Comment in 2020

Despite a strong media presence and pledges from high-profile investors, the divestment movement has largely failed to mobilize financial markets in the war on carbon. Divestment 2.0 will require major tweaking to more effectively redirect the flow of capital and catalyse greater corporate climate action.

As the world’s economies seek to use new renewable energy developments to address climate change and reinvigorate economies post-COVID-19, avoiding a fixation on targets in decision-making will ensure positive social and environmental outcomes.

Co-production is an increasingly popular approach to knowledge generation encouraged by donors and research funders. However, power dynamics between institutions in the Global North and South can, if not adequately managed, impede the effectiveness of co-production and pose risks for long-term sustainability.

Observed ice-sheet losses track the upper range of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report sea-level predictions, recently driven by ice dynamics in Antarctica and surface melting in Greenland. Ice-sheet models must account for short-term variability in the atmosphere, oceans and climate to accurately predict sea-level rise.

We need a modern-day Marshall Plan to build climate resilience in the developing world. It is doable if, for each dollar spent reaching net zero, we spend an additional 25 cents on building resilience.

Phasing out coal requires expanding the notion of a ‘just transition’ and a roadmap that specifies the sequence of coal plant retirement, the appropriate policy instruments as well as ways to include key stakeholders in the process.

Extreme weather damage databases report no significant heatwave impacts in sub-Saharan Africa since 1900, yet the region has experienced a number of heatwaves and will be affected disproportionately by them under climate change. Addressing this reporting discrepancy is crucial to assess the impacts of future extreme heat there.

Planned relocation of communities exposed to climate hazards is an important adaptation measure. However, relocation planning and policies must recognize and support those who do not wish to relocate, particularly groups with strong place attachment and for whom relocation may increase, not reduce, vulnerability.

In risk analysis, it is recognized that hazards can often combine to worsen their joint impact, but impact data for a rail network show that hazards can also tend to be mutually exclusive at seasonal timescales. Ignoring this overestimates worst-case risk, so we therefore champion a broader view of risk from compound hazards.

Traditional coastal protection methods that rely on built, hard structures like seawalls may not be effective to keep pace with a changing climate. Nature-based coastal defences based on habitat restoration can be an adaptive coastal protection alternative.

Synergistically addressing local and global environmental damages rather than optimizing a specific aspect of the policy conundrum helps to effectively foster climate action in road transport while maintaining public acceptance and socially fair outcomes.

Expectations for the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure’s framework to drive climate action in the private sector are high, and there is growing interest in its relevance for guiding public sector climate action. However, consideration of the framework’s limitations is critical prior to public sector application.

The COVID-19 pandemic will be an unprecedented test of governments’ ability to manage compound risks, as climate hazards disrupt outbreak response around the world. Immediate steps can be taken to minimize climate-attributable loss of life, but climate adaptation also needs a long-term strategy for pandemic preparedness.

Applying an invasive framework to native species that are shifting their ranges in response to climate change adopts an adversarial, local and static paradigm that is often at odds with protecting global biodiversity.

The Galapagos Islands inspired the theory of evolution by means of natural selection; now in the Anthropocene, the Galapagos represent an important natural laboratory to understand ecosystem resilience in the face of climate extremes and enable effective socio-ecological co-evolution under climate change.

Climate change will increase the intensity and frequency of a range of natural hazards, from floods to wildfires, which impact the built environment. More research is needed on buildings and infrastructure performance under different climate-driven events to support recovery predictions and effective mitigation policies.

Characterizing infrastructure vulnerability to climate change is essential given the long asset lives, criticality of services delivered and high costs of upgrading and maintaining these systems. Reconciling uncertainty from past infrastructure design decisions with future uncertainty of climate change will help prioritize limited resources to high risk assets.

Much of Australia has been in severe drought since at least 2017. Here we link Australian droughts to the absence of Pacific and Indian Ocean mode states that act as key drivers of drought-breaking rains. Predicting the impact of climate change on drought requires accurate modelling of these modes of variability.

To improve climate resilience for extreme fire events, researchers need to translate modelling uncertainties into useful guidance and be wary of overconfidence. If Earth system models do not capture the severity of recent Australian wildfires, development is urgently needed to assess whether we are underestimating fire risk.

Catastrophic fires have generated intensified public responses in favour of transformative climate change action. Realizing the potential of this moment requires us to understand and puncture the cultural and emotional politics of our collective denial.