Climate Change and Geography

BackgroundAddressing climate change and its associated effects is a multi-dimensional and ongoing challenge. This includes recognizing that climate change will affect the health and wellbeing of all populations over short and longer terms, albeit in varied ways and intensities. That recognition has drawn attention to the need to take adaptive actions to lessen adverse impacts over the next few decades from unavoidable climate change, particularly in developing country settings. A range of sectors is responsible for appropriate adaptive policies and measures to address the health risks of climate change, including health services, water and sanitation, trade, agriculture, disaster management, and development.ObjectivesTo broaden the framing of governance and decision-making processes by using innovative methods and assessments to illustrate the multi-sectoral nature of health-related adaptation to climate change. This is a shift from sector-specific to multi-level systems encompassing sectors and actors, across temporal and spatial scales.DesignA review and synthesis of the current knowledge in the areas of health and climate change adaptation governance and decision-making processes.ResultsA novel framework is presented that incorporates social science insights into the formulation and implementation of adaptation activities and policies to lessen the health risks posed by climate change.ConclusionClarification of the roles that different sectors, organizations, and individuals occupy in relation to the development of health-related adaptation strategies will facilitate the inclusion of health and wellbeing within multi-sector adaptation policies, thereby strengthening the overall set of responses to minimize the adverse health effects of climate change.

Complexity and interdisciplinary approaches to environmental research

The role of the chief scientist (CS), a key administrative position in various Israeli ministries, is to fund policy‐oriented research and support evidence‐based decision‐making. Has the CS's role promoted or constrained incorporation of scientific advice regarding climate change adaptation into governmental policy? Have administrative traditions affected the adaptation planning process in Israel? Analysis of documents and 26 in‐depth interviews with key stakeholders sheds light on the ongoing climate change adaptation policy formulation process. Our study reveals that the CS of the Ministry of Environmental Protection functions as a bridge at different interfaces and can be characterized as a boundary worker between institutions. The inherent independence of this position facilitates the CS's ability to initiate, foster, and prioritize complex issues such as adaptation. Our findings further suggest that the perception that Israel has already adapted, or will easily adapt, has negatively affected the adaptation process. 科学建议和行政传统：首席科学家在气候变化适应工作中的作用 首席科学家是以色列各部门的一个关键行政职务, 其具体作用是为政策性研究提供资金, 并支持循证决策。对于有关气候变化适应的科学建议, 首席科学家的作用是促进还是限制了其被纳入到政府政策中？行政传统是否影响了以色列的气候适应规划进程？通过文件分析及与关键利益相关者的26次深入访谈, 笔者揭示了正在进行的适应气候变化政策的制定过程。研究表明, 环保部门的首席科学家在不同的层面上起着桥梁作用, 在不同机构的分界线上工作以彼此连接。该职位的内在独立性能促进首席科学家在发起问题、培养和优先考虑包括适应气候等复杂问题的能力。研究进一步表明, 以色列已经适应了或即将轻易适应某些观点, 而这已经对气候适应过程产生了负面影响。 Asesoria cientifica y tradiciones administrativas: el papel que juegan los cientificos principales en la adaptacion al cambio climatico El papel que juegan los cientificos principales, un puesto administrativo clave en varios ministerios israelies, esta especificamente designado para el financiamiento de investigacion orientada hacia la politica y el apoyo a decisiones basadas en evidencia. ?El papel que juegan los cientificos principales ha promovido o limitado la incorporacion de asesoria cientifica en lo que concierne a la adaptacion al cambio climatico dentro de las politicas del gobierno? ?Las tradiciones administrativas han afectado el proceso de planeacion para la adaptacion en Israel? El analisis de los documentos en 26 entrevistas exhaustivas con partes afectadas clave ilustra el proceso de formulacion de las politicas de adaptacion al cambio climatico actual. Nuestro estudio revela que el Cientifico Principal del Ministerio de Proteccion Ambiental funciona como un puente para diferentes interfaces y puede ser caracterizado como un trabajador limitrofe entre las instituciones. La independencia inherente de esta posicion facilita la habilidad del cientifico principal para iniciar, fomentar y darle prioridad a complejos problemas como la adaptacion. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que la percepcion de Israel ya se ha adaptado, o se adaptara facilmente, y ha afectado negativamente el proceso de adaptacion.

Climate Change (CC) is universally recognized as a major global threat due to its nature of impacts. Island nations are known to be the most vulnerable to CC impacts where many countries have initiated mitigation and adaptation actions through sector-based policy measures. Singapore and Sri Lanka are two Asian island nations with CC induced threats. Two countries are different in terms of economic development, but similar developing countries in the CC agenda. In this context, both the countries have initiated mitigation and adaptation actions through policy measures. This study compares the key climate driven performance indicators with historical data to evaluate the performance of climate change policy of each country. Generally, policy evaluation has been conducted by adopting scientific and non-scientific tools, but it is seldom see that the relation of climate driven indicators along with CC policy. Also the policy research was mostly based on European case studies and Asian island nations were not easy to find in this context. The comparison of two countries in terms of CC policy is to determine the key vulnerable sectors where intervention is necessary for island nations. Mitigation policies are evaluated in Singapore and Sri Lanka using GHG emission pathways under twelve (12) indicators and adaptation policies are measured under the national expenditure of key sectors of the economy under seven (07) indicators. The analysis further elaborated by comparing both countries with key economic sectors that has positive and negative influence on CC impacts. Finally, the analysis outcome is used for lessons to learn from each other in improving the CC policy of Singapore and Sri Lanka. As every country has a unique set of strategies to minimize contributions to CC impacts, unique features that are common to both countries are chosen as variables for the comparison. Policy recommendations are provided to implement solid action plan for post 2020. The study expects to assist island countries to strengthen the CC policy as a national priority to manage unforeseen impacts posed by CC phenomena

As climate change increasingly impacts ecosystems, economic activity, and human well-being, Europe is accelerating the development of coherent and effective climate action under the umbrella of the Paris Agreement and the EU Green Deal. This research evaluates the dynamics and effectiveness of existing mitigation and adaptation policies and governance frameworks at the European Union level and within eight European countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom.This work combines an extensive review of primary EU and national policy documents in force in 2025, with insights from 42 semi-structured interviews with key informants, including experts from European institutions, national decision-makers, research organisations, and civil society representatives. The interviews provide critical insights into actual implementation dynamics, political priorities and challenges, and the institutional barriers that shape climate action beyond formal planning commitments.The analysis focuses on the core pillars of climate policy, examining objectives, timeframes, and sectoral coverage across key socio-economic sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture, health, infrastructure, and water management. A focal point is the tension between sustainable development, mitigation and adaptation, as mitigation policies are relatively mature and supported by robust EU monitoring, while adaptation remains heterogeneous and under-prioritised or under-financed. The findings reveal significant gaps in the operationalisation of climate strategies, short-termism and polarisation or weak institutional cooperation, despite the steady development of the formal strategic settings, the limited but useful involvement of civil society, the limited actual focus on societal issues and legislative gaps, among others.Our findings inform the development of the CROSSEU Decision Support System, ensuring the tool reflects real-world governance constraints and stakeholder needs. By identifying where synergies emerge and where institutional bottlenecks constrain progress, the research supports the translation of climate-socio-economic risks data into actionable, socially-informed decision pathways. Furthermore, the strong national specificities highlight the need for understanding the local context and the relevance of comparative research for fostering equitable and resilient climate strategies at the European scale.This research was funded by the "Cross-sectoral Framework for Socio-Economic Resilience to Climate Change and Extreme Events in Europe (CROSSEU)" project, under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme (Grant agreement No. 101081377).

Background/Aim : Climate Change has an impact on critical components of “One Health” such as human health, animal health, plant health and environmental health. Climate and environmental change also affects socio-economic determinants of “One Health” such as development, demographics, agriculture, animal production, global trade, food prices, poverty etc. The study aims to provide an analysis of the impacts of climate change on “One Health” and identify adaptation and mitigation strategies to address these impacts. Methods: The analysis of the impacts of climate change and variability on “One Health” integrates the WHO Health Impact Assessment methodology with the FAO Biosecurity framework which includes human health (food safety), animal health, plant health and environmental health. The study provides a cross-sectoral analysis of the adaptation and mitigation strategies and policies to address climate change and variability challenges to “One Health” focusing in a case study in California’s green economy. Results: There are multiple pathways through which climate change may impact “One Health” including: changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, ocean warming and acidification, changes in complex contaminants’ transport pathways, and socio-economic and demographic factors among others. To address the challenges of climate change and variability to One Health is complex and requires trade-offs in a green economy framework. The case study in California addressing agriculture and environment sectors in show that decisions made in the agricultural sector impact environment, health and social factors and that health impact assessments are critical for policy change. Conclusion: To address the impacts of climate and environmental change One Health in a green economy it is necessary to develop inter-sectoral adaptation and mitigation strategies that are integrated in resilient climate development plans. Approaches such as health promoting agriculture policies and green chemistry are critical to mainstream health across sectors in California’s green economy. In this context health impact assessments facilitate decision-making and policy changes in a green economy since address socio-economic and development aspects.

Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination

Consistency between farmers’ perceptions of climate change (CC) and meteorological trends leads to effective farm adaptation strategies. This study was conducted in hazard-prone districts, Kurigram (riverbank erosion-prone) and Nilphamari (drought-prone), of the northwest region of Bangladesh to compare farmers’ perceptions of CC with meteorological trends, and to examine farm adaptation measures. A total of 252 smallholder households were interviewed. Household survey, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and field observations were carried out to collect the primary data. The findings revealed that farmers’ perceptions of CC were consistent with the meteorological trends of the past 30 years (1986–2015) and showed increasing temperature parameters and decreasing rainfall parameters. Farmers perceived negative impacts were increased summer temperature and length of summer days, decreased rainfall intensity, number of rainy days and length of winter days as well as increased intensity of floods, droughts, riverbank erosion and other natural hazards. The farmers also noted significant moderate to high impact of CC on agricultural production. The practiced adaptation strategies were low to medium, and almost all the households applied traditional strategies including compost and manure in their fields and practiced crop rotation as well as homestead gardening to minimize the adverse impact of CC. The study recommends bridging information gaps between the scientific community and farmers about CC adaptation options to meet challenges posed by CC. This study also provides field-based evidence for devising CC mitigation and adaptation policies.

The Australian Government is currently addressing the challenge of increasing water scarcity through significant on-farm infrastructure investment to facilitate the adoption of new water-efficient pressurized irrigation systems. However, it is highly likely that conversion to these systems will increase on-farm energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, suggesting potential conflicts in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. This study explored the trade-offs associated with the adoption of more water efficient but energy-intensive irrigation technologies by developing an integrated assessment framework. Integrated analysis of five case studies revealed trade-offs between water security and environmental security when conversion to pressurized irrigation systems was evaluated in terms of fuel and energy-related emissions, except in cases where older hand-shift sprinkler irrigation systems were replaced. These results suggest that priority should be given, in implementing on-farm infrastructure investment policy, to replacing inefficient and energy-intensive sprinkler irrigation systems such as hand-shift and roll-line. The results indicated that associated changes in the use of agricultural machinery and agrochemicals may also be important. The findings of this study support the use of an integrated approach to avoid possible conflicts in designing national climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, both of which are being developed in Australia.

Climate change is one of the multiple stressors facing African cities; these cities are responding by developing climate change action plans including adaptation and mitigation policies. Effectively mainstreaming climate change in city plans and operations and moving from ambition to implementation is complex. Multi-actor engagement, transdisciplinary knowledge interactions, co-designing and sustained co-learning are often required in such planning and action contexts. In this paper, we trace and reflect on the process of developing an adaptation planning process for the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. Given shortcomings of the previous adaptation responses attempted in the City, specifically that of poor uptake, we trialled a more intentional and directly designed, formative and interventionist approach using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). We reflect on what we as a research team and City officials learnt in this process. Our findings emphasise that exploring the local context remains critical in understanding and surfacing tensions with potential climate change responses. Failure to be mindful of such issues will likely result in mere compliance, and potentially, maladaptation. Contrary to experiences in other South African settings, rather than attempting to engage all actors simultaneously, our experience suggests that working with a core group initially, before expanding the circle of actors, is needed. These actors serve as mediators and pivotal actors for learning and change, and, with appropriate authority and passion, can drive, coalesce, and potentially re-enthuse waning interest from within. They leverage already existing trust relationships and strengthen participation throughout the process. Combined, these factors are critical for ensuring implementation and legacy.Significance: Careful attention to a co-designed and emergent ‘Theory of Change’ can help both the process and design of engaged climate change research and help to reframe the climate action needed in urban contexts. The collaborative processes we applied increased awareness and engagement between officials around issues of climate change and, in particular, climate change adaptation. The lessons and opportunities gathered in the miniature expansive learning journey we trialled may be useful for others trying to embark on climate change adaptation journeys in cities in Africa and beyond.

The impacts of climate change are apparent in various regions of the world. Even though climate change may have a positive effect, it is anticipated that there will be many severely negative effects on human and natural resources in the future. Therefore, in addition to the need for stronger promotion of mitigation policies, it is urgently necessary to study and implement adaptation policies over the longer term to prepare for the possible negative impact of climate change. To implement climate change adaptation measures rapidly in Japan, it would seem practical and effective to make good use of the various countermeasures already promoted by both the national and the local governments for many sectors such as disaster prevention, environmental management, food production, and protection of the nation’s health. These countermeasures are considered to have potential for effecting climate change adaptation. This study, focusing on adaptation to climate change negative impacts, investigates to what extent the existing policies of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government could contribute to climate change adaptation, based on a comprehensive examination of targeted fields and indicators for which adaptation policies could be pursued. The results showed many of the existing policies could be useful for adaptation to climate change in many sectors. Furthermore, less than half of these policies need to take future climate change into account in order to contribute to climate change adaptation. This study proposes three basic steps that consider future climate change and local governmental propositions for the rapid implementation of adaptation policies in Japan.

This article outlines the latest scientific knowledge on global warming/climate change, especially in the meteorological and climatological fields, presented in the fourth assessment report (AR4) from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, and provides a comparison with the third assessment report (TAR). In the review of WG1 report, we summarize “Observed recent climate change” and “Future climate projection, ” referring to major events and climate variables. In the review of WG2, we summarize the results on the main potential impacts of global warming projected on the natural environment and ecosystems in the future. Finally, a review of downscaling studies is presented, which are very important as they provide a bridge between regional scale climate change information presented in WG1 and WG2.Since TAR, progress in understanding how climate is changing in space and in time has been gained through improvements and extensions of numerous datasets and data analyses, broader geographic coverage, better understanding of uncertainties, and a wider variety of measurements. Understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has also improved. AR4 concludes with very high confidence (higher than TAR) that : i) climate warming is unequivocal and ii) the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming. In studies on the impacts of global warming, understanding of global warming risk is evaluated more quantitatively based on greatly increased studies of observed trends in the physical and biological environment and their relationships with regional climate change, as well as improved future climate projections on a regional scale.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and customary rights are crucial elements in sustainable natural resource management, especially amidst the dynamics of global climate change. This study uses bibliometric methods to map scientific developments and legal frameworks governing the protection of customary rights and the use of TEK in the context of the environment and climate change. Data were collected from leading academic databases from 2000 to 2024 and analyzed using bibliometric software to identify publication trends, researcher collaborations, and dominant keywords. The results show a significant increase in international publications and collaborations, primarily focusing on integrating local wisdom in climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and strengthening the legal framework for customary rights. This study confirms that recognizing and protecting customary rights in environmental policies are critical for sustainability and social justice. The main contribution of this study is the presentation of a comprehensive picture of the scientific and legal landscape that can form the basis for developing climate adaptation policies based on customary rights.

Farmers’ behavioural attitudes towards climate change are complex and poorly understood, making difficult the development of mitigation and adaptation policies that would be accepted and implemented. The purpose of this paper is to assess the behavioural approaches of rural women farmers to adaptation measures of climate change in Abia State, Nigeria. Specifically, this paper ascertains perceived effects of climate change in the study area and adaptation measures practised by the women in the study area and identifies farmers’ behavioural responses to adaptation measures to climate change and factors that influence farmers’ behavioural approach to adaptation measures to climate change in the study area. Multistage sampling techniques were used in selecting 180 respondents for the study. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis, while Tobit regression model and Pearson’s correlation were used to test the hypotheses. Results show that high sunshine intensity, increased drought, inadequate access to water and crop losses are major perceived changes to climate change, while change of planting time (\(\bar{x} = 4.79\)), enterprise diversification (\(\bar{x} = 4.51\)) and crop rotation (\(\bar{x} = 4.22\)) are major adaptation measures practised by the women in the study area. Seeking for information based on observed changes (\(\bar{x} = 5.00\)), reverting to indigenous or self-help methods and changing cropping style and time (\(\bar{x} = 3.41\)) were identified as major behavioural responses of the women to climate change, while Tobit regression result indicated that age (−2.795**), household size (2.705**), level of education (3.389***) and income (2.505**) were major factors that influence the women farmers’ behavioural approach to adaptation measures to climate change in the study area. Pearson’s correlation analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between the women’s behavioural responses to adaptation measures to climate change and adoption of adaptation measures by the women. The study has examined and shown the women’s level of conformity, constraints and factors that influence their adoption of adaptation and mitigation strategies in the study area. It is therefore recommended among others that targeted and timely information be provided to the women through agricultural extension and mass media, the most effective and sustainable indigenous technologies used by the farming communities could be incubated with a view to upscale and out scale them in other to enhance adaptation to climate change and variability by the resource-poor farmers. ICT-driven virtual platform that provides weather advisory services for small-scale farmers should be made available through rural advisory services (RAS). This will help farmers handle climate risk situation promptly.

Climate change is an environmental justice issue because it is likely to cause disproportionate harm to low-income countries and low-income populations in higher-income countries. While climate change mitigation and adaptation policies may be able to minimize these harms, they could make them worse unless they are developed and implemented with an eye toward promoting justice and fairness. Those who view climate change as an environmental justice issue should be wary of endorsing policies that sound like they promote the cause of social and economic justice, but in fact do not. While climate change policies may help to mitigate the effects of climate change on poor people, there is no guarantee that they will be just at the local, national, or global level. Those who care about global climate justice must remain actively engaged in policy formation and implementation to ensure that justice does not get shortchanged in the response to global warming.