthropocene highlight the paradoxical and hybrid nature of islands. I suggest that developing and better understanding concepts of island spatiality can be meaningful for informing future spatial transformation in, and for adopting contextualised approaches to, both islands and the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When young people engage with climate change education, they are often left feeling disempowered and daunted. But past research has shown that there are ways to design and deliver climate change education that can be empowering and enabling. The delivery of climate change education was further challenged in 2020 by the shift to online learning driven by the COVID‐19 pandemic restrictions. However, the challenges of the pandemic context also offered an opportunity to engage new audiences and establish new collaborations in climate change education. In this paper, we explore how the shift to online research, collaboration and education can also be harnessed to develop interdisciplinary coastal adaptation training for young people interested in better understanding the complexities of our coastal environments. The resulting 'More than Maps' framework draws on qualitative and quantitative data collected over a two‐year programme focused on the design and delivery of an international climate change research capacity building workshop series, across the United Kingdom, Ghana, Jamaica and Australia. Carried out by an interdisciplinary team of early career researchers and established academics, 15 workshops were developed on coastal adaptation research methods, targeting a range of 'young' audiences who are and will continue to be impacted by climate change. Building on reflections from the workshops' design and delivery, we developed a scalable framework to aid researchers in sharing open‐access, replicable methods for studying climate change mitigation and adaptation. This work demonstrates that our workshop participants had increased confidence, sought to apply learned methods to other contexts, and wanted to share this knowledge with others. We conclude that the COVID‐19 online workspace facilitated rather than hindered the international collaboration and delivery of these coastal adaptation research methods workshops, and we provide best practice tips to researchers delivering climate change education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a review of the literature that develops the "socio‐ecological fix" concept, this paper makes two arguments. First, it argues that the concept is trapped in a specific historical understanding of 20th‐century capitalism that goes through "crisis" and "fixes." Second, the paper argues that this understanding of history largely ignores the potential for revolutionary ruptures that create social systems entirely at odds with capital. The severity of the climate crisis suggests that moving further into the 21st century will not allow such clean "fixes." The climate crisis will make revolutionary ruptures not only possible, but inevitable. The "socio‐ecological fix" has become increasingly popular to understand a possible and future energy transition off fossil fuels within the confines of capitalist social relations of production. The concept emerges and builds off David Harvey's famous "spatial fix" concept to understand how capitalism can temporarily transcend the current climate crisis. The "socio‐ecological fix" helps see how capitalist crises and fixes are economic and environmental at the same time, intertwined together. Through a review of the literature that develops the "socio‐ecological fix" concept, I make two clear arguments. First, I argue that the concept is trapped in a specific historical understanding of 20th‐century capitalism that goes through crisis and fixes. According to this framework, from which the "socio‐ecological fix" functions within, the capitalist mode of production is here to stay indefinitely and can only be reformed through series of fixes. This understanding of capitalism not only downplays class struggle but also has too much of a narrow sense of politics in the context of the ongoing climate crisis. Second, I argue that this understanding of history largely ignores the potential for revolutionary ruptures that create social systems entirely at odds with capital. The severity of the climate crisis suggests that moving further into the 21st century will not allow such clean fixes. The climate crisis will make revolutionary ruptures not only possible, but inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public engagement is an important feature of research into societal issues and challenges. Complex issues such as responses to climate change, environmental degradation, and fuel and food poverty require a closer link between academic research and publics if action relating to these challenges is to be harnessed collectively. The past two decades have seen an increase in efforts to form closer links between publics and academics. However, much of the activities associated with forming such links remain embedded within motivations defined by academics. Not only are these motivations defined by academics, but their success is often aligned with outcomes formed by the perspectives and targets of academics. Thus, "expert–lay" divisions are placed at the centre of the processes which initiate, facilitate, and report on public engagement. This paper engages with recent developments in public engagement to reveal the "expert–lay" divisions that allow academia to colonise the spaces and processes of public engagement. Using contemporary definitions of colonisation, this commentary demonstrates how academia forms a dominant praxis around spaces and outcomes of engagement. Overall, a reflexive approach to allow added opportunities for engagement to be facilitated by non‐academic actors is recommended, while the influences of different academic disciplines in defining the possibilities for such opportunities is acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale intervention in the Earth's climate system features centrally both in definitions of, and proposed responses to, the Anthropocene. In its deliberate guise – as climate geoengineering – such intervention is highly contentious, threatening to profoundly reshape the geography and politics of environmental governance frameworks, not to mention the nature of the environments towards which those frameworks are oriented. Yet, even as experiments with geoengineering technologies are growing in number, geographers continue to engage seldom with scientific, political or indeed public debates about them. In this paper we contend that geographical ideas about space, scale, power and geopolitics must urgently be brought to bear on ongoing efforts to experiment with geoengineering, and to deliberate its future role in responses to climate change. We develop this argument in two parts. First, we suggest that ongoing debates about the acceptability of geoengineering experimentation would benefit from recognising incumbent spatial and scalar categorisations (e.g., small scale vs. large scale, indoors vs. outdoors) not as fixed ontological anchors, but as relational and provisional constructs, open to being rethought in new, potentially productive ways. Second, we call for geographers to document and contest inequalities and injustices, both in debates about what geoengineering is or might become, and in the outcomes generated by efforts to undertake geoengineering in practice. Here there are opportunities for geographers to reshape the frames of reference used by others to comprehend the implications of the Anthropocene itself, drawing on traditional disciplinary strengths in ecofeminism, political ecology and environmental justice, as well as the production of space and critical geopolitics. Such endeavours, we contend, will form a vital complement to existing geographical engagements with the concept of the Anthropocene, reaffirming the value of the discipline's distinctive – and explicitly normative – voice within ongoing policy and public deliberations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet discussion forums and other forms of virtual social networking media are increasingly being used as sites of discursive practice. Quite apart from the research opportunities offered by conventional forms of Internet research (such as surveys and polls), discussion forums (alongside Web-logs and social networking sites) arguably provide new opportunities for social researchers to gather data in this very particular, but nonetheless popular cultural context. This paper explores the phenomenon through the large amount of textual data generated from an article on climate change and sustainable lifestyles in the Guardian newspaper. The discourses that emerged in reaction to this article provide valuable insights into the social construction of climate change and sustainable lifestyles, demonstrating conflicting arguments relating to the acceptance of climate change as a human-induced phenomenon, the reliability of data used to assert arguments concerning global warming and the contested views expressed over the value of adopting more sustainable lifestyles. Further, the paper argues that environmental social scientists need to become aware of the potential for analysing virtual discussion forums and social networking sites as valuable data sources for their research, recognising that these represent both cultural artefacts in their own right and alternative sites of discursive practice for anonymous and immediate everyday talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has witnessed significant growth across the globe of domestic and international initiatives designed to ameliorate both existing and potential impacts of climate change. The threat of altered environments and possibility of mass migrations of people have spurred intensive planning as well as the commitment of considerable resources to addressing such threats. Indeed, the primacy of climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts and planning has become so pronounced that one might argue that this is a new and pre-eminent form of development in the international arena. As with previous developmental preoccupations such as progress, modernity, gender, microcredit, participation and good governance, climate change adaptation and mitigation is today a central part of the development mantra. In this paper I examine the 'climate change turn' in development work by focusing on the case of Bangladesh, a country often discussed in both scholarly literature and popular discourse as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the possible effects of climate change. Images of rising waters, flooded fields and displaced farmers in the region have become an iconic symbol deployed during debates on climate change both locally and globally. As a result Bangladesh has emerged as a laboratory of sorts in which a series of national-level strategic plans, projects, programmes, trust funds and financing schemes are being designed and tested in partnership with international donors and development agencies, all built around the idea of climate change and resilience. Looking specifically at some of the most marginalised communities in Bangladesh - such as char dwellers and slum populations - I question in this paper what impact these efforts to combat climate change may have, in particular the possibility of being displaced not by climate change but rather by development processes meant to ameliorate its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special section grew out of a series of sessions on 'Mixed methods and hybrid epistemologies' at the Association of American Geographers annual meetings in 2013 and 2014. The five papers that comprise it each examine climate change as a mixed or hybrid entity, and consider some of the theoretical and methodological tensions associated with contemporary climate change research. In so doing, the authors reflect on the challenges of field-based observation and measurement, and they draw on a rich array of conceptual resources in attempting to capture climate's multidimensional character. In this brief introduction, I consider the contributions of the papers in the context of three areas of climate change scholarship: climate knowledge, ontologies of climate and the methodologies of climate change research. Taken as a whole, the collection suggests the value of a methodological and epistemological pluralism, one capable of registering the hybrid character of climate change and coping with the fact that multiple measurements, understandings and enactments of climate may be equally valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been increasing scholarship exploring the social, cultural, and political dimensions of climate change migration, there is to date limited research situating climate migration studies within geopolitical history and land struggles, particularly in post‐conflict states like Cambodia. Four decades after the Khmer Rouge genocide (1975–1979) ended, rural migration and land struggles remain a central aspect of Cambodia's political and economic life. Since the beginning of the Cambodian civil war (1970), rural populations have repeatedly been forced to move from their land. However, the geopolitical dimension of land has not been widely considered in current climate change migration literature. To explore these dynamic relationships between land, migration, and geopolitical history, this paper investigates both historical narratives and everyday relationships with land of land(less) migrants in Veal Veaeng District, Western Cambodia, a former war zone and a Khmer Rouge stronghold during the 1980s and 1990s. This paper argues that political history plays a vital role in defining migration trajectories in Cambodia, especially how historical factors define land struggles. Through exploring migrants and land frontier dynamics, this paper discovers that poor peasants have been forced between labour markets and land frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That climate change is a major disruptor of rural livelihoods in the low‐ and middle‐income countries, including sub‐Saharan Africa, has been a key narrative for the continent's development for at least a decade. And while the severity of climate impacts on African development should not be underestimated, in this paper I argue that the vulnerability of smallholders in São Tomé and Príncipe should be considered in the broader political economic and historical context of progressing depeasantisation and proletarianisation of global agricultural labour. Moreover, I posit that certain smallholders' vulnerability can actually increase as a result of both autonomous and externally planned adaptation strategies, the latter most commonly promoted by governments and their international development partners. To substantiate these arguments, the paper combines theoretical insights from labour geography and critical adaptation studies with ethnographic data collected in Liberdade – a village in the small island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe – which participated in a nationwide climate change adaptation project. I trace local smallholders' vulnerability back to the country's political economic history and complement this by an investigation of the changing labour relations at the community level. Here, I analyse the autonomous adaptation strategies pursued by the residents and critically assess the localised effects of planned adaptation embodied by the project, with a specific focus on how they affect local labour relations. I conclude by providing some reflections on addressing the current pitfalls of planned adaptation. In this paper I argue that the vulnerability of smallholders in São Tomé and Príncipe should be considered in the broader political economic and historical context of progressing depeasantisation and proletarianisation of global agricultural labour. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the country, I also critically analyse rural labour relations as they are affected by autonomous and planned adaptation strategies pursued in the village of Liberdade, which participated in a nationwide climate change adaptation project by the government and a large development organisation. I conclude by summarising the argument and providing some reflections on addressing the current pitfalls of planned adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With projected climate change, it is increasingly important to understand the current role of weather in everyday life and how it may change in the future. This paper evaluates two qualitative research approaches for their ability to generate insight into weather-related experiences and everyday practices. As these mundane day-to-day weather interactions often escape memory over time, the paper calls into question the ability of conventional methodological approaches that rely on recall to accurately excavate these events. The research examined serial one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with an adapted short-term focus, and daily diary-photographs. Each approach was applied to one of two Australian cities with sharply contrasting climates - Melbourne and Darwin. Both approaches were able to generate insight into weather-related experiences and practices. However, both presented problems. In interviews, these problems related to retrospective accounts beyond 'yesterday', where physical experience recollections became limited. For diary-photographs, inspiring participants to continually complete and submit contributions proved problematic. I argue that interviews are better for documenting routine practice and generalised experiences, while diary-photographs are better at showing fine-grained detail of physical experiences. Where both aspects are sought, as in this study, a combination is possible. However, using dual methods increases the risk of participant fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst increasing mobility leads to people regularly experiencing new climatic conditions, understanding how people actually adapt to new regimes of heat in their everyday lives is currently under researched. It is often assumed that increased demand for air conditioning will be an automatic response to heat, but widespread international variation in the current use of cooling technologies suggests a more complex situation. As one means of exploring how thermal comfort is achieved under different climatic conditions, this paper reports on the findings of a pilot study exploring adaptive practices in relation to heat with people who have recently migrated to Spain. The paper explores how thermal comfort is accomplished through adaptation in everyday activities including cooling technologies, clothing and routines and rhythms. The paper emphasises the importance of attending to how new routines emerge in the context of relocation and highlights a need for further research to understand how changing climatic conditions may serve to reconfigure the production of comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the iconography of climate change in contemporary climate action campaigns in the UK. I aim to show how sample images are simultaneously scientific denotations of global warming and cultural connotations of danger and vulnerability. I further demonstrate that while similar images are associated with different agendas and geographical visions, they attach to a shared discourse of vulnerability that has Western (colonial) roots. The paper concludes with an overview of possible ways for climate action campaigns to effectively convey their political messages without recycling colonial visions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy production has come under increasing scrutiny as concerns about energy security and climate change have risen. In the UK changes in government structure and privatisation of the electricity industry have led to the emergence of multi-level governance. This means that decisions on how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity-generating sector should no longer be solely a national policy decision. Previous studies have sought to explore how renewable energy may develop under multi-level governance, but this paper pays attention to a traditional fossil fuel source, coal, which is still an important means of electricity generation. Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel and advocates argue that carbon capture and storage techniques could make coal ‘clean’, paving the way for a long-term, secure and low emission way to produce energy. This study focuses on the Yorkshire and Humber Region, which has had a long association with coal mining and looks at the implications of this as the region seeks to develop a climate change action plan and an energy strategy within the new regional governance structures. The paper argues that the regional networks developed to address climate change are influenced by existing social power structures and alliances. The region as a territorial structure becomes a useful device in promoting national priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, along with other so-called global challenges, demands that scholars work across disciplines. Drawing on Donna Haraway's idea of situated knowledges, this paper develops an approach to mixing disciplines by engaging in epistemological pluralism, or approaching a research problem through more than one way of conceptualising it. The example of climate change adaptation planning in Nepal is used to show how a hybrid methodology research design requires thinking through what can be known and also what cannot be known by using a particular method. The main argument is that it is not possible to prove methodologically which conceptualisation or analytical entry point is better than another. Rather, new insights are gained both by triangulating data from different methods, and by probing the ways that they present contradictory results. An interdisciplinary research design is therefore used as a kind of kaleidoscope wherein plural epistemologies help to reveal new, albeit partial and situated, patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last ten years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a prominent new paradigm in environmental politics in developing countries in general and in Africa in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in Rwanda presented in this paper indicates. The paper analyses why forced resettlement of farmers is considered an innovative action among the climate change adaptation efforts and argues that the concept of adaptation to climate change is a travelling idea that is constantly translated and used politically to frame environmental and developmental interventions in concrete places that heavily impact the everyday lives of rural dwellers. Drawing on actor-network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by providing a critical assessment of the linkages between global climate change governance and concrete local adaptation measures, revealing that adaptation to climate change does not always have positive effects on people's livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are new, and increasing, pressures facing coastal communities, including socio-economic and environmental change, exploitation of resources, urban development and the predicted impacts of climate change. The cumulative and interacting effect of these challenges may result in socio-economic and physical decline. This paper responds to calls for more detailed investigation into coastal regeneration by providing empirical evidence (interviews, observations, policy analysis) on specific coastal resorts on the island of Ireland. In doing so it builds on an emerging area of research that suggests coastal regeneration may be theoretically and practically informed by "resilience thinking". The case study findings highlight differing, and sometimes competing values, perceptions and priorities at the local level and highlight the challenges facing striving resorts seeking to find their contemporary identity and enhance their resilience to future change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we show how a seemingly unremarkable object - a cattle grid - has come to presence climate change in partial and contingent ways on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK. We identify the cattle grid as an 'anticipatory object' through which conservation organisations seek to manage the future and adapt to climate change, but which at the same time presences that unthought-of future for others in the landscape. We explore the ways in which the cattle grid acts to presence something that is not only absent - climate change - but has uncertain imminence. We investigate the ways in which the cattle grid make climate relevant as an embodied and experiential process, a physical and intellectual artefact, and the means to imagine climate and the ways it might change. Drawing upon interpretative approaches informed by theorisations of materiality, presence and absence to understand climate change as a social phenomenon, we go beyond a consideration of this ordinary object defined by its function to consider how the object is experienced, the processes and practices through which people relate to it, and the ways in which social meaning accumulates around it. The empirical basis for this argument is provided by in-depth interviews with local representatives of Natural England, residents and farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport sector is consistently responsible for around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries and is one of few sectors where emissions continue to increase as a result of apparently insatiable demand for road and air travel. This paper examines how the formulation of transport policy fits into the exposition of UK climate policy, focusing on three principal areas of tension: policy priority (congestion and carbon reduction); strategies to reduce emissions (technological and behavioural solutions) and timescale (short- and long-term vision). We suggest that in overcoming such tensions government ministers will need to devolve significant policy formulation and implementation powers to an appropriate scale of governance – in this case the city-region – to fashion a ‘convergence space’ capable of promoting meaningful action with regard to transport's climate impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While widely used as a form of data collection, the use of film as a stand-alone medium for the dissemination of research has not been fully realized in the social sciences. The hesitation on the part of many scholars to produce video is based on the lack of criteria for what constitutes a research-film. Each academic publication has underlying research-reporting characteristics. If these characteristics are evident then the medium of dissemination should not matter. This article argues that a research-film can serve as an academic publication because it reflects the reporting of research that contributes to new knowledge or theories in a particular discipline(s). Taking a reflective approach, this article uses the film Climate Change, Voices of the Vulnerable: The Fishers' Plight, which advances knowledge in the fields of Environmental Studies and Geography, to critically assess the research-reporting characteristics of research films. The film, based on fishers' perceptions to climate change in Trinidad and Tobago, meets some of the characteristics of research-reporting through the representation of the theoretical framework and demographic sample data, a clear representation of the findings and analysis through thematic transition slides, and presentation of a conclusion. However it falls short through a lack of systematic representation of the sampling process and a well-grounded theoretical frame with cited studies. The findings suggest that research-films can stand-alone as an output for academic research-reporting as the short-falls can be easily remedied in order to satisfy the characteristics of research-reporting. The article concludes by raising the opportunities and challenges for social researchers who use this method for disseminating academic research, including the lack of outlets to provide peer-reviews of research-films in the published literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has profound implications for the geography of work. As the papers in this special section aim to show, changes to the climate – both long and short term – are not experienced directly but through the lens of working life. Those experiencing climate change are not atomistic entities, but connected agents, deeply embedded within global systems: as market traders or factory workers; rural farmers or civil servants. The changing climate does not therefore mean changing weather, but changing terms of work. What was once sufficient for personal and family needs may no longer be so in a new environment, meaning reduced quality of livelihoods, longer working hours, and a greater vulnerability to exploitation by employers. This special section brings together insights from a range of contexts to explore this situated experience of climate change, highlighting how life and work within global production networks combine to determine its experience. Climate change has profound implications for the geography of work. This special section brings together insights from a range of contexts to explore this situated experience of climate change, highlighting how life and work within global production networks combine to determine its experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a mixed-method approach to investigate smallholder perceptions of climate change in the Loess Plateau region of China. We combine qualitative and quantitative research methods with climate data analysis to gauge the climatic changes smallholders have perceived over the last 30 years, as well as how these changes have been experienced. At two research sites, each method produced markedly different results. Drawing on the work of feminist political ecologists and other geographers, we suggest that the dissonance between data sets generated using different research methods arises because each method produces knowledge that is partial and situated. To explain the contradictions between smallholder perceptions of climate change across the qualitative and quantitative methods and their disagreement with the climate record, we adopt aspects of assemblage theory and the dwelling perspective to suggest that smallholder knowledge of climate change is structured through their observations of and interactions with dynamic, networked socio-natural assemblages. We argue that a better understanding of the conduits through which perceptions and experiences of climate change come into being, and hence how climate knowledge is shaped, is necessary to account for the multiple epistemologies through which climate change is known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of climate services for development ( CSD) is growing rapidly, presented by donors and implementers as an opportunity to address the needs of the global poor, whether informing agricultural decisionmaking in rural communities, facilitating disaster preparedness or promoting public health. To realise this potential, however, CSD projects must understand the information needs of their intended users. This raises a critical epistemological challenge for CSD: how can we know who is vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change, and why are they vulnerable to particular impacts? In this paper, we consider both the epistemological tension arising over the construction of vulnerability that emerges at the intersection of the physical and social science communities within CSD and a second, less-discussed epistemological stress surrounding how user identities are understood within the social science community engaged in CSD-related research and implementation. We illustrate these tensions through the example of a climate services programme that delivers agrometeorological advice to farmers in Mali, demonstrating the ramifications of these epistemological issues for the design and delivery of services that further development and adaptation goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reservoirs are fundamental for water and energy supply but vulnerable to impacts including climate change. This paper outlines the steps in the development of a model to predict how climate, land use and hydrological change could affect the physiochemical and ecological quality of reservoirs in Portugal's Douro region. Climatic data will be downscaled for subsequent finer spatial scale models to develop scenarios and outputs. Field observations and satellite imagery analysis will create dynamic maps providing data on change in land use and vegetation cover, while Artificial Neural Networks will determine how climate, land use and vegetation cover change may influence catchment hydrology. Data from field surveys of biological indicators, greenhouse gas emissions plus additional research will be applied in the Stochastic Dynamic Methodology, a sequential modelling process based on statistical parameter estimation, developed to predict and model physiochemical and ecological changes in reservoirs. This interdisciplinary approach will provide vital modelling tools for end users essential for water resource management in Portugal and to comply with the EU Water Framework Directive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing international recognition of the need for practical guidance on evaluating risks and adapting freshwaters to climate change, drawing on both field and model evidence. This special section of Area demonstrates the varied ways in which geographers, environmental and social scientists, engineers and resource managers are beginning to address these urgent needs. This editorial considers the long history of field experimentation and measurement that has informed professional practice in catchment and water quality management. We assert that comparable levels of investment and commitment are now needed to guide adaptations to climate change. The research within the special section reflects two contrasting perspectives: (i) top-down, macro-scale, climatic and non-climatic risk assessments for freshwaters and (ii) bottom-up, micro-scale experimentation, involving adaptation measures at the river reach and habitat level. We emphasise that greater efforts are required to integrate the results of research at these contrasting scales to deliver benefits that are robust to the large uncertainty associated with climate projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including sustainability, geography and climate change.

Much uncertainty is derived from the application of conceptual rainfall runoff models. In this paper, HYSIM, an ‘off-the-shelf’ conceptual rainfall runoff model, is applied to a suite of catchments throughout Ireland in preparation for use in climate impact assessment. Parameter uncertainty is assessed using the GLUE methodology. Given the lack of source code available for the model, parameter sampling is carried out using Latin hypercube sampling. Uncertainty bounds are constructed for model output. These bounds will be used to quantify uncertainty in future simulations as they include error derived from data measurement, model structure and parameterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing paradigm of UK flood risk management that privileges structural solutions over non-structural ones is evolving in response to threats posed by climate change and higher environmental standards required by the EC Water Framework Directive. This paper examines the contrasting reactions of DEFRA and the Scottish Executive. The Scottish ‘experiment’, which embraces a strong definition of sustainability, is contrasted with a weaker version emerging in England and Wales. Divergent levels of risk and histories of managing that risk explain many of these contrasts. Scotland's more radical approach has the potential to become a new paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, fluvial and aeolian processes in dryland environments have been viewed as mutually exclusive. However, recent research indicates that in many regions dryland aeolian and fluvial systems do not operate independently. There are interactions between the two systems that have important implications for the geomorphology of the landscape. This paper reviews the factors controlling the transfer of sediments between aeolian and fluvial systems, focusing on moisture availability, sediment supply and the magnitude/frequency characteristics of fluvial and aeolian events. We conclude by highlighting areas of future research that will contribute greatly to our understanding of aeolian–fluvial relationships in dryland areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern coastal dune management is viewed largely through the prism of dune ecology. Achieving maximum biodiversity and preserving priority species are the primary objectives and management is based on interventions (grazing, mowing, burning, reseeding, and artificial destabilisation) to achieve that purpose. Under non‐managed conditions, dune vegetation tends to evolve temporally following well‐established succession patterns that lead to a low diversity scrub or woodland. Achieving high diversity involves resisting succession so as to preserve the more biodiverse, earlier stages. The net effect of management is to create dunes with a network of vegetation types that conform to human wish lists. Rather than natural environments, such interventions reduce dunes to the status of parklands. The natural status of NW European dunes under the conditions of relatively stable sea level and generally limited sand supply over the past few thousand years, and certainly since the Little Ice Age (1650–1800), is to be at a relatively well‐vegetated and advanced stage of succession. Modern dune management effectively amounts to a form of "dune gardening" to maintain a status that is not natural (i.e., attuned to the ambient environment) under contemporary conditions or those of the past two centuries. Current practice is based on a human value‐judgement that views natural succession as the enemy. This view and the resulting actions to resist natural change are at variance with the more pervasive environmental management goal of maintaining natural systems by resisting human intervention. Such an approach reduces dune resilience to global climate change. We advocate an approach that views dunes as combined geomorphological and ecological systems capable of change in response to changing environmental drivers. Modern management of coastal dunes can be described as "dune gardening." This approach is based on the maximisation of biodiversity and resists natural change. We advocate an alternative approach that views dunes as part of a dynamic coastal system and permits them to evolve and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birds are sensitive to climate variability and change. This pilot study explores variations in bird communities in India under contrasting phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Statistical analyses were performed using monthly bird data for the years 1990–2015 in Goa and Tamil Nadu. Monthly precipitation, temperature, the Oceanic Niño Index and the Dipole Mode Index were used as explanatory variables for species richness and counts of three marker species (Brahminy Kite, Indian Pond Heron and Lesser Whistling Duck). Due to highly autocorrelated series, small sample sizes and many test permutations, there is greater likelihood of Type I errors when interpreting correlation results. However, pooling bird data by climate mode and state revealed that species richness was generally greater under El Niño or negative IOD (locally wet conditions) than under La Niña or positive IOD (locally dry conditions). In Goa, the Brahminy Kite, Indian Pond Heron and Lesser Whistling Duck had significantly higher counts during El Niño than La Niña events. In Tamil Nadu, there were significantly more Kites under negative than positive IOD phases. Regional variations in sensitivity may reflect species‐dependent factors such as food availability and security of nesting sites. Further research is needed to establish causal mechanisms between climate mode and species richness as well as into the combined effects of ENSO and IOD on bird communities across South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to a special section on environmental displacement, we introduce the concept and ground it in seemingly distinct processes of climate change, extraction, and conservation. We understand environmental displacement as a process by which communities find the land they occupy irrevocably altered in ways that foreclose or otherwise impede possibilities for habitation or else disrupt access to resources within these spaces of life, work and socio-cultural reproduction. Such dislocation amounts to environmental displacement on the grounds that it is justified by environmental or ecological rationales, motivated by desires to access natural resources, or else provoked by human-induced environmental change and attempts to address it. Building from here, we make the case for why climate change and efforts to mitigate and adapt to it, extractive industries, and conservation initiatives should be analysed together as displacement inducing phenomena, as they are empirically connected in consequential ways and materialise from similar logics. We additionally lay out the contributions of the individual articles of the special issue and draw connections across them to help provide a preliminary framework for thinking through environmental displacement, including its causes, logics, and consequences, especially for vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mozambican state is currently working to relocate 7000 people from the interior of the Limpopo National Park (LNP), itself part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). As the process began in 2003, this stands out as one of the region's most protracted contemporary conservation-related evictions. I draw from this case to shed light on the increasingly complex spatial dynamics of land and green grabs and, more specifically, demonstrate the importance of zooming out from discrete land acquisitions to examine how their resulting displacements are increasingly shaped by spatial processes at and beyond their borders. In doing so, we begin to see that displacement from the LNP is not a simple case of eviction from a discrete protected area. Rather, it has been provoked by the opening of the international border, hence drawing transfrontier conservation areas ( TFCAs) like the GLTP into the purview of land and green grabs. At the same time, competition over space with an adjacent grab - a sugarcane/ethanol plantation - has severely interfered with relocation, drastically prolonging it. The case, more broadly, sheds light on how conservation, agricultural extraction and climate change mitigation - all forms of land acquisitions that incite dislocation - come together to produce novel patterns of environmental displacement, placing profound pressures on rural communities and their abilities to occupy space and access resources, including labour opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread acceptance of the idea of working across disciplines and methods in climate change research, the interpretive social sciences continue to be relatively neglected in interdisciplinary research endeavours. Much greater appreciation across epistemological differences is necessary for inclusive collaborative efforts, which in turn requires explicit discussion of what those differences are. Based on the author's participation in an interdisciplinary research project on climate change in Tibet, this article discusses three conceptual challenges: knowledge, system and ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increased focus within the human dimensions of climate change on understanding the complex and multiple ways of 'knowing' climate. While these discussions are important in recognising different ways of knowing the climate and climate change processes already underway, we argue that this epistemological approach is limited and challenging. It begins with an assumption that there is one world (climate) out there that can just be known differently, and that knowledge can be isolated from ways of being and acting in the world. This often results in a distilling of complex knowledge practices into information for the purposes of integration. Drawing from a material-semiotic approach from Science and Technology Studies ( STS), we propose a shift of focus to ontology, with an emphasis on the enactment of knowledge and reality (climate) simultaneously. We present ethnographic data from two drought events (2008/2009 and 2010/2011) among Maasai pastoralists in Northern Tanzania in East Africa to illustrate the value of such an approach, using multiple topologies (regional, network, fluid) for thinking through and following multiple enactments of drought in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will have a major impact on freshwater environments globally. The management of these ecosystems is one of the key challenges currently facing environmental policymakers and producing well-informed climate change adaptation strategies is a priority. Links between climate, hydrology and ecology are poorly understood, and relatively little study has taken place on conservation of standing freshwaters, particularly with respect to landscape context and connectivity in a changing environment. Scotland's lakes (termed lochs in Scotland) contain more than 90% of Great Britain's total freshwater resource. They are distributed across the country, occurring in a wide variety of types and sizes, together providing habitats of international importance for numerous species. There is a pressing need across all geographic scales to conserve these environments in the face of changing water body, catchment and global pressures, including climate change in particular. Here, we introduce a new conceptual framework ( ESVRA), designed to inform climate change adaptation strategies for standing freshwaters at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Adaptation actions will be contingent on the nature and scale of the climate changes, the sensitivity of different lake types to change and the resilience of the specific conservation interests involved. As such, potential adaptation actions are situated within current debates in conservation management surrounding priority species and habitats, threats from multiple stressors, invasive non-native species and the potential benefits of catchment-scale management. Following the ESVRA framework, we present an analysis of climate projections for Scotland; discuss potential climate impacts on the physico-chemical, hydromorphological and ecological processes within lakes; offer a spatial risk assessment for the conservation of Scottish lakes; and advance the adaptation discussion, moving from broad adaptation principles to specific adaptation actions protecting the conservation interests of individual lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar geometry is used to accurately date the four paintings of Waterloo Bridge and one painting of Charing Cross Bridge, from Monet's London Series, that have the sun clearly visible within the image. Monet reworked the ‘enveloppe’ within these images on subsequent days when the sun was in a similar position but did not change the position of the sun. Letters to Monet's wife and contemporary weather data verify the probable dates. This confirms that Monet painted what he saw and that we can cautiously use his London Series as a pictorial ‘weather diary’ of typical Victorian London fogs. Monet painted these images from the Savoy Hotel during stays in 1900 and/or 1901 and the fifth floor balcony he used has now been located for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imprint of the past upon contemporary landscape forms and processes is differentiated in terms of geologic, climatic and anthropogenic memory. Geologic memory refers to controls exerted upon relief, erodibility, erosivity and accommodation space (areas in landscapes where sediments are stored and reworked). These factors set the imposed boundary conditions within which contemporary landscape-forming processes operate. Climatic memory refers to the influence of past climatic conditions upon contemporary landscape forms and processes. Climatic controls exert a primary influence upon the nature of geomorphic processes, while the influence of climate upon ground cover affects the effectiveness of these processes. Climate change may induce profound alterations to the flux boundary conditions under which contemporary landscapes operate. This is exemplified by the variable imprint of glacial/interglacial cycles in differing parts of the world. Anthropogenic memory refers to the imprint of past human activities on contemporary landscapes, whereby human disturbance in the past altered landscape forms, processes and associated flow/sediment fluxes in a manner that continues to affect the way the contemporary landscape works. Contrasting examples from a tectonically stable landscape (Australia) and a tectonically uplifting landscape (New Zealand) are used to highlight the variable influence of geologic, climatic and anthropogenic memory upon the persistence and erasure of landscape forms and resulting implications for sediment flux in differing settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the efficacy of national climate programmes (packages of policies introduced by governments to meet emissions reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol) by considering emissions trends before and after their implementation. Analysis reveals that only four of 21 countries with defined programmes demonstrate improved emissions trends following their inception and in only one is the change statistically significant. The reasons for this are manifold but serendipity appears to play as large a part as strategy in determining national emissions trends in the early years of climate programmes. Inflated claims of success by national governments are unhelpful for effective policy analysis and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine flooding, particularly that associated with North Sea storm surges, has posed a recurrent threat to human use of the Thames Estuary and its shorelines. During the later Middle Ages a growing frequency of surges placed increasing burdens upon the resources of coastal communities. This is reflected in expenditure upon sea-walls and related defences and in the frequent issuing of commissions of sewers, the mechanism by which the Crown intervened in matters of flood prevention and drainage. In the era of labour shortages initiated by the Black Death of 1349, the defence of some reclaimed marshlands around the Estuary and tidal river was abandoned in a precursor of managed retreat or realignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self-organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems’ responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in a climatically stressful environment, alpine grassland is sensitive to subtle climate changes in its productivity. We remedy the current deficiency in studying grassland productivity by taking the integrated effect of all relevant factors into consideration. The relative importance of temperature, rainfall and evaporation to the alpine grassland productivity in western China was determined through analysis of their relationship with the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) between 1981 and 2000. Climate warming stimulated grassland productivity in the 1980s, but hampered it in the 1990s. Temperature is more important than rainfall to grassland productivity early in the growing season. However, their relative importance is reversed late in the growing season. Monthly summer month rainfall modified by maximum monthly temperature is a good predictor of alpine grassland productivity at 62.0 per cent. However, the best predictor is water deficiency, which is able to improve the estimation accuracy to 78.3 per cent. Hence, the impact of temperature on grassland productivity is better studied indirectly through evaporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]