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Abstract Background Climate change is one of the greatest threats to health that societies face and can adversely affect mental health. Given the current lack of a European consensus paper on the interplay between climate change and mental health, we signal a need for a pan-European position paper about this topic, written by stakeholders working in mental health care. Methods On behalf of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), we give recommendations to make mental health care, research, and education more sustainable based on a narrative review of the literature. Results Examples of sustainable mental healthcare comprise preventive strategies, interdisciplinary collaborations, evidence-based patient care, addressing social determinants of mental health, maintaining health services during extreme weather events, optimising use of resources, and sustainable facility management. In mental health research, sustainable strategies include investigating the impact of climate change on mental health, promoting research on climate change interventions, strengthening the evidence base for mental health-care recommendations, evaluating the allocation of research funding, and establishing evidence-based definitions and clinical approaches for emerging issues such as ‘eco-distress’. Regarding mental health education, planetary health, which refers to human health and how it is intertwined with ecosystems, may be integrated into educational courses. Conclusions The EPA is committed to combat climate change as the latter poses a threat to the future of mental health care. The current EPA position paper on climate change and mental health may be of interest to a diverse readership of stakeholders, including clinicians, researchers, educators, patients, and policymakers.

Marine animal forests (MAFs) are benthic ecosystems characterised by biogenic three-dimensional structures formed by suspension feeders such as corals, gorgonians, sponges and bivalves. They comprise highly diversified communities among the most productive in the world's oceans. However, MAFs are in decline due to global and local stressors that threaten the survival and growth of their foundational species and associated biodiversity. Innovative and scalable interventions are needed to address the degradation of MAFs and increase their resilience under global change. Surprisingly, few studies have considered trophic interactions and heterotrophic feeding of MAF suspension feeders as an integral component of MAF conservation. Yet, trophic interactions are important for nutrient cycling, energy flow within the food web, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and MAF stability. This comprehensive review describes trophic interactions at all levels of ecological organisation in tropical, temperate, and cold-water MAFs. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of available tools for estimating the heterotrophic capacities of the foundational species in MAFs. It then discusses the threats that climate change poses to heterotrophic processes. Finally, it presents strategies for improving trophic interactions and heterotrophy, which can help to maintain the health and resilience of MAFs., (© 2024 Cambridge Philosophical Society.)

The paper by K. L. Blaxter and J. L. Clapperton (1965) 'Prediction of the amount of methane produced by ruminants. Br J Nutr 19, 511–522' has been cited 656 times according to Web of Science and continues to be cited with increasing frequency to the present day. The analysis described in the paper, or meta-analysis as it would be known now, is of methane production from cattle and sheep based on forty-eight trials using closed-circuit respiration chambers, all carried out at the Hannah Research Institute, Ayr, UK, between 1955 and 1965. Methane emissions per unit of diet fed were shown to vary depending on diet, level of feeding and individual animal. As such, previous notions that methane emissions were essentially proportional to energy intake were set aside. The main reasons for the paper's continuing citation are the set of equations that can be used to predict methane emissions from ruminants when the technically demanding respiration chambers are unavailable, and that it was the first definitive study to describe the complexities of methane emissions with respect to animals and diets. The paper thus provided abundant insights of the relations between ruminant methane emissions and nutritional biology, and rumen microbiology, in particular, that have informed countless research projects in the intervening half-century. Given the importance of methane as a greenhouse gas in the climate change scenario, these insights are at least as relevant today as they were in 1965. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate is a major extrinsic factor affecting the population dynamics of many organisms. The Broad-Scale Climate Hypothesis (BSCH) was proposed by Elton to explain the large-scale synchronous population cycles of animals, but the extent of support and whether it differs among taxa and geographical regions is unclear. We reviewed publications examining the relationship between the population dynamics of multiple taxa worldwide and the two most commonly used broad-scale climate indices, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Our review and synthesis (based on 561 species from 221 papers) reveals that population changes of mammals, birds and insects are strongly affected by major oceanic shifts or irregular oceanic changes, particularly in ENSO- and NAO-influenced regions (Pacific and Atlantic, respectively), providing clear evidence supporting Elton's BSCH. Mammal and insect populations tended to increase during positive ENSO phases. Bird populations tended to increase in positive NAO phases. Some species showed dual associations with both positive and negative phases of the same climate index (ENSO or NAO). These findings indicate that some taxa or regions are more or less vulnerable to climate fluctuations and that some geographical areas show multiple weather effects related to ENSO or NAO phases. Beyond confirming that animal populations are influenced by broad-scale climate variation, we document extensive patterns of variation among taxa and observe that the direct biotic and abiotic mechanisms for these broad-scale climate factors affecting animal populations are very poorly understood. A practical implication of our research is that changes in ENSO or NAO can be used as early signals for pest management and wildlife conservation. We advocate integrative studies at both broad and local scales to unravel the omnipresent effects of climate on animal populations to help address the challenge of conserving biodiversity in this era of accelerated climate change., (© 2022 Cambridge Philosophical Society.)

‘Landscape’ is relatively underexplored in legal scholarship, notwithstanding its occasional centrality to legal analysis, and the ways in which law contributes to the shaping of landscape.Wind energy is an especially rich area for the exploration of landscape; not only do wind farms consistently raise concerns about landscape, but the existence of climate change complicates the response to local concern. Most of the legal literature on ‘knowledge’ focuses on the ways in which different ‘expert’ knowledges find their way into, and then shape, legal processes and decisions. This article is more concerned with the ways in which the planning system receives different knowledge claims, and validates some of them. The discussion turns around four tentative categories of knowledge claim: expert or technical knowledge claims; lay (or sometimes local) knowledge claims; prior institutional knowledge claims; and professional planning knowledge claims. Knowledge of the complex, dynamic and plural idea of landscape in any particular case is constructed in the process of decision making and reason giving through a careful layering of these different sorts of knowledge claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends strong emissions sufficientarianism as an approach to assigning moral rights to generate greenhouse gas emissions. Strong emissions sufficientarianism holds that only subsistence emitting is morally permissible. This paper argues that, since it is uncertain how many subsistence emissions there will be, the present generation owes it to future generations to refrain from generating non-subsistence emissions, not to risk imposing on them a tragic choice between sacrificing themselves and contributing to very dangerous climate change. The paper also addresses the charge that emissions sufficientarianism, in general, is too permissive since it entails a right to contribute to very dangerous climate change. The overall message is that, given the moral urgency posed by climate change, there is little room for distributive principles besides emissions sufficientarianism. This casts doubt on the appropriateness of relying on carbon budgets in assigning rights to emit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper deals with the kinetic-theoretic description of the evolution of systems consisting of many particles interacting not only with each other but also with the external world, so that the equation governing their evolution contains an additional term representing such interaction, called the 'forcing term'. Firstly, the interactions between pairs of particles are both conservative and nonconservative; the latter represents, among others, birth/death rates. The 'forcing term' does not express a 'classical' force exerted by the external world on the particles, but a more general influence on the effects of mutual interactions of particles, for instance, climate changes, that increase or decrease the different agricultural productions at different times, thus altering the economic relationships between different subsystems, that in turn can be also perturbed by stock market fluctuations, sudden wars, periodic epidemics, and so on. Thus, the interest towards these problems moves the mathematical analysis of the effects of different kinds of forcing terms on solutions to equations governing the collective (that is statistical) behaviour of such nonconservative many-particle systems. In the present paper, we offer a study of the basic mathematical properties of such solutions, along with some numerical simulations to show the effects of forcing terms for a classical prey–predator model in ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent surveys of the literature on climate change and migration emphasize the important diversity of outcomes and approaches of the empirical studies. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis in order to investigate the role of the methodological choices of these empirical studies in finding some particular results concerning the role of climatic factors as drivers of human mobility. We code 51 papers representative of the literature in terms of methodological approaches. This results in the coding of more than 85 variables capturing the methodology of the main dimensions of the analysis at the regression level. These dimensions include authors' reputation, type of mobility, measures of mobility, type of data, context of the study, econometric methods, and last but not least measures of the climatic factors. We look at the influence of these characteristics on the probability of finding any effect of climate change, a displacement effect, an increase in immobility, and evidence in favor of a direct vs. an indirect effect. Our results highlight the role of some important methodological choices, such as the frequency of the data on mobility, the level of development, the measures of human mobility and of the climatic factors as well as the econometric methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is considered to be one of the most significant and complex challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century. As such, it is essential to increase the knowledge base regarding climate change and how best to address its impacts through efficient policies. This special issue, which is divided into two parts – published in the previous and current issues of Environment and Development Economics – is a selection of papers related to 'The Economics of Climate Change and Sustainability', the topic of an international workshop organized by the Economics Department of the University of Bologna in April 2018. The papers in this special issue cover a wide range of climate-change-related topics, including endogenous growth and overlapping generation models; climate-related financing and green bonds; demography; location decisions and technology diffusion; quantitative relationships and experimental approaches. They aim at providing new insights into the economics of climate change and help to identify new directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a dynamic model of energy system change the paper examines the role of innovation in bringing about a low carbon energy system. The processes of innovation and technological substitution are cumulative, dynamic, and highly non-linear processes such that how the energy system evolves in the long term is extraordinarily sensitive to the strength and duration of the initial policies. It is possible, under some policy assumptions, that energy systems would continue to depend on fossil fuels for so long as fossil fuels remain abundant and the least cost resource; and under other assumptions, after allowing for the unavoidable lags associated with investment and the building up of a new capital stock, that fossil fuels would become almost wholly displaced by the non-carbon alternatives. The implication is that the external benefits of innovation, which include the creation of options and the reduction of costs arising directly from innovation itself, and the reduction of environmental damage, are far greater, perhaps by orders of magnitude, than the traditional cost–benefit models used for the analysis of climate change mitigation. The analysis suggests why a focus on discovery and innovation offers a promising way forward for national and international policies on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of climate change on rich and poor countries across the world. We measure two indices of the relative impact of climate across countries, impact per capita, and impact per GDP. These measures sum market impacts across the climate-sensitive economic sectors of each country. Both indices reveal that climate change will have serious distributional impact across countries, grouped by income per capita. We predict that poor countries will suffer the bulk of the damages from climate change. Although adaptation, wealth, and technology may influence distributional consequences across countries, we argue that the primary reason that poor countries are so vulnerable is their location. Countries in the low latitudes start with very high temperatures. Further warming pushes these countries ever further away from optimal temperatures for climate-sensitive economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for the integration of compulsory climate change topics across the core law curriculum. It argues that the most persuasive rationale for this is based in climate legal obligations and institutions, and a clear-eyed perception of climate risk, rather than the sustainability agenda. To this end, the paper outlines efforts taken to 'mainstream' climate change and environmental law education in a core course of the LLB degree – land law. An empirical study sought to evaluate the students' engagement with these materials, and their broader views concerning climate change and their legal education. The paper critically evaluates the course and the results of the empirical study. It concludes that students want to be, and should be, taught climate law and the climate context of law as part of their prescribed learning throughout the core curriculum, rather than as optional or elective content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article describes the main insights deriving from the papers collected in this special issue which jointly provide a 'room with a view' on some of the most relevant issues in climate policy such as: the role of uncertainty, the distributional implications of climate change, the drivers and applications of decarbonizing innovation, the role of emissions trading and its interactions with companion policies. While looking at different issues and from different angles, all papers share a similar attention to policy aspects and implications, especially in developing countries. This is particularly important to evaluate whether and to what extent the climate policies adopted thus far in developed countries can be replicated in emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the potential impacts of climate change on financial markets, focusing on their long-term significance. It uses a top-down modelling tool developed by Ortec Finance in partnership with Cambridge Econometrics that combines climate science with macro-economic and financial effects to examine the possible impacts of three plausible (not extreme) climate pathways. The paper first considers the impact on gross domestic product (GDP), finding that GDP is lower in all three pathways, with the most severe reduction in the Failed Transition Pathway where the Paris Agreement climate targets are not met. The model then translates these GDP impacts into financial market effects. In the Failed Transition Pathway, cumulative global equity returns are approximately 50% lower over the period 2020–2060 than in the climate-uninformed base case. For the other two pathways where the Paris Agreement targets are met, the corresponding figures are 15% and 25% lower returns than in the base case. Results are provided for other asset classes too. These demonstrate that climate change represents a significant market risk, with implications for financial planning, modelling and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does protest affect political speech? Protest is an important form of political claim-making, yet our understanding of its influence on how individual legislators communicate remains limited. Our paper thus extends a theoretical framework on protests as information about voter preferences, and evaluates it using crowd-sourced protest data from the 2017–2019 Fridays for Future protests in the UK. We combine these data with ~2.4m tweets from 553 legislators over this period and text data from ~150k parliamentary speech records. We find that local protests prompted MPs to speak more about the climate, but only online. These results demonstrate that protest can shape the timing and substance of political communication by individual elected representatives. They also highlight an important difference between legislators' offline and online speech, suggesting that more work is needed to understand how political strategies differ across these arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is one of the most significant and complex challenges facing the world's economies. The necessity to enlarge the knowledge base regarding climate change and its impacts and to design efficient policies is widely accepted by the scientific community, the decision makers and the general public. This special issue, which will be published in two parts in the current and subsequent issue of Environment and Development Economics , is a selection of papers related to the topic of the international workshop on 'The Economics of Climate Change and Sustainability' organized by the Economics Department of the University of Bologna in April 2018. The papers in this special issue cover a wide range of climate-change-related topics, which include endogenous growth and overlapping generation models; climate-related financing and green bonds; demographics; location decisions; technology diffusion; quantitative relationships and experimental approaches. We hope that this special issue will provide some new insights into the economics of climate change and help to identify new directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of the work and achievements of James Croll, this paper reviews the records of direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments made by Charles Lyell, Archibald and James Geikie and James Croll himself, in order to evaluate their contributions to the sciences of glacial geology and Quaternary environmental change. The paper outlines the social and physical environment of Croll's youth and contrasts this with the status and experiences of Lyell and the Geikies. It also outlines the character and role of the 'Glasgow School' of geologists, who stimulated Croll's interest into the causes of climate change and directed his focus to the glacial and 'interglacial' deposits of central Scotland. Contributions are outlined in chronological order, drawing attention to: (i) Lyell's high-quality observations and interpretations of glacial features in Glen Clova and Strathmore and his subsequent rejection of the glacial theory in favour of processes attributed to floating icebergs; (ii) the significant impact of Archibald Geikie's 1863 paper on the 'glacial drift of Scotland', which firmly established the land-ice theory; (iii) the fact that, despite James Croll's inherent dislike of geology and fieldwork, he provided high-quality descriptions and interpretations of the landforms and sediments of central Scotland in order to test his theory of climate change; and (iv) the great communication skills of James Geikie, enhanced by contacts and evidence from around the world. It is concluded that whilst direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments were critical to the long-term development of the study of glaciation, the acceptance of this theory was dependent also upon the skills, personality and status of the Geikies and Croll, who developed and promoted the concepts. Sadly, the subsequent rejection of the land-ice concept by Lyell resulted in the same factors challenging the acceptance of the glacial theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral responsibility is a prominent concept used in political discourses and theoretical debates. Yet disagreement remains on how it could work in practice. When attempting to address global challenges such as global poverty, combating atrocities, or artificial intelligence, approaches often revert to retrospective accounts of responsibility that focus on non-compliance with regulatory frameworks. As a result, cases where prospective responsibility would be required often go unaddressed. In this article, we introduce an analytical conceptualization of responsibility that should help to guide the application of moral responsibility in such situations. In the first step, we develop a typology that distinguishes between four types of responsibility: 'obligatory', 'structural', 'prescribed', and 'discursive'. Second, we identify responsibility gaps for each responsibility type. Third, we introduce different ethical principles from political theory that help to identify potential responsibility relations. We illustrate the utility of this framework with the example of climate change, where ethical principles beyond the contribution principle have already been applied. The paper facilitates new perspectives in political debates about how to allocate responsibility in light of global challenges and enhances theoretical debates in International Relations scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catholic social thought and teaching is sometimes conceptualised using an historical or principles-based approach. This paper proposes an alternative framing, construing Catholic social teaching (CST) as a multi-layered phenomenon that can be grouped into three broad tiers, each with a distinctive role. This framing is not intended to supercede the others, nor is it inconsistent with them. The proposal emerges out of a series of discussions hosted by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a Catholic UK-based development agency, member of Caritas Internationalis, and an official agency of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. The paper operates on two levels simultaneously: it attempts a distinctive reframing of CST using a distinctive source, and it attempts an enactment of CST methodologically and structurally. Construing CST as a multi-layered phenomenon that can be grouped into three broad tiers provides a clarity that empowers us in two ways. First, it clarifies the distinctive role of CST at each level. Second, it makes clear that CST is a work of the Spirit rather than a human phenomenon. Such an understanding of CST brings out with particular clarity a vision of the role, purpose, and even the agency of Catholic social thought in relation to a troubled world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates how climate scenario analysis can be used for forward-looking assessment of the risks and opportunities for financial institutions, using a case study for a UK defined benefit pension scheme. It uses a top-down modelling tool developed by Ortec Finance in partnership with Cambridge Econometrics to explore the possible impacts of three plausible (not extreme) climate pathways of the scheme's assets and liabilities. It finds that the funding risks are greater under all three climate pathways than under the climate-uninformed base scenario. In the absence of changes to the investment strategy or recovery plan, the time taken to reach full funding is increased by three to nine years. Given that most models currently used by actuaries do not make explicit adjustments for climate change, these modelled results suggest it is quite likely that pension schemes are systematically underestimating the funding risks they face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a complex interaction between pollution, climate change, the environment and people. This complex interplay of actions and impacts is particularly relevant in coastal regions, where the land meets the sea. To achieve sustainable development in coastal systems, a better understanding is necessary of the role and impact of pollution and the connectedness of the elements, namely, pollution, climate and the people, as well as associated impacts unfolding in an integrated social-ecological system (SES). In this context, the enabling capacity of tools connecting scientific efforts to societal demands is much debated. This paper establishes the basis for climate-smart socially innovative tools and approaches for marine pollution science. The goal of developing a set of innovative tools is twofold: first, to build on, integrate, and further improve the well-founded strengths in diagnosis and process understanding of systemic environmental problems; and, second, to provide decision-making with usable information to create actionable knowledge for managing the impact of marine pollution on the SES under a changing climate. The paper concludes by establishing the scope for a 'last mile' approach incorporating scientific evidence of pollution under climate change conditions into decision-making in a SES on the coast. The paper uses case studies to demonstrate the need for collaborative tools to connect the science of coastal pollution and climate with decision-making on managing human activities in a SES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is closely linked to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane due to human activities, and soaring temperatures might themselves pose a risk to natural carbon sequestration in the land. This editorial introduces three papers in the current issue exploring the adverse effects on mental health of climate-related loss of biodiversity and cultural heritage markers and the beneficial effects of adopting a plant-based diet. It also suggest three simple steps that clinicians can themselves take to act against climate change: choosing and recommending a plant-based diet, reducing personal use of fossil fuels and integrating climate change in discourse in all areas of their professional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTGame theory has been useful as an analytical framework for assessing environmental and resource regulations and policies. The papers in this volume provide the latest methodological and applied works in game theory to a wide range of natural and environmental resource problems such as fishing, grazing, pollution, climate change, water allocation, and stochastic production processes. The findings in the papers suggest that game theory is an effective tool for the analysis of the efficient use of shared natural resources; it can be used to identify stable agreements between parties to a resource conflict, and show how non-cooperation over global public goods/bads has a high social cost tag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of development and climate change on infectious diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Infant mortality and infectious disease are closely related, but there are better data for the former. In an international cross-section, per capita income, literacy, and absolute poverty significantly affect infant mortality. We use scenarios of these three determinants and of climate change to project the future incidence of malaria, assuming it to change proportionally to infant mortality. Malaria deaths will first increase, because of population growth and climate change, but then fall, because of development. This pattern is robust to the choice of scenario, parameters, and starting conditions; and it holds for diarrhoea, schistosomiasis, and dengue fever as well. However, the timing and level of the mortality peak is very sensitive to assumptions. Climate change is important in the medium term, but dominated in the long term by development. As climate can only be changed with a substantial delay, development is the preferred strategy to reduce infectious diseases even if they are exacerbated by climate change. Development can, in particular, support the needed strengthening of disease control programs in the short run and thereby increase the capacity to cope with projected increases in infectious diseases over the medium to long term. This conclusion must, however, be viewed with caution, because development, even of the sort envisioned in the underlying socio-economic scenarios, is by no means certain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: It is well-established that heatwaves increase demand for emergency transport in metropolitan areas; however, little is known about the impact of heat events on demand for prehospital retrieval services in rural and remote areas, or how heatwaves are defined in this context.Inclusion Criteria: Papers were eligible for inclusion if they reported on the impact of a heat event on the activity of a prehospital and retrieval service in a rural or remote area.Methods: A search of PubMed, Cochrane, Science Direct, CINAHL, and Google Scholar databases was undertaken on August 18, 2020 using search terms related to emergency medical transport, extreme heat, and rural or remote. Data relevant to the impact of heat on retrieval service activity were extracted, as well as definitions of extreme heat.Results: Two papers were identified, both from Australia. Both found that heat events increased the number of road ambulance call-outs. Both studies used the Excess Heat Factor (EHF) to define heatwave periods of interest.Conclusions: This review found almost no primary literature on demand for prehospital retrieval services in rural and remote areas, and no data specifically related to aeromedical transport. The research did recognize the disproportionate impact of heat-related increase in service demand on Australian rural and regional health services. With the effects of climate change already being felt, there is an urgent need for more research and action in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is arguably the defining issue of our time, with global impacts. Yet to date, scholarship within social policy has remained relatively fragmented and disparate, leaving an urgent need to start comprehensively embedding environmental thinking across all domains of the discipline (Williams, 2021). Responding to this challenge, this paper draws together existing work at the nexus of social policy, the environment, and climate change. The paper then presents findings from workshops held with social policy scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, using these discussions to propose pathways to embed climate change within the discipline. The paper represents a significant contribution to knowledge within the field as it seeks to both broaden discussions about social policy and climate change; to identify theoretical and empirical relationships that exist between the two fields but have not been fully recognised in existing scholarship; and to bring new perspectives and voices into the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Croll left school at the age of 13 years, yet while a janitor in Glasgow he published a landmark paper on astronomically-related climate change, claimed as 'the most important discovery in paleoclimatology', and which brought him to the attention of Charles Darwin, William Thomson and John Tyndall, amongst others. By 1867 he was persuaded to become Secretary and Accountant of the newly established Geological Survey of Scotland in Edinburgh, and a year after the appearance of his keynote volume Climate and time in 1875, he was lauded with an honorary doctorate from Scotland's oldest university, Fellowship of the Royal Society of London and Honorary Membership of the New York Academy of Sciences. Using a range of archival and published sources, this paper explores aspects of his 'journey' and the background to the award of these major accolades. It also discusses why he never became a Fellow of his national academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In the world of 19th-Century science, Croll was not unusual in being both an autodidact and of humble origins, nor was he lacking in support for his endeavours. It is possible that a combination of Croll's modesty and innovative genius fostered advancement, though this did not hinder a willingness to engage in vigorous argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent wave of scholarship attests that the liberal world order is under threat. Although there is disagreement about the underlying reasons for this diagnosis, there are few attempts to further our understanding of how the liberal order can be reinvigorated. This paper probes the potential of blockchain technology to promote international cooperation. Blockchain technology is a data structure that enables global governance stakeholders to establish decentralized governance systems which provide high-powered incentives for enhanced cooperation. By outlining the contours of a blockchain-based global governance system for climate policy, the paper illustrates that blockchain technology holds theoretical promise to foster cooperation in three ways: leveraging new sources of information through blockchain-based prediction markets; allaying coordinating problems through reducing the cost of transactions for side payments; and allowing states and other global governance actors to make more credible commitments given guaranteed execution of blockchain-enabled smart contracts. By empowering local knowledge holders and non-state actors that traditionally lacked the means to coordinate efforts to influence global politics, blockchain technology also promises to advance an international order based on liberal values. In actuality, however, emerging blockchain-based global governance systems will fall short of the libertarian ideal of 'fully-automated liberalism' as their design and operation will remain under the shadow of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and the pursuit of sustainability and sustainable business might be regarded as among the world's "wicked problems", especially as they are multi-dimensional problems. Achieving corporate accountability in this context is also difficult when corporate structures are complex as they operate globally and through supply chains. At the European level, under the Green Deal, the Sustainable Finance Initiative and the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative include new reporting requirements to amend and expand the scope and application of the 2014 Non-Financial Reporting Directive, alongside changes to directors' duties to ensure they take account of stakeholders' needs and environmental and human rights due diligence requirements. This paper will argue that these legislative and regulatory efforts are to be welcomed, but the complexity of the regulation threatens to undermine its potential impact. It may therefore be necessary to reduce some of the complexity of the regulatory arrangements. However, some complexity may increase resilience and adaptability for responding to the risks involved in the uncertainty and unpredictability of climate change and in dealing with complex corporate structures. The answer is to provide robust regulation that will prompt the corporate behaviours required to avoid the catastrophic trajectory we currently face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with identifying and accounting for cases where the epistemic standard is raised inappropriately. The first section is concerned with identifying a notion of a variable epistemic standard that is neutral regarding a range of theoretical issues. The second section argues that the possibility the epistemic standard could be raised in some epistemic inappropriate way warrants further investigation. The third section outlines and provides a partial explanation of such a case: one in which a climate change denier attempts to raise the epistemic standard in order to shut down inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topics such as climate change, diversity and inequality are likely to dominate the future of Social Policy. This is also a time of a generational change in Social Policy. In this paper I will address the questions of the future challenges for Social Policy by mapping the trajectories of the second generation of Social Policy Academics. There is much to learn from this generation such as the importance of epistemic communities, of mentoring and sustained engagement with policy-makers. However, the argument put forward in this paper is that Social Policy as it developed into an academic subject from the 1960s lost the connection to policy-makers due to expanding outside London; focusing on establishing social policy as an academic subject, academic careers and moving into comparative Social Policy. One effect of this is that an explicit focus on policy innovation and design has gone missing. Instead, this space in the policy landscape has been claimed by think tanks that continue to be highly successful in influencing government policy. A re-discovery of policy design as a key part of Social Policy together with the other lessons from this generation will be needed if we want to tackle the big challenges of tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate adaptation planning in pursuit of resilient and sustainable societies has become a focal point in urban policy. Climate adaptation planning is generally regarded as separate from traditional urban planning practices. Globally and in Europe, however, cities are increasingly integrating climate adaptation planning into their traditional urban planning instruments and processes. Recent research indicates that the scope of such integration is at varying stages. The City of Rotterdam (Netherlands) and the City of Antwerp (Belgium) have been identified as two European cities that face similar climate impacts and risks given their proximity to a large river delta. Both cities aim to integrate climate adaptation into their respective urban planning policies, but the scope of their integration differs. This paper critically analyses the urban planning policies of these two cities to distil key lessons learnt that cities with similar climate impacts and approaches to urban planning may potentially face in integrating climate adaptation planning into urban planning policies. The paper finds that identifying and evaluating the synergies, co-benefits or trade-offs of adaptation measures is a key challenge to integrating climate adaptation into urban planning policy. It is a potential stumbling block for long-term sustainable development and climate resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human health benefits of cardiometabolic disease prevention can be accompanied by planetary co-benefits. Focusing efforts towards young people, including children and adolescents, is conducive to disease prevention. In the context of cardiometabolic disease prevention, this review paper critically summarises the available literature on the acute cardiometabolic responses to physical activity and breakfast manipulations among young people. Given the seriousness of global climate change, which will disproportionally affect our younger generations, this review paper offers new insights into the inherent interactions between child–adolescent behaviour and cardiometabolic health from an environmental sustainability perspective to aid climate change mitigation efforts, including exploring future research avenues. A growing evidence base suggests acute moderate- to high-intensity exercise bouts can attenuate postprandial plasma glucose, insulin and triacylglycerol concentrations for up to 24–48 h in young people. Whether accumulating physical activity throughout the day with short, frequent bouts promotes cardiometabolic risk marker attenuations is unclear. Breakfast consumption may enhance free-living physical activity and reduce glycaemic responses to subsequent meals for a possible additive impact. If repeated habitually, attenuations in these cardiometabolic risk factors would be conducive to disease prevention, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with disease diagnosis and treatment. To progress current understanding with high public health and planetary relevance, research among samples of 'at risk' young people that span cellular-level responses to ecologically valid settings and address human and planetary health co-benefits is needed. Indeed, certain physical activity opportunities, such as active travel to school, offer important direct co-benefits to humans and planetary health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula region has undergone a long and sustained warming period, followed by a shorter but also sustained cooling period, and then a very recent return to warming conditions. All of these have profoundly impacted the glaciers peripheral to the Antarctic Peninsula. This paper focuses on the analysis of the surface mass balance monitoring of such glaciers by the glaciological method, complemented by the analysis of mass-balance estimates by geodetic methods, as well as frontal ablation estimates. We aim to summarize the current knowledge and outline the main challenges faced by investigating the mass balance of such peripheral glaciers and their current contribution to sea-level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain glaciers are crucial sources of fresh water, contributing directly and indirectly to water, energy and food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Assessing the impact of diminishing glacial meltwater contributions to the security of this resource is critical as we seek to manage and adapt to changing freshwater dynamics in a warming world. Both water quantity and quality influence water (in)security, so understanding the fluxes of water, sediment and contaminants through glacial and proglacial systems is required for holistic assessment of meltwater contribution to downstream resource security. In this paper we consider the socio-environmental role of and pressures on glacier-fed waters, discuss key research priorities for the assessment of both the quantity and quality of meltwater and reflect on the importance of situating our understanding within a transdisciplinary and inclusive research landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upper Palaeolithic archaeological sites in the Basque Country have been excavated for over a century. They have yielded a rich palaeoenvironmental record with zoological and botanical remains that have been obtained in stratigraphic series dated precisely by radiocarbon. This information reveals cyclical environmental changes from climates similar to today to drier and extremely cold conditions, when species in current boreal biomes and others now extinct but with similar ecological preferences were present in the region. Moreover, the archaeological sites have provided high-resolution information about the resilience mechanisms of the communities of our own human species. This information allows us to increase the corpus of palaeoclimate data regarding the Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 2 and MIS 3 for a critical region within the human population of Eurasia. The aim of this paper is to show how an extraordinary capacity for adaptation to drastic climate changes Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer societies displayed, even though their subsistence depended on biotic resources that alter rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cryospheric change occurs in unequal spaces. Societies living near ice are divided by race, class, gender, geography, politics and other factors. Consequently, impacts of ice loss are not shared equally, and everyone experiences cryospheric changes differently. Responsibility for recent ice loss is also driven by a relatively small portion of humanity: those who emit the most greenhouse gases. Additionally, people who study the cryosphere come from institutions and societies where inequality is often systemic, making research on ice and snow a symptom of and contributor to social inequality. To better understand unequal effects of cryospheric change within and across diverse communities, including research communities, this paper focuses on three areas, drawing primarily from glacier-related work: (1) the social context of cryospheric changes; (2) attribution and responsibility for cryospheric changes and (3) imbalances in knowledge about the cryosphere. Addressing these dimensions of ice loss requires transdisciplinary approaches that connect research to societies and link glaciology and other cryospheric sciences with social sciences and humanities. These concepts, cases and suggestions to help address inequalities also reveal that no singular conceptualization of sustainability exists. Different societies, residents and researchers possess distinct understandings of and goals for 'ice in a sustainable society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in climatic patterns are expected to have significant effects on health and wellbeing. However, the literature on the effect of climate on subjective wellbeing remains scant and existing studies focus mostly on developed countries or cross-country analyses. This paper aims to identify the relationship between climate conditions on happiness after controlling for individual and social characteristics. Ecuador, a geographically fragmented country with varying climate conditions across municipalities, constitutes an ideal case study to assess the effect of climate variables on happiness. We employ a cross-section analysis to identify the effect of temperature, precipitation and humidity on happiness. The paper shows that climate conditions constitute an important determinant of people's subjective wellbeing. The results also suggest that income and education attenuate the effect of temperature on happiness and that substantial differences are observed depending on whether places are hot/humid or cold/dry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring the spread of non-indigenous species is fundamental to study global warming effects on marine biodiversity. A valuable tool is represented by the continuous updating of the geographic range expansion of non-indigenous species. Lamprohaminoea ovalis is a Lessepsian mollusc initially recorded in the Mediterranean Sea in 2001. This paper reports its range expansion over the last 20 years related to water warming. The first record of Lamprohaminoea ovalis from the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) is also reported. Two individuals (about 10 mm length) were observed on a sub-vertical rocky bottom at 26 m depth displaying potential trailing behaviour. This recent finding extends the currently known distributional range of Lamprohaminoea ovalis, representing the northernmost occurrence of this non-indigenous species in the western Mediterranean Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue highlights the most recent socio-legal research related to the mitigation, if not the elimination, of the threat of anthropogenic disasters in Asia and beyond. The drafts of these papers were originally presented at the Presidential Session on "The Anthropocene and the Law in Asia" at the Fourth Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) Conference held in the vibrant city of Osaka, Japan in December 2019. The timing of this particular session, the first of its kind to be held at an ALSA Conference, turned out to be somewhat prophetic, in that two anthropogenic catastrophes—the historic zoonotic pandemic and the cataclysmic wild bushfires—had just begun to strike in December in Wuhan, China and in New South Wales, Australia, respectively. The novel coronavirus pandemic would kill more than 1 million people in the following months, after infecting more than 40 million across the globe. The Australian wild bushfires killed and displaced more than 3 billion animals, becoming the worst wildfire ever recorded in the world. Since that last ALSA Conference in December 2019, multiple anthropogenic disasters have hit various regions in Asia and across the world. The papers in this Special Issue examine various impacts of anthropogenic disasters and propose innovative socio-legal strategies to mitigate them. Included are arguments for the proposal of new legal education curricula and innovative pedagogy on environmental law and the exploration of an international multidisciplinary teaching framework in reconsidering and reshaping human-centric legal education. Also proposed is the development of a robust Earth Jurisprudence based on the adoption of the Rights of Nature principles, while moving away from the Euro-American exploitive view of nature as commodified properties. Additionally proposed is the establishment of a land-based, topological jurisprudence that incorporates the nuanced narratives of indigenous voices in dealing with the threat of human-induced ecological and environmental disasters in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Mediterranean mountains are biodiversity hotspots where northern species occur surrounded by drier and warmer lowlands. In this context, global warming is pushing these species to higher elevations. This paper assesses whether forest birds have experienced a shift upwards over the elevation gradient in the last 35 years in the Guadarrama Mountains (600–2,400 m asl; central Spain). Alternatively, the paper tests whether the reported shifts are related to changes in forest structure resulting from rural abandonment and/or forest management. To do this, sampling carried out from 1976 to 1980 along the elevation gradient was repeated in 2014–2015. In addition, the habitat preferences of birds were used to test if the elevation shifts were related to changes in forest structure. Results show that the mean range position of birds associated with tree cover shifted downwards, a trend supported by an increase in tree-dependent birds at mid-elevations. These trends suggest that an increase in tree cover has buffered the altitudinal shifts of forest birds predicted by climate warming. Results also suggest that proper forest management may improve the resilience of forest bird communities to the pervasive effects of climate warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of cleaner production technologies is supposed to be crucial to mitigate the effect of climate change. The diffusion of technology from developed to developing countries can be done through different channels. It can be a business decision such as firms' relocation, opening of a subsidiary or the adoption of technology by southern firms, or it may be decided at the government level. This paper investigates, in a two-country model (North and South), the relationship between the diffusion of mitigation technologies, firms' relocation and the environment. We assume that both countries implement a carbon tax and there are two kinds of production technology used: a relatively clean technology and a dirty one. This paper theoretically shows that the technology diffusion by technology adoption, public transfer or subsidiary creation induces a decrease in relocation, while technology diffusion via purchasing dirty southern firms may increase the number of relocated firms. The paper also demonstrates that technology diffusion may have perverse effects in the long run. Indeed, total emissions may increase with technology diffusion since southern firms become more competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]