Comment in 2024

I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.

This article considers the possibilities and limits of reimagining international development policy by taking the values, practices, and worldviews of Indigenous communities as its starting point. Drawing on ethnographic research in Guatemala, we contrast the development industry’s overwhelming focus on economic growth as the gold standard of well-being with the perspective of Maya-Achí groups, who insist that growth and modernization must not come at the expense of the ecology, food sovereignty, or Indigenous ways of life connected to the land. We argue that the Maya-Achi organizations with whom we collaborate offer a philosophy and practice better attuned to the urgency of the climate crisis than that of the dominant model of development. To bring the international development agenda in line with local climate action, we propose reconceiving Development as Buen Vivir—an Indigenous philosophy of good living. To do so, we propose three lines of action: (1) Increasing Funding for Indigenous-led climate action; (2) Re-conceptualizing development practices to align with Buen Vivir, and (3) Transforming social and economic policies.

As the climate crisis deepens and the impacts are felt more often and more acutely worldwide, scientific, engineering, and policy communities need more tools and opportunities to make a difference in tackling climate challenges. The Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) has recently published a technical research roadmap, Engineering Biology for Climate & Sustainability, that describes and details short-, medium-, and long-term milestones for engineering biology tool and technology advancements that can be applied to mitigate, prevent, and adapt to climate change. These ambitious technical achievements can only be realized in the context of complementary research, policy, and investment and in combination with efforts from many other disciplines and approaches. Herein we illustrate the opportunities, as described by the roadmap, in engineering biology research and development to impact climate change and long-term environmental sustainability, and why and how engineering biology and subsequent biotechnologies should be among the most prominent of approaches to overcoming the climate crisis.

Following Tosun’s distinction between international, national, and subnational scales of intervention, this commentary presents the ABCs of governmental climate action challenges in Latin America. In relation to international climate action, Latin American organizations present numerous and diverse positions in international fora. This heterogeneity of positions affects the region’s bargaining power. At the national level, centralism, dominant, hierarchical political cultures, and weak federal systems have limited collaboration across government sectors and offices as well as citizen participation. Furthermore, localized climate action is constrained by political centralization together with administrative, technical, and financial limitations of local and regional governments. Altogether these elements represent the ABCs of challenges for climate action in Latin America. This perspective piece remarks a gap in the literature, highlighting the ways that publications regularly ignore a comparative and regional outlook. Accordingly, this text recommends that Latin American social researchers move beyond single case studies to carry out cross-national comparisons.

Recently adopted UN high seas Agreement elaborates an overarching legal framework for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of the areas beyond national jurisdiction. A remarkable advancement of this Agreement is a clear recognition of the need to address the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and biodiversity. This comment presents a cautiously optimistic view that the new legal instrument may pave the foundation for global and regional climate action for protecting marine biodiversity in a changing climate. Climate action can be integrated into area-based measures for the conservation of marine ecosystems, including the establishment of high seas marine protected areas. The Agreement also created a legal obligation to consider climate change in the process of environmental impact assessment of activities on the high seas. Therefore, this Agreement is a unique addition and reform to the international law of the sea. However, the success of the Agreement will largely depend on the widespread ratification of states and effective implementation at the regional level.