In recent years, local governments have gained significant importance in the implementation of climate policy. Cities and municipalities offer place-based and context-specific solutions to climate-related and –specific problems. However, cities also often face an implementation challenge. Previous studies have consistently found a general influence of capacity as a key constraint for local governments. Scholars generally… Continue reading Unpacking capacity for climate action: mechanisms shaping the effect of organisational capacity on policy implementation at the local level

The amount of scientific knowledge and published case studies on climate risks and adaptation action in cities has been rising sharply over the recent years. Typologies, archetypes or clustering approaches have been used in a range of studies and science-for-policy reports in an attempt to structure the wealth of case study information into larger profiles… Continue reading Urban typologies in climate risk and adaptation studies: Approaches, applications, remaining gaps and ways forward

Navigating the diverse definitions of urban and rural areas, along with the varied urban patterns within cities, poses a significant challenge when comparing cities globally. Different regions or countries employ distinct combinations of physical and socioeconomic attributes to define a city, complicating efforts to establish uniform criteria. While organizations like the OECD, the EU, or… Continue reading Identifying Urban Typologies through remote sensing and clustering

With climate change and rapid urban migration, cities face the question of where to locate new residents to minimize travel and related CO2 emissions. While the IPCC suggests general planning concepts such as compact or transit-oriented development, a place-specific understanding of how this translates to the local context is lacking. Here, we introduce a novel… Continue reading Evaluating low-carbon urban planning strategies across urban typologies using causal machine learning

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and… Continue reading Indicators of Global Climate Change

In 2022, the IPCC WGIII finalized the 6th assessment report (AR6) and delivered an open database hosted by IIASA that collects detailed data on possible transition pathways related to the third chapter.

Acknowledging that effective communication of uncertainty is a critical element of scientific assessment, the IPCC has adopted a standardized uncertainty assessment framework to enhance transparency and dependability in its findings. Despite these efforts, author teams frequently encounter difficulties in the assessment process, leading to unclear assessment justifications and confusion among readers of the report. Our… Continue reading Use systematic reviews to inform IPCC uncertainty assessments

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been a crucial facilitator of climate change research and governance. A special collection of npj Climate Action have published a range of research articles, reviews and perspectives that discuss the achievements of the IPCC, the challenges it faces when it enters its 7th assessment cycle, and suggestions… Continue reading The IPCC at a crossroads: leaving policy relevance behind?

As the environmental program of the United Nations, UNEP aims to play a key role in shaping the global discourse on climate change, influencing international negotiations, and directing funding streams to effective climate action initiatives. This presentation will explore UNEP's strategic approach to climate action, examining two key elements that enable the organization to set… Continue reading How the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Sets Climate Change Agendas and Influences Global Action

As climate-related matters touch ever more aspects of ever more people's lives, it is essential to provide the public with verifiable information that helps to understand climate issues and their ramifications, including potential solutions and the conditions under which they might or might not work. Wikimedia projects - i.e. Wikipedia and its sister sites like… Continue reading Wikimedia Projects as Key Elements of the Global Climate Literacy Landscape

Climate change and climate-change mitigation both have potentially major distributional effects. The distribution of the costs of climate-change mitigation, in turn, is among the main drivers of voter support for necessary policy action (Dechezleprêtre, et al., 2022). Carbon pricing aims to narrow the gaps between private and social costs of greenhouse gas emissions and is… Continue reading Who pays for higher carbon prices in OECD countries? Monitoring households’ adjustment burdens

The corpus of national climate policies continues to grow, but to what effect? Using a unique dataset of 2,782 policy instruments in 43 OECD and major emerging economies over the period 2000-2019 we show that concentrating policies on certain instrument.