Climate change is one the greatest developmental challenges confronting cities in countries such as India. Urban poor especially women face the major brunt of changing climatic conditions because of their high dependence on natural resources, and limited capacity to cope with climate variability thus negatively impacting their livelihoods. The present study aims to capture the… Continue reading Do climatic stresses and extremes pose greater risk to poor urban women? A study of slums in Delhi, India

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) commonly used by policymakers in climate decision-making have been criticized for insufficiently incorporating certain justice considerations, and for being relatively closed to stakeholder inputs and feedback. Based on a comprehensive justice framework, this work responds to both criticisms and proposes a flexible and pragmatic approach to operationalize distributive justice: justice patterns.… Continue reading Breaking Barriers with Patterns: A Participatory Approach for Integrating Justice into Global Mitigation Scenarios

Environmental action and international development are two closely linked agendas that dominate international policy discussions. It is therefore important to understand how inequalities and basic needs that are central to development are affected or resolved by environmental policies. Here, we will showcase new development on integrating the material prerequisites for human well-being (using the Decent… Continue reading Closing decent living gaps in sustainable development pathways with strong equity improvements

Justice is emerging as a lens for evaluating the scenarios and pathways generated by integrated assessment models for inclusion in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. We aim at constructing a framework for incorporating justice into IAM tools and scenarios. Drawing upon 39 interviews with a multi-disciplinary range of experts embodying gradients of involvement with… Continue reading Justice in and beyond integrated assessment modelling

Current emissions trends may deplete a 1.5°C consistent carbon budget in approximately 6 years, resulting in a period of exceedance. To inform the equitable realignment of efforts that minimize exceedance magnitude and duration, we propose the use of ‘net-zero carbon debt’. Net-zero carbon debt is a measure that combines ‘fair’ shares of a remaining carbon… Continue reading Delayed carbon debt drawdown fails younger generations

As climate change adaptation is unfolding across the world, a scientific evaluation of progress in adaptation is ever more important. Adaptation projects are increasingly reported and assessed in the scientific literature, covering an growing breadth of case studies from across different world regions and sectors such as agriculture, critical infrastructure or settlements. Learning from the… Continue reading Mapping and synthesizing evidence on global adaptation progress: Achievements of GAMI and lessons for the future

Evidence of climate change adaptation has grown exponentially in recent years and decades. However, this evidence base is highly heterogeneous in its methods, context-specificity, and relevance for effective risk reduction. The Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative (GAMI) was the first systematic evidence synthesis project that mapped adaptation literature from across the globe and categorised the evidence… Continue reading Ways forward in global adaptation evidence synthesis: Lessons learnt from GAMI and beyond

Globally, national governments are developing policies and plans to increase resilience to climate hazards across all sectors. To date, most methodologies used for tracking adaptation progress focus exclusively on policies and plans that explicitly mention climate adaptation, unfortunately, this practice leads to the exclusion of many policies that increase climate resilience but are not explicitly… Continue reading Progress and Gaps in National Adaptation Policy

Adaptation to climate change is often conceptualized as either/or, as a dichotomy, with adaptation responses being categorized as either planned (formal and structured) or autonomous (organic, self-organized, everyday). There is recent anecdotal and theoretical evidence on the existence and importance of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation, however examination of this interaction has been… Continue reading Dichotomy or Continuum? A global review of the interaction between autonomous and planned adaptations

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the climate crisis constitutes the “greatest threat to global health in the 21st century”, the impacts of which are extremely unequally distributed. Economic activity associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions results in air pollution mortality, among other consequences for ill-health. The air quality experienced by 99% of the… Continue reading Greenhouse gas (GHG) pricing and mortality: evidence from a systematic review and meta-regression

Carbon pricing, in varied forms, is an expression of economic theory known for close to 100 years, and has been proposed in climate policy analysis for 35 years. Yet global progress remains patchy and clearly inadequate, and in the US – the country in which economists most actively and persistently promoted the carbon pricing agenda… Continue reading The carbon pricing paradox

In a world of nationally determined climate action, ambitious climate policies in some regions that are not matched by similar efforts in trade partners entail the risk of carbon leakage. Carbon border adjustment mechanisms that impose carbon costs comparable to those of domestic producers are a way to level the playing field and alleviate leakage… Continue reading Five decades of research on border carbon adjustments – a systematic review of the literature