News & Comment

Climate change communication is trapped between the norms that govern scientific practice and the need to engage the public. Overcoming this tension requires new societal institutions where the science and politics of climate change can co-exist.

There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society. Closing this gap represents a necessary but insufficient step towards improved public discourse and more constructive policy formulation on climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect evolving attitudes in adapting to sea-level rise by taking a systems approach and recognizing that multiple responses exist to achieve a less hazardous coast.

Slow progress in scaling-up climate finance has emerged as a major bottleneck in international negotiations. Debt relief for climate finance swaps could provide an alternative source for financing mitigation and adaptation action in developing countries.

The environmental challenges that confront society are unprecedented and staggering in their scope, pace and complexity. Unless we reframe and examine them through a social lens, societal responses will be too little, too late, and potentially blind to negative consequences.

US efforts to integrate social and biophysical sciences to address the issue of global change exist within a wider movement to understand global change as a societal challenge and to inform policy. Insights from the social sciences can help transform global change research into action.

Net energy analysis should be a critical energy policy tool. We identify five critical themes for realizing a low-carbon, sustainable energy future and highlight the key perspective that net energy analysis provides.

Embracing an 'evidence-informed' rather than 'evidence-based' attitude to policy-making should result in more effective action on climate change, recognizing that evidence must be used in such a way as to interact persuasively with other factors.

Governments and businesses are beginning to account for natural capital, but must collaborate to promote sustainability, combat climate change and improve decision-making.

Stratospheric injection of sulphate aerosols has been advocated as an emergency geoengineering measure to tackle dangerous climate change, or as a stop-gap until atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are reduced. But it may not prove to be the game-changer that some imagine.

The emergence of new Arctic trade routes will probably change the global dynamics of invasive species, potentially affecting marine habitats and ecosystem functions, especially in coastal regions.

Resilience management goes beyond risk management to address the complexities of large integrated systems and the uncertainty of future threats, especially those associated with climate change.

Global change information demands access to data sources and well-documented provenance to provide the evidence needed to build confidence in scientific conclusions and decision making. A new generation of web technology, the Semantic Web, provides tools for that purpose.

Climate change, alongside numerous other pressures, is having unprecedented effects on water resources both globally and locally. Retailers need to implement a range of adaptation measures to ensure the sustainability of supply chains.

Rewarding smallholders for sequestering carbon in agricultural land can improve food security while mitigating climate change. Verification of carbon offsets in food-insecure regions is possible and achievable through rigorously controlled monitoring.

The impacts of extreme weather are being felt by us all and scientific research points to a likely worsening of weather patterns in the next decades. Therefore, it is imperative to think carefully about how we build the infrastructure of the future to increase the resilience of our societies.

Faced with serious air pollution, China is aggressively reshaping its energy system, building on recent progress with renewables and on available supplies of gas. This should help contain global warming and provide new impetus to climate change negotiations.

The growing scarcity of freshwater due to rising water demands and a changing climate is increasingly seen as a major risk for the global economy. Consumer awareness, private sector initiatives, governmental regulation and targeted investments are urgently needed to move towards sustainable water use.

The proposed 'cost assessment cycle' is a framework for the integrated cost assessment of natural hazards.

As global population continues to grow, managing the relationships between water, food and energy is becoming increasingly critical. Businesses need to react to the challenge and be mindful of the important role they play in implementing solutions.