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An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification have been discussed as needed changes in urban studies. The critiques of the limitations of urban studies, in terms of both the scholarship and the scholars, offer important and concrete responses to expanding the scope of the field. Yet this tremendous special issue on ‘Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies’ with 10 papers cutting across a range of sites and topics is decidedly not only about empirical variation; this is an important distinction worth drawing more attention to. The creativity expressed in these papers comes at an auspicious time in urban studies where new routes for doing urban theory are needed to move past debates about singular versus plural epistemologies of the urban. As a kind of research that demands more translation, exchange and collaboration, perhaps comparative urban research as a mode of theory-building can help to humble the chest-pounding, posturing, privilege of thinking and speaking the language of theory. The theoretical ambitions of these very different papers show how urban theory need not only be about better understanding urbanisation within the epistemological confines of late capitalism. Rather than reifying a shared grammar of urbanisation as a necessity to understand each other, they may entice scholars everywhere to develop a broader vocabulary and perhaps even learn another language.

9 páginas.- 4 figuras.- 38 referemcias.- Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01627-2, Increasing the number of environmental stressors could decrease ecosystem functioning in soils. Yet this relationship has not been globally assessed outside laboratory experiments. Here, using two independent global standardized field surveys, and a range of natural and human factors, we test the relationship between the number of environmental stressors exceeding different critical thresholds and the maintenance of multiple ecosystem services across biomes. Our analysis shows that having multiple stressors, from medium levels (>50%), negatively and significantly correlates with impacts on ecosystem services and that having multiple stressors crossing a high-level critical threshold (over 75% of maximum observed levels) reduces soil biodiversity and functioning globally. The number of environmental stressors exceeding the >75% threshold was consistently seen as an important predictor of multiple ecosystem services, therefore improving prediction of ecosystem functioning. Our findings highlight the need to reduce the dimensionality of the human footprint on ecosystems to conserve biodiversity and function., This project received funding from the British Ecological Society (agreement no. LRA17\1193; MUSGONET). M.D.-B. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the I+D+i project PID2020-115813RA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M.D.-B. is also supported by a project of the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) and the Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades of the Junta de Andalucía (FEDER Andalucía 2014-2020 Objetivo temático ‘01 - Refuerzo de la investigación, el desarrollo tecnológico y la innovación’) associated with the research project P20_00879 (ANDABIOMA). E.M.-J. thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for supporting his research stay in Germany (Fellowship for Experienced Researchers). M.C.R. acknowledges support from an ERC Advanced Grant (694368). M.G.A.H. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 310030_188799). M.B. is supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (# RYC2021-031797-I)

Many cities have abandoned plans for hosting the Olympics due to crises of high costs, unnecessary infrastructures, and a range of socio-spatial exclusions. These problems stem from conflicts between the short-term needs of the event and the long-term needs of the city. In response, Olympic organizers launched a series of reforms to improve alignment between the Games and the host city. This paper examines these reforms, identifies urban development agendas in preparation for Paris 2024, and explores their implications on selected spaces of urban intervention within Paris. Thinking through rhizomatic philosophy, the paper advocates for a more nuanced approach to exploring the problems and potential of mega-event-led urban development. In so doing, the paper maps organizer and activist assemblages, and posits that efforts at reform are stymied by a too-narrow interpretation of who counts as a stakeholder. Subsequently, the spatial articulations of the mega-event risk perpetuating the exclusions that reform intended to resolve. Ensuring a wider representation of resident voices could help minimize the distance between word and deed in the latest rounds of Olympic reform.

The article focuses on the everyday making of housing vacancy in Athens and discusses the multiple housing struggles and cross-tenure dispossessions this process entails. The analysis draws on interview material collected during a six-month fieldwork, particularly on the narratives of inhabitants in a neighbourhood of the city experiencing increasing vacancy levels and being represented as ‘declining’ in the public debate. Through a relational reading of vacancy, the often unknowingly related actors involved and affected by this process, their practices and understandings, are analysed. The findings reveal the different, perceived or actualised processes, human and material agencies sustaining vacancy in place, showing how (unequally) affected actors, despite their geographical and social distance, shape this process through their interdependencies. The paper discusses some dichotomies dominating the conceptualization of vacancy, suggesting also that these seemingly inactive spaces are not natural outputs or abstract representations of the market, but spaces constituted through action, embroiled in social antagonisms and conflicts over power and agency.

This paper discusses options to increase mitigation ambition in crediting mechanisms that serve the Paris Agreement (PA), such as the Article 6.4 mechanism. Under the Clean Development Mechanism and other crediting mechanisms, baselines have been specified in the form of greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity factors and linked to business-as-usual developments. This means that with increasing production of goods and services through carbon market activities, absolute emissions may increase or fall only slowly. At a global level, such an approach widens the "emissions gap". To enable continued use of emissions intensity baselines in crediting mechanisms while being in line with the PA’s goal to pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5˚C, we propose to apply an "ambition coefficient" to emissions intensities of technologies when establishing the baseline. This coefficient would decrease to reflect increasing ambition over time, and reach zero when a country needs to reach net zero emissions. Due to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, the coefficient would fall more quickly for developed than for developing countries. The latter would be able to generate emission reduction credits well beyond 2050, while for the former, crediting would stop around 2035 or before. An ambition coefficient approach would generate certainty for carbon market investors and preserve trust in international carbon markets that operate in line with the agreed, long-term ambition of the international climate regime.

In this article, I take the framework of neuroliberalism as an analytical lens to explore the functioning and implementation of a social impact bond-funded welfare service for young homeless people in the UK. After reflecting on the lines of connections and divergences between social impact bonds and neuroliberal logics, I draw attention to the limitations that exist in welfare interventions inspired by neuroliberal thought. On the one hand, the studied intervention functioned mainly through designing trustful, ideal-type relationships as a means to ‘fix’ people, thereby focusing on behavioural and biographical deficiencies and spreading good life ideals of a marketized world. On the other hand, I demonstrate how this focus on adjusting micro-contexts and tinkering with the affective, relational infrastructure fails to understand systemic constraints. Those were particularly evident with regard to the precarious labour market environment and colliding welfare agendas individuals were confronted with.

The creation and curation of environmental data present numerous challenges and rewards. In this study, we reflect on the increasing amount of freely available glacier data (inventories and changes), as well as on related demands by data providers, data users, and data repositories in-between. The amount of glacier data has increased significantly over the last two decades as remote sensing techniques have improved and free data access is much more common. The portfolio of observed parameters has increased as well, which presents new challenges for international data centers, and fosters new expectations from users. We focus here on the service of the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers (GTN-G) as the central organization for standardized data on glacier distribution and change. Within GTN-G, different glacier datasets are consolidated under one umbrella, and the glaciological community supports this service by actively contributing their datasets and by providing strategic guidance via an Advisory Board. To assess each GTN-G dataset, we present a maturity matrix and summarize achievements, challenges, and ambitions. The challenges and ambitions in the democratization of glacier data are discussed in more detail, as they are key to providing an even better service for glacier data in the future. Most challenges can only be overcome in a financially secure setting for data services and with the help of international standardization as, for example, provided by the CoreTrustSeal. Therefore, dedicated financial support for and organizational long-term commitment to certified data repositories build the basis for the successful democratization of data. In the field of glacier data, this balancing act has so far been successfully achieved through joint collaboration between data repository institutions, data providers, and data users. However, we also note an unequal allotment of funds for data creation and projects using the data, and data curation. Considering the importance of glacier data to answering numerous key societal questions (from local and regional water availability to global sea-level rise), this imbalance needs to be adjusted. In order to guarantee the continuation and success of GTN-G in the future, regular evaluations are required and adaptation measures have to be implemented.

In this paper, I propose the notion of ‘German Theory’ to allude to the processes of translation and circulation of theoretical ideas discussed in the German humanities and German geography across and beyond the linguistic boundaries of its origin. However, these ideas did not travel, at least not to Anglophone geography. This paper investigates why not, and it maps out the lost theoretical potential that has been foregone as a result. ‘German Theory’ is thus read here as a potentiality that has not actualised. More specifically, this paper studies the reception of Foucault, as it emerged in two distinct territories of thought, each with their own interpretation: first, Kittler’s work on the materiality of discourse in German humanities, and second, the ‘discourse school’ in German geography. The latter’s insistence on the textuality of discourse disconnected their Foucault reception not only from Kittler’s, but equally so from ongoing debates in Anglophone geography. By reflecting on why the ‘German Foucault’ did not travel to Anglophone geography, I raise a speculative epistemological question about the im/potentiality of ‘German Theory’: could a more cosmopolitan theory have emerged from a circulation of these ideas had they travelled across linguistic boundaries?

Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires foundational changes in societies, politics, and economies. Greater effectiveness has been attributed to actions in the public sphere than to the actions of individuals. However, little is known about how climate literacy programs address the political aspects of mitigation and adaptation. The aim of this systematic literature review is to fill this gap and analyze how public-sphere actions on mitigation and adaptation are discussed in climate literacy programs in schools. Based on database searches following PRISMA guidelines we identified 75 empirical studies that met our inclusion criteria. We found that central aspects of climate policy such as the 1.5-degree limit, the IPCC reports, or climate justice are rarely addressed. Whilst responsibility for emissions is attributed to the public sphere, the debate about mitigation usually focuses on the private sphere. Climate change education does not, therefore, correspond to the climate research discourse. We show that effective mitigation and adaptation are based on public-sphere actions and thus conclude that effective climate education should discuss those public actions if it is to be effective. Hence, we propose that climate education should incorporate political literacy to educate climate-literate citizens., +repphzhbib2022A

Coastal areas are highly diverse, ecologically rich, regions of key socio-economic activity, and are particularly sensitive to sea- level change. Over most of the 20th century, global mean sea level has risen mainly due to warming and subsequent expansion of the upper ocean layers and the melting of glaciers and ice caps. Over the last three decades, increased mass loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has also started to contribute significantly to contemporary sea-level rise. The future mass loss of these ice sheets, which combined represent a sea-level rise potential of ~65 m, constitutes the main source of uncertainty in long-term (centennial to millennial) sea-level rise projections. Improved knowledge of the magnitude and rate of future sea-level change is therefore of utmost importance. Moreover, sea level does not change uniformly across the globe, and can differ greatly at both regional and local scales. The most appropriate and feasible sea level mitigation and adaptation measures in coastal regions strongly depend on local land use and associated risk aversion. Here, we advocate that addressing the problem of future sea-level rise and its impacts requires (i) bringing together a transdisciplinary scientific community, from climate and cryospheric scientists to coastal impact specialists, and (ii) interacting closely and iteratively with users and local stakeholders to co-design and co-build coastal climate services, including addressing the high-end risks. Following these principles, as also adopted in the EU project “Projecting sea-level rise: from projections to local implications” (PROTECT), we encourage the formation of research consortia that cover the entire knowledge chain. In this way global sea-level science can be linked to effective coastal climate services at the scale of risk and adaptation

A promising strategy to reduce smartphones' environmental footprint is to increase their service lifetime, thereby reducing the demand for resource-intensive production of new devices. Most of the existing literature focuses on production-oriented measures, such as improving repairability, but what remains missing is a systematic overview of consumer-oriented interventions to extend smartphones' service lifetime. In this study, we applied the consumer intervention mapping approach by systematically identifying consumer decision situations along the smartphone life cycle and interventions that encourage consumers to make smartphone lifetime-extending decisions. We identify two main mechanisms to achieve lifetime extension: retention by increasing the time during which a user keeps a device, and recirculation by passing on a device to an additional user. Altogether, we identified 26 different types of interventions to induce consumers to make smartphone lifetime-extending decisions and structure these according to consumer-influence techniques, e.g., informing consumers about retention/recirculation options and environmental impacts caused throughout device life cycles, persuading consumers by creating emotional attachment, nudging consumers through product labels for secondhand devices, simplifying execution of lifetime-extending decision options through take-back programs, and incentivizing lifetime-extension through buy-back programs. These interventions' success in achieving lifetime extensions and reducing environmental impacts in practice depends on the degree to which they actually extend smartphones' service lifetime and reduce production of new devices (displacement rate), induction and re-spending effects associated with the interventions, and the interventions’ implementation feasibility, which conflicts of interest in the smartphone ecosystem often challenge.

This article explores the reasons for the local rejection of a proposed national park in Switzerland. Using a mixed-methods approach and resorting to qualitative and quantitative data, we follow the thread of trust issues in the participatory planning process of a protected area. Different rationales and discourses, both project-specific but also more general, influenced the opinions of local stakeholders. Connecting these different opinions was the issue of (dis)trust, which weaves in and out of prominent lines of argumentation and informs individual sentiments. The application of a multidimensional trust framework helps to understand the influence of different types of trust on protected area negotiations. We discuss how a focus on rational trust building can help to sharpen the diverse goals of contemporary protected areas with integrated conservation and economic development schemes, as well as enable the emergence of other types of trust to facilitate conservation debates.

Pastoralists in Western Mongolia face a range of challenges during their annual grazing cycle due to the simultaneous but conflicting needs for secure allocation rules and a high degree of flexibility. In this paper, I analyze the seasonal arrangements and corresponding strategies that households adopt to deal with unpredictable environmental conditions and the demands of supplying livestock with sufficient forage throughout the year. In contrast to game theory simulations, I argue that dilemmas are: a) often not a question of cooperating or not, but form continua of more or less; and b) socially embedded as people operate in a multitude of relationships that influence their decision-making. Therefore, sharing information in a manner that prioritizes the requirements of individual households while not jeopardizing social reputation is crucially important. Rhetorical skills play an important role in this regard, but there are also situations when herders blatantly ignore state law or local institutional arrangements and risk confrontation to ensure the survival of livestock leading to a situation where free-riding may at times become the dominant strategy.

Social scientists have argued that ethical consumption is embedded into broader lifestyles running across various domains of social life. For instance, fair trade consumption might be part of a distinctive lifestyle, including behaviors such as going to fancy restaurants or the opera. We, therefore, investigate the relationships of the main dimensions of broader lifestyles to various aspects of fair trade consumption—from purchase frequency, to visiting specialized stores, to the identification with fair trade. The analysis relies on data collected in the Summer of 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland. Since per capita consumption of fair trade products in this country was on a comparatively high level, the results are also important for other societies experiencing only currently the mainstreaming of fair trade. The first dimension, distinctiveness of lifestyles, denoting orientations and behaviors with high social prestige in society, emerges as a substantial and important determinant of all included aspects of fair trade consumption. The second dimension, modernity, is only correlated with a subset of these aspects. These effects are robust, even when taking ethical and political orientations and resource endowment into account. Hence, differences between lifestyle groups do not simply reflect the social position of high-status consumers or their ethical and political views. They reflect orientations, mental representations and routines specific to these social groups. Broader lifestyles are, therefore, a relevant addition to explanations of fair trade consumption.

Conservation management of wildlife species should be underpinned by knowledge of their distribution and abundance, as well as impacts of human activities on their populations and habitats. Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) are subject to incidental capture in a range of Australia’s commercial fisheries including gill netting, purse seining and mid-water trawling. The impact these fishery interactions have on common dolphin populations is uncertain, as estimates of abundance are lacking, particularly for the segments of the populations at risk of bycatch and in greater need of protection. Here we used double-observer platform aerial surveys and mark-recapture distance sampling methods to estimate the abundance of common dolphins in 2011 over an area of 42,438 km2 in central South Australia, where incidental mortality of common dolphins due to fisheries bycatch is the highest. We also used the potential biological removal (PBR) method to estimate sustainable levels of human-caused mortality for this segment of the population. The estimated abundance of common dolphins was 21,733 (CV = 0.25; 95% CI = 13,809–34,203) in austral summer/autumn and 26,504 in winter/spring (CV = 0.19; 95% CI = 19,488–36,046). Annual PBR estimates, assuming a conservative maximum population growth rate of Rmax = 0.02 and a recovery factor of Fr = 0.5 for species of unknown conservation status, ranged from 95 (summer/autumn) to 120 dolphins (winter/spring), and from 189 (summer/autumn) to 239 dolphins (winter/spring) with an Rmax = 0.04. Our results indicate that common dolphins are an abundant dolphin species in waters over the central South Australian continental shelf (up to 100 m deep). Based on the 2011 abundance estimates of this species, the highest estimated bycatch of common dolphins (423 mortalities in 2004/05) in the southern Australian region exceeded the precautionary PBR estimates for this population segment. Recent bycatch levels appear to be below PBR estimates, but low observer coverage and underreporting of dolphin mortalities by fishers means that estimates of dolphin bycatch rates are not robust. The effects of cumulative human impacts on common dolphins are not well understood, and thus we recommend a precautionary management approach to manage common dolphin bycatch based on local abundance estimates.

Particularly since the financial crisis of 2008, much has been written about the growing influence of finance in the development of cities in the global North. Today, financial markets also appear to be expanding southwards. A small but growing number of existing studies on the financialization of Southern cities helpfully explore how international investment changes urban development locally. Yet, they say less about the actors, procedures, and hurdles through which global market expansion is forged and expanded in the first place. In this paper, we examine the role of standards and standards-setting organizations in fostering market expansion and financial deepening. In particular, we highlight the efforts of standards-setting organizations in implementing a novel financial tool, green municipal bonds. Green municipal bonds are debt instruments that allow cities to raise capital through the issuance of bonds exclusively for investment in projects certified as sustainable. First employed by European, Canadian, and US cities, the paper traces the processes that led up to the issuance of these bonds in Mexico City, one of the first municipalities in the so-called ‘emerging markets’ to issue green municipal bonds. Our findings indicate that standards barely impacted project implementation; nevertheless, with the political efforts of standards-setting organizations, standards worked as vehicles through which infrastructures of markets, knowledge, and political support were built, legitimized, and secured. While these processes widened and deepened financialization, they also encountered challenges in terms of the long-term stabilization of these infrastructures and the upkeep of political support.

Predictions about the effects of climate change cannot be made with complete certainty, so acknowledging uncertainty may increase trust in scientists and public acceptance of their messages. Here we show that this is true regarding expressions of uncertainty, unless they are also accompanied by acknowledgements of irreducible uncertainty. A representative national sample of Americans read predictions about effects of global warming on sea level that included either a worst-case scenario (high partially bounded uncertainty) or the best and worst cases (fully bounded uncertainty). Compared to a control condition, expressing fully bounded but not high partially bounded uncertainty increased trust in scientists and message acceptance. However, these effects were eliminated when fully bounded uncertainty was accompanied by an acknowledgement that the full effects of sea-level rise cannot be quantified because of unpredictable storm surges. Thus, expressions of fully bounded uncertainty alone may enhance confidence in scientists and their assertions but not when the full extent of inevitable uncertainty is acknowledged. This study shows that expressing uncertainty about best- and worst-case effects of climate change on sea-level rise increases trust in climate scientists and message acceptance but not when the full extent of inevitable uncertainty due to unpredictable storm surges is also acknowledged.

Warming increases the metabolic demand of consumers1, strengthening their feeding interactions2. This could alter energy fluxes3–5 and even amplify extinction rates within the food web6–8. Such effects could simplify the structure and dynamics of ecological networks9,10, although an empirical test in natural systems has been lacking. Here, we tested this hypothesis by characterizing around 50,000 directly observed feeding interactions across 14 naturally heated stream ecosystems11–15. We found that higher temperature simplified food-web structure and shortened the pathways of energy flux between consumers and resources. A simple allometric diet breadth model10,16 predicted 68–82% of feeding interactions and the effects of warming on key food-web properties. We used model simulations to identify the underlying mechanism as a change in the relative diversity and abundance of consumers and their resources. This model shows how warming can reduce the stability of aquatic ecosystems by eroding the structural integrity of the food web. Given these fundamental drivers, such responses are expected to be manifested more broadly and could be predicted using our modelling framework and knowledge of how warming alters some routinely measured characteristics of organisms. Observations of feeding interactions show that warming simplifies the structure of food webs in stream ecosystems. Simulations show that consumer diversity and changes in abundance drive this simplification and can reduce ecosystem stability.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) under the guidance of the precautionary principle sets out standards to guarantee high quality water services for European citizens. This creates pressure on European cities to update and renew their water infrastructures in accordance with EU Law at great financial cost. Cities within the Union try to bridge this financial gap with a variety of approaches. This paper presents the cases of London and Milan, both of which were subject to legal proceedings for breaching the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive. By example of these two cases, this article details how the precautionary principle affects urban water infrastructure provision, and how the regulation of the primary risk of pollution can both trigger innovation and create secondary risks within the highly integrated urban water infrastructure sector. The London case focusses on an individual infrastructure project and shows how its financial framing has compromised the final outcome, while the Milan case presents a longer-view perspective that shows how structural changes in the urban water infrastructure sector have enabled an environment for sustainable financial innovation. The role of transparency and good local governance practices are emphasized for a successful implementation of the precautionary principle requirements in a city’s water sector. Managing this process effectively can result in meaningful social innovation for urban water infrastructure provision. Horizon 2020 Framework Programme

Background: The environment can play a relevant role in performance in runners. This study aimed to verify the distribution of the best European road runners across the continent, and to investigate variables related to country representatives in the European Senior outdoor top list 2019. Methods: The sample comprised 563 European runners, aged 18–48 years, ranked in the European Senior outdoor top list 2019 for distances of 10–42 km. Country-related variables were gross domestic product (GDP), competition place, population size, and sports investment. The countries were categorized as “top ten countries” or “other countries”. Binary logistic regression was used for analysis. Results: The United Kingdom showed the highest prevalence of runners in the ranking (men—17.6%, women—23.0%), followed by Spain (male ranking—12.1%) and Germany (female ranking—8.6%). For men, sports investment (OR = 1.13, CI95% = 1.03–1.28) and country GDP (OR = 0.96, CI95% = 0.93–0.98) showed an association with the chances of the athlete to reach the Top 10 ranking, while among women, the only variable significantly related was the competition venue (OR = 3.97, CI95% = 1.40–11.23). Conclusion: As in other sports considered “non-expensive”, the economic and demographic characteristics of the place where athletes train can provide advantages in performance.

During recent decades, stable oxygen isotopes derived from tree-ring cellulose (δ18OTRC) have been frequently utilised as the baseline for palaeoclimatic reconstructions. In this context, numerous studies take advantage of the high sensitivity of trees close to their ecological distribution limit (high elevation or high latitudes). However, this increases the chance that indirect climatic forces such as cold ground induced by permafrost can distort the climate-proxy relationship. In this study, a tree stand of sub-alpine larch trees (Larix decidua Mill.) located in an inner alpine dry valley (Val Bever), Switzerland, was analysed for its δ18OTRC variations during the last 180 years. A total of eight L. decidua trees were analysed on an individual base, half of which are located on verified sporadic permafrost lenses approximately 500 m below the expected lower limit of discontinuous permafrost. The derived isotope time series are strongly dependent on variations in summer temperature, precipitation and large-scale circulation patterns (geopotential height fields). The results demonstrate that trees growing outside of the permafrost distribution provide a significantly stronger and more consistent climate-proxy relationship over time than permafrost-affected tree stands. The climate sensitivity of permafrost-affected trees is analogical to the permafrost-free tree stands (positive and negative correlations with temperature and precipitation, respectively) but attenuated partly leading to a complete loss of significance. In particular, decadal summer temperature variations are well reflected in δ18OTRC from permafrost-free sites (r = 0.62, p &lt, 0.01), while permafrost-affected sites demonstrate a full lack of this dependency (r = 0.30, p &gt, 0.05). Since both tree stands are located just a few meters away from one another and are subject to the same climatic influences, discrepancies in the isotope time series can only be attributed to variations in the trees’ source water that constraints the climatic fingerprints on δ18OTRC. If the two individual time series are merged to one local mean chronology, the climatic sensitivity reflects an intermediate between the permafrost-free and –affected δ18OTRC time series. It can be deduced, that a significant loss of information on past climate variations arises by simply averaging both tree stands without prior knowledge of differing subsurface conditions.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at harnessing economic complexity for sustainable and inclusive economic growth by calling for a decade of joint action. In this paper, we show how the action-oriented collaborative culture of complex and competitive economic ecosystems in places outside the major population centers may generate significant positive external effects for society and the environment at large. We illustrate this by means of two small case studies in Switzerland, a country with a federal system that enables decentralized economic development. The first case study investigates the economic ecosystem of the small town Monthey to show how productive migrants and embedded multinational companies increase the knowledge and know-how of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The successful collaboration of insiders and outsiders accounts for the internal economic complexity that makes the region innovative and competitive. The second case study highlights the importance of the federalist system by showing how the canton of Solothurn succeeded in nurturing globally competitive export-oriented SMEs. We conclude that the success of these inclusive economic ecosystems in unexpected places may only be understood in the specific geographical, historical and political context, as well as the general openness of these regions toward entrepreneurial migrants and global business. The importance of local social capital makes it hard to replicate such success stories. Nevertheless, they indicate that the global knowledge economy may not just pose a threat, but also offer great opportunities for productive regions beyond the major global high-tech clusters of economic complexity.

Over the past 11,000 years, humans have domesticated a wide range of animals for different purposes designed to serve the human economy, society, and religious activities. The resulting mutual dependence between humans and their domestic partners created anthropogenic landscapes designed to sustain and protect their members. In this paper, we review the literature on the latest insights in interdisciplinary anthropological research on the evolution of animal domestication and breeding and put them in the context of the contemporary ethical debate on animal welfare and the application of modern biotechnology to animal breeding. Opponents of the use of animal biotechnology tend to see breeders often as enablers of industrial farming that would seek selective business advantage at the expense of the environment and animal welfare. Many applications of animal biotechnology may, however, also help to address environmental and animal welfare concerns in an effective way. Moreover, recent archeological and genetic research findings on the history of animal domestication reveal a distinctive kind of mutualism in the human–animal relationship based on a gradual co-evolutionary process with clear benefits for both parties in the relationship. These insights challenge the popular Neo-Darwinian account of unilateral adaptation only benefiting the more powerful party. Instead, they support the hypothesis that humans do not just adapt, but actively shape the environment through cultural niche construction (CNC) that also involves care and protection for domesticated animals. These empirical findings should also be taken into account in the contemporary ethical debate on animal welfare, which has become increasingly detached from the real-world efforts to improve animal welfare through best practices.

Although sustainable responsible investing (SRI) has increasingly become popular on the financial markets, the potential of raising capital from private investors for sustainable development has not been efficiently seized thus far. The lack of knowledge and training about SRI by financial advisors has often been identified as one of the main reasons for this investment gap. In order to accelerate the role of financial advisors as change agents for SRI, this study proposes several strategic communication interventions that advisors could employ in their advisory talks to raise more attention and engagement among private investors for SRI. The interventions proposed are oriented on the 5A model of SRI decision making by Herwig Pilaj and drawn from an interdisciplinary literature review on sustainability, communication, and attitudinal and behavioral change. The results provide a perspective and practical guide for financial advisors on how to effectively communicate SRI to private investors. Limitations and areas future research are discussed.

With the diffusion of digital technologies, new forms of sharing have emerged called ‘the sharing economy’. Digitalization has been the enabler for covering a broad range of sharable resources (technical aspect of sharing) and for operating beyond the limits of small groups and personal relationships (social aspect of sharing). This two-fold digital transition of sharing has enabled unprecedented efficiency in coordinating access to resources. It has created new patterns and practices of sharing in the space between traditional sharing on the one hand and the formal market economy on the other; leading to the emergence of a new class of resource allocation systems which we call ‘the digital sharing economy’ (DSE). We analyse the DSE as a socio-economic phenomenon without referring to normative presuppositions, such as the presence of pro-social motivations for sharing. Building on a comprehensive definition of the DSE, we propose a theoretical framework for it that embraces and structures the broad variety of sharing platforms and the practices promoted by them. By separating our analysis from normative premises about sharing, we hope to contribute to an unbiased discussion of the sharing economy phenomenon and to lay the ground for differentiated assessments which refer to explicit normative frameworks such as sustainable development.

Sustainable development requires a shift from traditionally invested assets to socially responsible investing (SRI), bringing together financial profits and social welfare. Private high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) are critical for this shift as they control nearly half of global wealth. While we know little about HNWIs’ investment behavior, reference group theory suggests that their SRI engagement is influenced by their identification with and comparison to reference groups. We thus ask: how do reference groups influence the investment behavior of SRI-oriented HNWIs? To answer this question, we analyzed a unique qualitative data set of 55 semi-structured interviews with SRI-oriented HNWIs and industry experts. Our qualitative research found that, on the one hand, the family serves as a normative reference group that upholds the economic profit motive and directly shapes HNWIs to make financial gains from their investments at the expense of social welfare. On the other hand, fellow SRI-oriented HNWIs serve as a comparative reference group that does not impose any concrete requirements on social welfare performance, indirectly influencing SRI-oriented HNWIs to subordinate social concerns to financial profits. Our scholarly insights contribute to the SRI literature, reference group theory, and practice.

Issues continuously compete for attention in the news media and on social media. Climate change is one of the most urgent problems for society and (re)gained wide public attention in 2019 through the global climate strike protest movement. However, we hypothesize that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 challenged the role of climate change as a routine issue. We use extensive news media and Twitter data to explore if and how the pandemic as a so-called killer issue has shifted public attention away from the issue of climate change in Switzerland. Results show that the climate debate fell victim to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the news media and the Twitter-sphere. Given the vast dominance of the pandemic, there is a strong indication this finding applies similarly to various other issues. Additional hashtag co-occurrence analysis shows that some climate activists react to this development and try to connect the issue of climate change to the pandemic. We argue that suppression of climate change by the pandemic is a problem for its long-term resolution, as it seems to have turned climate change back into a struggling issue.

The challenges posed to humanity by climate change require innovative approaches. Well-designed games are powerful tools with the potential to support solving climate related challenges. In this article, we present a mapping review study of games that address climate change issues (climate games). In a search and selection process, we identified 115 climate games that were classified by applying a newly developed game typology. This allowed gaining an overview of existing climate games and identifying potentials for future game development. The game classification revealed that the majority of climate games (75%) were designed for learning purposes and addressed heterogeneous target audiences such as students, professionals, or the “general public”. The identified games covered a wide range of characteristics, e.g., regarding the topic addressed, player interaction, game-play, level of abstraction, or the media used for play. Nevertheless, we identified areas where only few or no games were found. These “gaps” provide opportunities where future games could help solving climate challenges and include, amongst others, games designed for professionals to address specific needs and games that create a direct impact outside the game environment. Regarding game design, experimenting with the abstraction of games is currently underexplored and offers potential for future developments.

As the international community’s best expression of a collective vision of a desirable future, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a framework against which to assess the broader impact of emerging technologies. Implications of technologies and practices for removing CO2 from the atmosphere (CDR) are not fully understood and have not yet been mapped against the full range of SDGs. CDR is widely seen as necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement’s global goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C, yet local geographical, socio-economic, and political interdependencies are often overlooked. This review synthesizes the best available understandings of potential implications of CDR options aiming to complement emissions reductions. It seeks to identify effects on and interactions between specific social, environmental, and policy environments, in which various CDR options could be pursued. Climate change mitigation and co-benefits from CDR could significantly benefit SDGs, yet poorly designed CDR policies could also challenge SDGs. Specific CDR options could generate conflicts over land, water, biomass, or electric power resources, and exclude communities from policy benefits with negative cascading effects for a range of SDGs. In the literature, implications of CDR activities on sustainable development are derived from current pilot activities, inferred from similar practices already operational or model outputs regarding land, energy, or material requirements. Important gaps remain. We identify questions for further disciplinary and inter- or transdisciplinary work strengthening understanding of how CDR could either support or threaten the achievement of the SDGs. Key policy insights CO2 removal (CDR) appears essential for limiting warming to well below 2°C; such stabilization of global climate is a precondition for at least partially achieving the SDGs. CDR options can generate positive and negative local/regional impacts on various SDGs via physical, social, economic, and political channels. None of these options are universally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The scale of implementation of CDR and related impacts are highly dependent on policy design and national planning processes. More research is needed to clarify how policy design can allow CDR options to generate synergies between, and prevent harm across, multiple SDGs.

Different water related risks such as lake outburst floods and water scarcity are typically assessed by separate methods and often by separate research communities. However, in a local context such as in mountain regions of the developing world different water risks are intertwined and shaped by multi-dimensional natural and socio-economic drivers. Progressing glacier melt and the associated growing number of lakes rises the threat of glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs); at the same time declining melt water supply changes the hydrological regime, resulting in changing water availability, especially during dry seasons. Here, we address this challenge by integratively assessing water scarcity and GLOF risks and their interactions for two study sites in glacierized catchments in the Cordillera Blanca and Urubamba in the Peruvian Andes. We used hydrological modelling, GLOF flow path modelling, and interviews with local people and technical experts to assess the hazard and risks of water scarcity and GLOFs. We incorporate perspectives of people living in those areas in order to gain a more comprehensive view on risks. While metrics of flood and water scarcity hazards are difficult to compare, we found insightful results using a comparative analysis of elements at risk from different water related hazards with different probabilities of occurrence. Furthermore, our study shows that considering the diverse local perspectives on risks as well as the social, cultural, economic and political context is essential to more successful and sustainable disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and integrated water management.

CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing is a monumental leap in genetic engineering with considerable societal implications – but it is a complex procedure that is difficult to understand for non-scientist...

The Paris Agreement has been celebrated as a breakthrough for international climate policy. However, relatively scant attention has been given to the emergent ecosystem of climate finance facilities that support it. We provide an overview of the rising number of climate-related trust funds at multilateral development banks (MDBs). These funds can be distinguished into mitigation funds and adaptation funds. Some funds have a focus on capacity building activities. To maximize their effect on sustainable development, the different types of funds should follow different resource allocation criteria: For adaptation funds, vulnerability should represent the primary criterion. For mitigation funds, the main criterion should be the emission reduction potential. Capacity building should primarily focus on countries with weak institutions. Using a novel dataset of disbursements of climate-related trust funds, available for the World Bank, we examine whether fund allocations correspond to these expectations, and compare them with those of bilateral donors. We find that while trust funds with a focus on mitigation generally allocate aid in line with efficiency considerations, trust funds with a focus on adaptation do not seem to prioritize the countries most strongly in need, contrary to bilateral aid. Furthermore, capacity building activities do not seem to focus on countries with weak institutions. These findings have important implications for the effectiveness and legitimacy of climate aid to developing countries.

In order to mobilize the volume of mitigation required to reach a global emissions path consistent with 1.5°C, policy instruments need to be much more stringent than they have been to date. They wi...

This paper is an inquiry into the powers at play in the everyday practices of making the city, and the social and spatial relations through which those who inhabit its margins put these powers to work. This exploration is based on a case study that considers informal housing practices and their regulation in allotment gardens in Berlin. To trace the mechanisms through which residents work to stay put in these sites, despite regulations prohibiting residency therein, the paper relates a debate on the transformative potential of the everyday to anthropological literature on the workings of the state, embedding this discussion in relational approaches to power and place. Joining these perspectives, I argue that the gardeners’ possibilities to stay put depend on the ways in which they meditate the presence of regulatory practices through their relations to state actors or institutional frames. These mediations not only highlight that people co-construct the order that takes shape, but also point to the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion built up along the way.

While postneoliberalism is often interpreted as a societal reaction against the deleterious effects of marketization in Latin America, this paper develops a finer-grained Polanyian institutional analysis to gain better analytical purchase on the ambivalent outcomes of postneoliberal reforms. Drawing on recent insights in economic geography, and in dialogue with the Latin American structuralist tradition, we elaborate our framework through a case study of the Argentinian soy boom of the 2000s, identifying forms of market extension, redistribution, reciprocity and householding that facilitated this process. We argue for a multi-scalar approach that balances attention to national and extra-local dynamics shaping the combination of these forms, identified through the lens of the “fictitious commodities” of the soy boom: money (credit, currency and cross-border capital flows), land (in the agricultural heartland and frontier regions), labor (transformed and excluded in a “farming without farmers” model) and, we add, knowledge (biotech). Our analysis identifies internal tensions as well as overt resistance and “overflow” that ultimately led to the collapse of postneoliberal regulation of the soy complex, ushering in a wider, market-radical counter-movement. Refracting double-movement-type dynamics through the prism of heterodox institutional forms, we argue, allows for a better grasp of processes that underlie institutional recalibrations of progressive and regressive kinds.

This theme issue originates from an invitational workshop on the spatiality and diversity ofmarkets, convened at the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy in Montreal in 2017.Workshop participants, regardless of their disciplinary backgrounds and diverse researchinterests, shared a conviction that markets should be analysed in their plural and hybridforms, as social and political constructs always ‘in making’. In contrast to more orthodoxconceptions of markets as free-standing entities, discrete institutions or ideal types, this wastranslated into an imperative to centre ‘marketization’, along with attendant processes ofmarket re/construction. While this was interpreted as a positive research programme, if achallenging and quite radically open one, there was also an underlying concern. The concernwas that critical approaches to the study of markets, which foreground and problematizetheir variegated character, seem to have reached something of an impasse. A gulf has openedup between those orthodox market purists who seem to see little beyond the abstract marketprescribed by the neoclassical model (a self-regulating system of rational buyers and sellers)and the heterodox sceptics who, if they do not sidestep the market altogether, focus insteadon an unruly plethora of real markets, criticizing the neoclassical market model as an ide-alized and ideological construct. As we point out elsewhere (Peck et al., 2020), the problemwith these polar(ized) positions is that, notwithstanding their philosophical and normativedifferences, they all tend to work with,or against, a received reading of the capital-MMarket as advanced by standard economic theory, indexing to this analytical yardstick ineither positive or negative terms. On the heterodox side, the sway of the neoclassical, capital-M Market is manifest across a range of perspectives. Political-economic accounts, forinstance, tend to invoke an understanding of the market as a destructive juggernaut.

The Paris Agreement’s success depends on parties’ implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) towards the Paris Agreement’s goals. In these climate action plans, most developing countries make their mitigation and adaptation contributions conditional upon receiving international support (finance, technology transfer and/or capacity building). While provision of support for NDC implementation could enhance equity among countries, the feasibility of NDC implementation might be challenged by the large number of conditional NDCs. This paper addresses the implications of this tension based on an analysis of all 168 NDCs. We find that feasibility is challenged because conditions applied to NDCs are often not well defined. Moreover, the costs of implementing all conditional contributions are too high to be covered by existing promises of support from developed countries, even if the entire annual $100 billion of climate finance were earmarked for NDC implementation. Consistent with principles of equity and the prioritization in the Paris Agreement, a higher proportion of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have conditional NDCs than do other countries. However, differences between the distribution of countries requesting support and those currently receiving support, in particular among middle-income countries, demonstrates potential tensions between feasibility and equity. The article concludes with recommendations on how cost estimates and updated NDCs can be strengthened to ensure support for NDC implementation is targeted more equitably and cost-effectively. Key policy insights -Support requested by developing countries to implement conditional NDCs far exceeds existing funding pledges. -Differences between existing patterns of financial assistance, and those implied by requests under conditional NDCs, mean that supporting NDCs may require a significant shift in provider countries’ priorities for allocating climate finance. This may challenge feasibility. -The Paris Agreement’s provisions on prioritizing LDCs and SIDS offer valuable guidance in making difficult choices on allocating support. -To increase the likelihood of attracting support, developing countries (assisted by capacity building as needed), should include credible cost estimates in future NDCs and formulate investment plans. -By outlining plans to mobilize support in their NDCs, developed countries can reassure developing countries that raising the ambition of NDCs is feasible

The Paris Agreement requires mitigation contributions from all Parties. Therefore, the determination of additionality of activities under the market mechanisms of its Article 6 will need to be revisited. This paper provides recommendations on how to operationalize additionality under Article 6. We first review generic definitions of additionality and current approaches for testing of additionality before discussing under which conditions additionality testing of specific activities or policies is still necessary under the new context of the Paris Agreement, that is, in order to prevent increases of global emissions. We argue that the possibility of ‘hot air’ generation under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) requires an independent check of the NDC’s ambition. If the NDC of the transferring country does contain ‘hot air’, or if the transferred emission reductions are not covered by the NDC, a dedicated additionality test should be required. While additionality tests of projects and programmes could continue to be done through investment analysis, for policy instruments new approaches are required. They should be differentiated according to type of policy instrument. For regulation, we suggest calculating the resulting pay-back period for technology users. If the regulation generates investments exceeding a payback period threshold, it could be deemed additional. Similarly, carbon pricing policies that generate a carbon price exceeding a threshold could qualify; for trading schemes an absence of over-allocation needs to be shown. The threshold should be differentiated according to country categories and rise over time. Key policy insights Without additionality testing, market mechanisms under the Paris Agreements might lead to an international diffusion of ‘hot air’. To avoid this, an independent assessment of NDC ambition is in order. Otherwise, activities under the mechanisms need to undergo specific additionality tests. Additionality testing of projects and programmes should build on the experience developed under the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. Bold approaches are needed for assessing additionality of policies. To avoid cumbersome assessment of all activities triggered by such policies, highly aggregated approaches are suggested, ranging from payback period thresholds for technologies mandated by regulation to minimum price levels triggered by carbon pricing policies. Over time, the stringency of threshold values should increase.

Present-day global mean sea level rise is caused by ocean thermal expansion, ice mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets, as well as changes in terrestrial water storage. For that reason, sea level is one of the best indicators of climate change as it integrates the response of several components of the climate system to internal and external forcing factors. Monitoring the global mean sea level allows detecting changes (e.g., in trend or acceleration) in one or more components. Besides, assessing closure of the sea level budget allows us to check whether observed sea level change is indeed explained by the sum of changes affecting each component. If not, this would reflect errors in some of the components or missing contributions not accounted for in the budget. Since the launch of TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992, a precise 27-year continuous record of sea level change is available. It has allowed major advances in our understanding of how the Earth is responding to climate change. The last two decades are also marked by the launch of the GRACE satellite gravity mission and the development of the Argo network of profiling floats. GRACE space gravimetry allows the monitoring of mass redistributions inside the Earth system, in particular land ice mass variations as well as changes in terrestrial water storage and in ocean mass, while Argo floats allow monitoring sea water thermal expansion due to the warming of the oceans. Together, satellite altimetry, space gravity, and Argo measurements provide unprecedented insight into the magnitude, spatial variability, and causes of present-day sea level change. With this observational network, we are now in a position to address many outstanding questions that are important to planning for future sea level rise. Here, we detail the network for observing sea level and its components, underscore the importance of these observations, and emphasize the need to maintain current systems, improve their sensors, and supplement the observational network where gaps in our knowledge remain.

The role of market mechanisms was far from certain in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The use of ‘constructive ambiguity’ led to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with Article 6.2 specifying a mechanism with limited international oversight, and Article 6.4 establishing a ‘Sustainable Development Mechanism’ (SDM) subject to detailed rules. Clear operationalization of these mechanisms remains a challenge, especially regarding the critical accounting issue that could not be resolved at the 2018 Katowice Climate Conference (COP24) – how to apply corresponding adjustments, especially regarding sectors not covered by targets under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs). By using fictitious examples, we explain two possible approaches to using Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6.2 for achieving NDCs: a ‘target-based’ one where the acquiring Party adds the ITMO amount to the target level of its NDC; and a ‘tally-based’ one where the acquiring Party removes the ITMO amount from the final tally of its NDC. We discuss how these approaches influence the way to make corresponding adjustments and to avoid ‘double counting’. The first one leads to ‘target/budget-based accounting’, the second one to ‘emission-based accounting’. For mitigation outside the scope of the host Party's NDC, we propose using a tally-based interpretation of ITMO use, as opposed to the target-based variety used in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and stress the need for additionality testing. This interpretation allows for mandatory corresponding adjustments for all ITMO usage, while the host Party NDC level remains unchanged. A buffer registry is created for corresponding non-NDC adjustments of the selling party. Key policy insights Under the Paris Agreement, transfers of emissions units between two countries through the Article 6 mechanisms need a corresponding adjustment on both sides to prevent double counting. Corresponding adjustments can be applied either to emissions targets under NDCs or measured emissions levels. The transfer of emissions reduction credits generated outside an NDC should lead to a corresponding adjustment of a buffer registry of the selling country, but not its emissions level/NDC target. Such credits should only be generated if additionality of the reductions is shown.