Comment in 2023

The first ever Global Stocktake is scheduled to conclude during COP28 and aims to assess progress on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and the means of implementation. However, the Global Stocktake runs the risk of overestimating progress by overlooking the symbolic dimensions of climate change adaptation policy.

This commentary underscores the need for immediate climate action following recent Greek wildfires. It outlines a comprehensive fire management strategy, emphasizing collaboration and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as essential components.

This comment piece seeks to remind readers of the urgency and importance of adaptation to climate change in the European Union, note significant recent policy developments, and highlight some of the opportunities that one particular aspect of EU policy, the new Mission on Adaptation, affords communities and policy makers to identify and develop more transformative actions. It offers initial suggestions for how social scientists might engage with these opportunities between now and 2030, but also stresses the need to consider them realistically in the context of the contemporary EU political landscape.

This comment links the radicalisation of climate justice movements in the Global North across time and space to the long-term environmental justice movements in post-colonial and settler-colonial geographies. I argue that the measures adopted by climate activists mirror the nature of resistance offered by activists against colonialism and its historic and continuing impact on local environments. I present the women-led Chipko Movement in the Himalayas in the 1970s as an example.

To disrupt ongoing colonialist, racist narratives of Oceania as a source of cheap labour in which climate change is increasingly interwoven, it is necessary to firmly align Oceania workers’ rights with climate justice. Oceania workers’ crucial role in Australia’s food security is minimised when temporary labour mobility opportunities are framed as a ‘solution’ to Oceania’s complex climate change challenges. Furthermore, climate justice demands, at a minimum, greater attention to structural reform of temporary labour programs to eliminate exploitation of migrant workers. Since for many Oceania workers in Australian industries, economic benefits are accrued at significant social cost, current temporary labour mobility regimes cannot, without significant improvement, produce additional benefits needed to substantively redress climate change harm. Engaging the Tuvaluan concept of fale pili, meaning to care for your neighbour as if they were family, we consider how this concept can facilitate greater support for workers’ rights and for climate justice.

With each IPCC report, the science basis around climate change increases extensively in terms of scope, depth, and complexity. In converting this knowledge into societal climate action, research organisations face the challenge of reforming the ways they structure themselves, generate solutions, and communicate scientific findings to stakeholders. Here we present a mission-driven approach to guide those efforts.

The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy (F2F) marks the first time that the EU addresses food sustainability covering both production and consumption (ref. ¹, p. 586). The flagship initiative under the F2F strategy is an entirely novel Framework for a Sustainable Food System (FSFS). The FSFS is being developed at a time where the war on Ukraine has resurfaced the debate on food security, in particular that the initiatives under the F2F will lead to a decrease in EU food production and export (ref. ², p. 15) and increased world food insecurity (ref. ³, p. 11). On the other hand, Röös et al. (p. 14)⁴, Pörtner et al. (p. 470)⁵ and Schiavo et al. (p. 40)⁶ argue that food insecurity will rather be a consequence of an unsustainable food system that threatens long-term food production. They state that a shift to agroecological practices, as promoted in the F2F strategy, can provide food security if in conjunction with demand-side dietary change, also promoted in the F2F strategy. It is clear that EU citizens will be important in order to demonstrate public support for the F2F strategy in general, and for the FSFS in particular. However, the abstract nature of the new Framework for a Sustainable Food System, the FSFS, may pose difficulties for citizens to exert political pressure on the next European Commission, on Member State governments and on the European Parliament. To make the FSFS more tangible as to what it could contain, I will outline three concrete policy proposals that the new law could include: (1) foster enabling food environments; (2) introduce a new incentives regime for food producers; (3) recognise animal welfare in the definition of a sustainable food system.

Climate change adaptation is increasingly being addressed by public, private, and hybrid governance institutions across global, regional, national, sub-national, and local scales. Strengthening emerging forms of trans-scalar adaptation action is critical for addressing urgent climate risks. However, critics point to growing climate injustices and public legitimacy perceptions of the emerging forms of trans-scalar adaptation governance remain in question. As scholars of legitimacy repeatedly tell us, legitimacy is crucial for effectively addressing policy problems. Adaptation governance will only work well when groups affected by climate change, as well as state and non-state actors, have confidence in global governance institutions and so feel it is worthwhile engaging with them, taking notice, discussing, participating, and accepting the norms and rules they promote. This commentary argues that we need more research on legitimacy in trans-scalar adaptation governance. Despite the importance of legitimacy for governing adaptation effectively, assessments of sociological legitimacy—i.e., legitimacy in the eyes of different stakeholders—are scant. Existing contributions on the issue of sociological legitimacy typically focus on climate governance institutions in general or in the area of mitigation, but not in the area of adaptation. The social science research community could significantly improve data and research on legitimacy in adaptation governance, in particular by investigating how climate justice may generate legitimacy perceptions in adaptation governance. In turn, this knowledge can be used to assist policymakers in enhancing legitimacy in trans-scalar adaptation governance.