research proposal about climate change

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• Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue
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Table of Contents

• 1. Climate engagement and activism
• 3. Local impact of climate change, environmental problems
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Detailed charts and tables

A majority of Americans consider climate change a priority today so that future generations can have a sustainable planet, and this view is held across generations.

Looking to the future, the public is closely divided on what it will take to address climate change: While about half say it’s likely major lifestyle changes in the U.S. will be needed to deal with climate change impacts, almost as many say it’s more likely new developments in technology will address most of the problems cause by climate change.

On policy, majorities prioritize the use of renewable energy and back the expanded use of specific sources like wind and solar. Americans offer more support than opposition to a range of policies aimed at reducing the effects of climate change, including key climate-related aspects of President Joe Biden’s recent infrastructure proposal. Still, Americans do not back a complete break with carbon: A majority says oil and gas should still be part of the energy mix in the U.S., and about half oppose phasing out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

Overall, 64% of U.S. adults say reducing the effects of climate change needs to be “a top priority to ensure a sustainable planet for future generations, even if that means fewer resources for addressing other important problems today.” By contrast, 34% say that reducing the effects of climate change needs to be “a lower priority, with so many other important problems facing Americans today, even if that means more climate problems for future generations.”

There are stark partisan differences over this sentiment. Nearly nine-in-ten Democrats (87%) say efforts to reduce the effects of climate change need to be prioritized today to ensure a sustainable planet. By contrast, 61% of Republicans say that efforts to reduce the effects of climate change need to be a lower priority, with so many other important problems facing Americans today. (Democrats and Republicans include those who lean to each party.)

Asked to look to the future 50 years from now, 51% of Americans say it’s more likely that major changes to everyday life in the U.S. will be needed to address the problems caused by global climate change. By contrast, 46% say it’s more likely that new technology will be able to address most of the problems caused by global climate change.

Most Democrats (69%) expect that in 50 years major lifestyle changes in the U.S. will be needed to address the problems caused by climate change. By contrast, among Republicans, two-thirds (66%) say it’s likelier that new technology will be able to address most climate change problems in the U.S. Among Republicans, this view is widely held (81%) among the majority who do not see climate change as an important personal concern; Republicans who express greater personal concern about climate change are more likely to say major changes to everyday life in the future will be needed to address problems caused by climate change.

Overall, majorities across generations believe that climate change should be a top priority today to ensure a sustainable planet for future generations. Generational divisions are more prominent among Republicans than Democrats, however.

Among Republicans, about half of Gen Zers (49%) and Millennials (48%) give top priority to reducing the effect of climate change today, even if that means fewer resources to deal with other important problems. By contrast, majorities of Gen X (61%) and Baby Boomer and older Republicans (71%) say reducing the effects of climate change needs to a lower priority today, given the other problems Americans are facing.

Generational differences among Democrats on this question are modest, with clear majorities giving priority to dealing with climate change today.

Majority of Americans prioritize developing alternative energy sources, but only a third would phase out all fossil fuels

Burning fossil fuels for electricity and in cars and trucks are among the primary sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Americans broadly favor increasing the use of renewable energy sources, but a majority reject the idea of phasing out fossil fuel energy sources completely. And Americans are about evenly divided on the idea of phasing out the production of new gasoline cars and trucks by 2035.

There are familiar partisan divisions over nearly every aspect of energy policy, particularly when it comes to fossil fuels. Political divides have widened over the past year as Republican support for alternative energy sources – including wind and solar power – has fallen while support for expanding offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing and coal mining has ticked up.

Within both parties, Gen Zers and Millennials are more supportive of proposals to move away from fossil fuels than their older counterparts.

A majority of Americans (71%) continue to say that the U.S. should prioritize developing alternative energy, while a much smaller share (27%) prioritizes expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas.

The share of Republicans who prioritize developing alternative energy sources over expanding the production of fossil fuels has fallen 18 percentage points in the past year. As a result, Republicans are now closely divided between these two energy priorities. Democrats remain near consensus levels in their support for prioritizing development of alternative energy levels.

Among Republicans, there are significant generational differences in support for increasing the development of renewable energy sources. Majorities of Gen Z (63%) and Millennial (62%) Republicans prioritize increased development of renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Smaller shares of Gen X Republicans (50%) and just 33% of Baby Boomer and older Republicans prioritize this approach over the expanding of fossil fuel development. For more details, including longer-term trends over time, see the Appendix .

Republicans and Democrats also differ over the best way to encourage reliance on renewable energy sources. Most Democrats (81%) continue to see a need for government regulations to increase reliance on renewable energy. On the other hand, two-thirds of Republicans (67%) say the private marketplace alone will be enough. See the Appendix for details.

In keeping with support for prioritizing the development of renewable energy, most Americans favor expanding solar panel farms (84%) and wind turbine farms (77%). By contrast, majorities oppose more coal mining (61%), more hydraulic fracturing (56%) and more offshore oil and gas drilling (55%).

Americans are divided over expanding nuclear power: 50% favor more nuclear power plants, while 47% are opposed.

Republican support for expanding solar power is down 11 points in the last year (from 84% to 73%), and support for wind power has fallen 13 points (from 75% to 62%). Democrats’ widely held support for increasing both energy sources remains largely unchanged.

In addition, there has been an increase since 2020 in the shares of Republicans who support expanding hydraulic fracturing of natural gas (up 10 points), offshore oil and gas drilling (up 6 points) and coal mining (up 6 points). See the Appendix for details.

Even so, younger Republicans remain less likely than their older counterparts to support expanding fossil fuel sources, consistent with past Center surveys.

For instance, 79% of Baby Boomer and older Republicans support more offshore oil and gas drilling, while roughly half (48%) of Gen Z Republicans say the same (a difference of 31 points). There are similar divides over hydraulic fracturing, the primary extraction technique for natural gas (74% of Baby Boomer and older Republicans favor vs. 44% of Gen Z Republicans).

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support using a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy sources, younger adults more inclined to phase out fossil fuels completely

While a large share of U.S. adults would prioritize alternative energy development over expanding the use of fossil fuels, most adults are not inclined to give up reliance on fossil fuels altogether.

The survey finds 64% of Americans say they support ongoing use of oil, coal and natural gas as well as renewable energy sources, while a third (33%) say the country should phase out the use of fossil fuels completely.

There are sharp differences of opinion about this issue by party. Most Republicans (86%) say that the U.S. should rely on a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy sources. Democrats are about evenly divided, with 47% in favor of using a mix of sources and 50% calling for a phase out of fossil fuels. About two-thirds of liberal Democrats (65%) support phasing out fossil fuels but fewer moderate and conservative Democrats say the same (39%).

There are also generational divisions on this issue, with younger generations more likely to support giving up fossil fuel use over time. In fact, majorities of Democratic Gen Zers (60%) and Millennials (57%) support phasing out fossil fuel use completely.

Americans are closely divided over phasing out gas-powered vehicles; Democrats, younger adults are more receptive to the idea

Climate advocates point to electric vehicles as a way to cut down on carbon emissions and reduce climate change. Americans are about equally divided on the idea of phasing out production of gasoline cars and trucks by 2035. A little under half (47%) say they would favor such a proposal, while 51% are opposed.

As with other proposals on climate and energy issues, partisans express opposing viewpoints. About two-thirds of Democrats (68%) support phasing out gasoline cars by 2035, while 76% of Republicans oppose this.

Most U.S. adults oppose oil drilling in ANWR but are more divided over Keystone XL decision

The issue of whether or not to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has long been a controversy in energy policy. Overall, most Americans (70%) oppose the idea, while 27% are in favor.

Nearly all Democrats (89%) say they oppose allowing oil and gas drilling in the ANWR. Republicans are about evenly divided, with half in favor of allowing this and 48% opposed.

One of Biden’s  first actions as president  was revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would have carried oil from Canada into the U.S.

About half of Americans (49%) say canceling the pipeline was the right decision, while 45% say it was the wrong decision.

Most Democrats (78%) say it was the right decision, while most Republicans (80%) say otherwise. See details in the  Appendix .

But there are also generational dynamics in views about gasoline-powered vehicles, with younger adults more supportive than older adults of phasing out gas cars and trucks. Narrow majorities of Gen Zers (56%) and Millennials (57%) support such a proposal, compared with 38% of Baby Boomer and older Americans. This pattern holds within both parties, though sizable partisan divides remain across all generations. See the Appendix for a look at how these generational and partisan divides compare across measures.

The public is broadly familiar with electric vehicles: About nine-in-ten have heard either a lot (30%) or a little (62%) about them. When it comes to first-hand experience, 7% of adults say they currently have an electric or hybrid vehicle; 93% say they do not.

People who say they have heard a lot about electric vehicles are closely divided over the idea of phasing out gas-powered cars and trucks by a margin of 52% in favor to 48% opposed. Not surprisingly, those who currently own an electric or hybrid vehicle are largely in favor of this idea (68% vs. 31% opposed).

Broad public support for a number of policies to address climate change, including some proposed in Biden infrastructure plan

In late March, the Biden administration announced a $2 trillion infrastructure plan with several elements they argue would help reduce the effects of climate change. The new Center survey finds majorities of Americans support a number of proposals to address global climate change, including three specific elements in Biden’s infrastructure plan.

There are sharp partisan divisions over many of these proposals, as expected. In addition, there are concerns, particularly among Democrats, that Biden’s policy proposals will not go far enough in efforts to reduce the effects of climate change.

Majorities of U.S. adults support a range of approaches to address climate change

The new Center survey finds majorities back three specific elements of Biden’s infrastructure plan. More than seven-in-ten Americans (74%) favor a proposed requirement for power companies to use more energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, to reduce carbon emissions. A smaller majority – 62% – favors federal spending to build a network of electric vehicle charging stations across the country in order to increase the use of electric cars and trucks.

And 63% of Americans support the idea of raising corporate taxes to pay for more energy efficient buildings and improved roads and bridges, a key funding mechanism in Biden’s infrastructure proposal.

Biden has closely tied his climate-focused infrastructure proposals with economic and job growth. Half of U.S. adults think that the Biden administration’s plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure in ways that are aimed at reducing the effects of climate change will help the economy. Three-in-ten think this will hurt the economy, and 18% say it will make no difference.

Americans continue to broadly support a number of longer-standing proposals to reduce the effects of climate change. Nine-in-ten Americans favor planting additional trees to absorb carbon dioxide emissions. About eight-in-ten (81%) favor providing a tax credit for businesses that develop technology that can capture and store carbon emissions before they enter the atmosphere. Both of these ideas were part of a set of policies supported by congressional Republicans last year .

Large majorities of Americans also favor tougher restrictions on power plant carbon emissions (76%), taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce (70%) and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and trucks (70%).

54% of Democrats think Biden administration’s climate policies will not go far enough

Three months into the Biden administration, there is no clear consensus over the administration’s approach on climate change. About four-in-ten Americans (41%) think the Biden administration’s policies to reduce the effects of climate change will not go far enough. Roughly three-in-ten (29%) think the Biden administration will go too far, and a similar share (28%) say the administration’s approach will be about right.

Republicans and Democrats have far different expectations for the Biden’s administration policies on climate change. A narrow majority of Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party (54%) –including 63% of liberal Democrats – think the administration’s policies will not go far enough to reduce the effects of climate change.

In contrast, six-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the Biden administration’s policies will go too far, including 74% of conservative Republicans.

There are some generational differences in views on this this issue among Republicans, in line with differences over the importance of addressing climate change. About as many Gen Z Republicans say Biden’s climate policies will not go far enough (35%) as say the policies will go too far (38%). By comparison, a 72% majority of Republicans in the Baby Boomer or older generations think the Biden administration will go too far on climate change.

When it comes to views about proposals aimed at reducing climate change, however, there are few differences of opinion across generations among either party. Yet large differences remain between Republicans and Democrats overall.

Democrats’ views about five proposals aimed at reducing the effects of climate change are uniformly positive. Roughly 85% to 95% of Democrats support each.

Republicans and Republican leaners are most supportive of proposals to absorb carbon emissions by planting large numbers of trees (88%), followed by a proposal to provide a corporate tax credit for carbon-capture technology (73%). A majority of the GOP (58%) favor tougher restrictions on carbon emissions from power plants. About half of Republicans favor taxing corporate carbon emissions (50%) or tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks (49%).

There are no divisions within the GOP by generation across these issues, though ideological divides are often sharp. For example, 65% of moderate and liberal Republicans favor tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, compared with 40% of conservative Republicans.

Republicans and Democrats are also deeply divided over climate-focused proposals in the Biden administration’s infrastructure plan.

Large majorities of Democrats favor requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources (92%), raising corporate taxes to pay for energy efficient buildings and improved roads (84%) and building a network of electric vehicle charging stations across the country (82%).

About half of Republicans (52%) support requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources. There is less support for federal spending to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations (38%). An equal share of Republicans (38%) support the idea of raising taxes on corporations to pay for more energy efficient buildings and better roads, although more moderates and liberals in the GOP (59%) than conservatives (27%) support this idea.

There is comparatively more support for these proposals among younger Republicans, particularly for federal spending to build electric vehicle charging stations and requirements for power plants to use more renewable sources.

Republicans and Democrats at odds over economic impact of Biden’s infrastructure plan

Democrats are largely optimistic that the Biden administration’s plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure in ways aimed at reducing the effects of climate change will help the economy. About eight-in-ten Democrats (78%) say this.

Among Republicans, a majority (59%) thinks this proposed plan will hurt the economy, while only about two-in-ten (18%) say it will help. Conservative Republicans (71%) are especially inclined to say the climate-focused infrastructure proposal will hurt the economy.

Generational differences are largely modest but occur in both parties. Baby Boomer Republicans are the most pessimistic about the plan’s economic impact, while Boomer Democrats are the most optimistic that the plan will help the economy.

What are important considerations to Americans in climate proposals?

When it comes to proposals to reduce the effects of global climate change, protecting the environment for future generations and increasing jobs and economic growth are the top considerations Americans would like to see in policy proposals.

Asked to think about what is important to them in proposals to reduce the effects of climate change, 64% of the public says protecting the quality of the environment for future generations is a very important consideration to them personally; 28% say it’s somewhat important to them and just 6% say it’s not too or not at all important to them.

A majority (60%) also says that increasing job and economic growth is a very important consideration to them personally when it comes to proposals to reduce the effects of climate change.

About half (52%) say keeping consumer costs low is a very important consideration to them personally in climate proposals. Making sure proposals help lower-income communities is seen as a very important consideration by 45% of the public.

About a third (34%) say getting to net-zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible is a very important consideration to them personally. Joe Biden has set a goal for the U.S. to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Limiting the burden of regulations on businesses is seen as a very important climate policy consideration by 24% of the public – the lowest share who say this across the six items asked in the survey. However, majorities view all six factors, including limiting the regulatory burden on businesses, as at least somewhat important considerations in climate proposals.

Partisans have differing priorities when it comes to climate change proposals. Among Republicans, increasing job and economic growth (65% very important) and keeping consumer costs low (61%) are their top considerations. Among Democrats, protecting the quality of the environment for future generations is their clear top consideration (79% very important), followed by making sure proposals help lower-income communities (59%) and increasing job and economic growth (58%). About half of Democrats (51%) say getting to net-zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible is very important to them.

Public sees actions from businesses, ordinary Americans as insufficient on climate change

Americans see a range of actors as falling short in efforts to help reduce the effects of global climate change. The public is broadly critical of the lack of action from large businesses and the energy industry – but also views elected officials, as well as ordinary Americans, as failing to do their part.

Nearly seven-in-ten adults (69%) say large businesses and corporations are doing too little to help reduce the effects of global climate change, while just 21% say they are doing about the right amount and very few (8%) say they are doing too much to address climate change. Similarly, a majority of the public (62%) says the energy industry is doing too little to help reduce the effects of global climate change.

The public also extends criticism on climate inaction to Americans themselves and the officials they vote into elected office. Overall, 66% say ordinary Americans are doing too little to help reduce the effects of climate change, and 60% say this about their state’s elected officials. A separate question that asks about the actions of the federal government across a range of environmental areas finds that 59% say the federal government is doing too little on climate change.

Americans are less critical of their own individual actions in helping to address climate change: Roughly half (48%) believe they, themselves, are doing about the right amount to help reduce the effects of climate change. Still, almost as many (47%) say they are doing too little to help.

When it comes to the role of environmental advocacy organizations, 48% say they are doing about the right amount to help reduce the effects of climate change, compared with 29% who say they are doing too little and 22% who say they are doing too much.

There are stark partisan differences in views of the role groups and individuals are playing to help reduce the effects of climate change. Large majorities of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say large businesses (85%), ordinary Americans (82%), the energy industry (80%) and their state elected officials (79%) are doing too little to help reduce climate change impacts. By contrast, about half of Republicans and Republican leaners or fewer say these actors are doing too little to address climate change. Republicans are much more likely to say most of these groups are doing about the right amount than to say they are doing too much to address climate change.

Generational differences in views are most pronounced on this question within the GOP. In general, Gen Z and Millennial Republicans are more likely than older Republicans to say groups and individuals are doing too little to help reduce the effects of climate change. For instance, 57% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennial Republicans say large businesses are doing too little to help address climate change, compared with 50% of Gen X Republicans and 43% of Baby Boomer and older Republicans.

A 54% majority of U.S. adults see climate scientists’ role on policy as too limited, though some have doubts about scientists’ understanding

As the Biden administration, Congress and state and local governments debate how best to address climate change, 54% of Americans think climate scientists have too little influence on policy debates about climate change. Smaller shares say climate scientists have about the right amount (22%) or too much (22%) influence on climate policy.

At the same time, Americans appear to have reservations about climate scientists’ expertise and understanding. Only about two-in-ten Americans (18%) say climate scientists understand “very well” the best ways to address climate change. Another 42% say climate scientists understand ways to address climate change “fairly well”; 38% say they understand this not too or not at all well.

Public views of climate scientists’ understanding are more positive, if still generally skeptical, on the fundamentals of whether climate change is occurring (37% say scientists understand this very well) and what causes climate change (28%).

Americans’ overall views about climate scientists’ expertise and understanding of what is happening to the Earth’s climate are similar to 2016, the last time Pew Research Center asked these questions.

In keeping with the wide political divisions over climate policy issues, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to rate climate scientists’ understanding highly. And these partisan divides have widened since 2016. For example, Democrats are 43 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say climate scientists understand very well whether or not climate change is occurring. This gap was 25 points in 2016. See the Appendix for details.

Similarly, far larger shares of Democrats than Republicans believe climate scientists have too little say in climate debates (77% vs. 27%).

Younger generations are especially likely to think climate scientists have too little say on climate policy debates. However, these generational dynamics occur only within the GOP.

Millennial (38%) and Gen Z (41%) Republicans are more likely than Baby Boomers and older generations of Republicans (18%) to think climate scientists have too little influence on related policy debates. About half of older Republicans (53%) say climate scientists have too much influence in these debates.

Roughly three-quarters to eight-in-ten Democrats across younger and older generations think climate scientists have too little say in climate policy debates.

Majority of Americans continue to say federal government is doing too little to protect key aspects of the environment

When it comes to environmental protection, a majority of Americans continue to see a role for stricter environmental regulations and majorities view the federal government as doing too little across most areas of environmental concern asked about in the survey, such as protecting air quality.

Gen Z and Millennials offer the broadest support for environmental regulations and for more government action to protect specific aspects of the environment.

Partisan gaps over government action to protect the environment remain very large and differences over the value of stricter environmental regulations have widened since last asked in September 2019 during the administration of Donald Trump.

There are generational and partisan differences over value of environmental regulations

Overall, 56% of Americans say that stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, compared with a smaller share (41%) who say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.

On balance Gen Z and Millennials are both much more likely to  stricter environmental laws as worth the cost than to say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy (by 59% to 33% and 63% to 35%, respectively). Gen X and Boomer and older adults also see stricter environmental laws as worth the cost, though by narrower margins.

A large majority of Democrats (81%) believe that stricter environmental laws are worth the cost. By contrast, 71% of Republicans say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. Republicans have become much more likely to take a critical view of stricter environmental regulations since September 2019, when 55% said they hurt the economy and cost too many jobs. (For more details on this change over time, see the Appendix ).

Generational differences in views occur primarily within the GOP and not among Democrats. Among Republicans, Gen Z (35%) and Millennials (34%) are more likely than Baby Boomer and older adults (20%) to say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, though larger shares across cohorts say these regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. Roughly eight-in-ten Democrats across generations say that stricter environmental laws are worth the cost.

Far more Americans say government is doing too little, rather than too much, on key areas of environmental protection

Consistent with Center surveys over the past few years, majorities of U.S. adults support more government action to address a range of environmental concerns, including air and water quality as well as climate change.

Overall, 63% say the federal government is doing too little to protect the water quality of lakes, rivers and streams. Majorities also say the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change (59%), protect air quality (59%) and protect animals and their habitats (57%). About half (51%) say the federal government is doing too little to protect open lands in national parks and nature preserves. Across all five items, small shares of the public believe the government is doing too much to address any one of these environmental issues.

There are wide differences in views on these issues by political party, with Democrats much more likely than Republicans to think that government efforts in these areas are insufficient.

While still the predominant viewpoint, the shares of Democrats who say the government is doing too little across these five areas are 6 to 10 percentage points lower than they were in May of 2020, before Joe Biden took office. Republicans’ views on these questions have been largely steady, although the share of Republicans who believe the federal government is doing too little to address climate change is down 5 percentage points, from 35% in May 2020 to 30% today.

Partisan groups remain far apart when it comes to assessment of government action on climate change: 83% of Democrats and Democratic leaners think the government’s efforts are insufficient, vs. 30% of Republicans and GOP leaners, a difference of 53 percentage points. Conservative Republicans stand out on this from their fellow partisans with a moderate or liberal ideology: 19% say the federal government is doing too little to address climate change compared with 49% of moderate or liberal Republicans.

Gen Zers and Millennials are more likely than older Americans to say the government is doing too little to address specific areas of environmental concern, though these divides are driven primarily by differences by generation within the GOP.

About two-thirds of Gen Zers (66%) and Millennials (65%) say the federal government is doing too little to protect air quality, compared with 58% of Gen X and 52% of Baby Boomer and older adults.

Similarly, 68% of Gen Zers and 66% of Millennials say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change versus 57% of Gen X and 52% of Baby Boomer and older adults.

Among Republicans, Gen Zers and Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomer and older adults to say the federal government is doing too little to address all five of these areas of environmental concern. Majorities of Democrats across generations say the government is doing too little to address these environmental issues.

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Climate Change Solutions Fund awards recognize nine projects around the world

Harvard faculty and students are training their interests and expertise on what is literally the world’s hottest hot-button issue: global warming. As a result, nine research teams will share $1 million in the seventh round of the Climate Change Solutions Fund (CCSF) awards for proposals that create critical knowledge, propel novel ideas, and lead toward solutions that can be applied at Harvard and across the globe.

“Pursuing a more sustainable future means advancing on several fronts to address the tremendous challenges posed by climate change,” Harvard President Larry Bacow said. “The projects being funded this year draw on strengths from across the University and among a wide swath of researchers and scholars. I look forward to seeing where their efforts lead us in the years ahead.”

Vice Provost for Research Richard McCullough , whose office administers the fund, said, “The variety of research in which our faculty and students engage — projects in government, engineering, chemistry, biology, landscape architecture, and more — reflects Harvard’s strong commitment to addressing the full scope of impacts from climate change. With support from the University and generosity from alumni and others, CCSF is able to fund projects that are paramount to solving global climate and health challenges.”

The fund was established in 2014 by President Emerita Drew Faust to support and speed up Harvard’s transition from nonrenewable to sustainable sources.

This year’s projects range from studying the implications of geographic and administrative boundaries on groundwater extraction in India, to identifying sources of methane in China, to examining natural structures with useful properties at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The fund review committee selects research projects each year from the University’s 12 Schools, giving special consideration to those that use the campus as a living laboratory to study global sustainability challenges that align with the priorities in the Harvard’s Sustainability Plan and the climate goals defined by the Presidential Committee on Sustainability and the Office for Sustainability . As of 2021, nearly 60 CCSF projects have received more than $7 million. The fund is supported by the President’s office and donations from alumni and others.

This year’s winning projects are summarized below. Applications for next year’s awards will open in July 2021. Interested applicants should contact [email protected] .

A Study of the Implications of Geographic and Administrative Boundaries on Groundwater Extraction in India

Shweta Bhogale , Ph.D. Candidate, Public Policy, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Agriculture’s increased dependence on groundwater at a time of worsening agroclimatic conditions is bringing the planet closer to a major water crisis, with potentially enormous consequences for both food production and the livelihoods of rural populations — a majority of the workforce in many developing countries. This project will study the effects of competition for groundwater and irrigation practices, crop choices, agricultural livelihoods, and long-term water levels in India. The project leaders hypothesize that water sources that are shared between districts see greater levels of water extraction, and aim to provide evidence for the effectiveness of different institutional and policy mechanisms that dampen adverse effects of competition for water. In particular, they are interested in whether governance of groundwater resources in their entirety, instead of as segmented units, could lead to more sustainable extraction practices.

Designing a Solid-State Battery Device for Ultrahigh Performance Electric Vehicle Applications

Xin Li , Associate Professor of Materials Science, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

After developing a solid-state battery with ultra-long cycling and ultra-high current density, with the

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Kaitlyn Loftus (left) and Robin Wordsworth.

A Back-to-Basics Approach to Improve Precipitation Physics in Global Climate Models

Kaitlyn Loftus , Ph.D. Candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with co-investigator Robin Wordsworth , Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

In the model worlds used to predict and prepare for climate change, it is almost always lightly drizzling — unlike on the real Earth. The most complex climate models cannot even reproduce observed precipitation characteristics accurately, let alone robustly predict future characteristics. This failure is significant, because precipitation is directly associated with high-risk impacts such as floods, droughts, and lower regional crop yields, and indirectly associated with uncertainties in future temperature change. This project proposes a novel approach to representing precipitation in climate models by building a model that better reproduces present-day precipitation.

Exploring Ion Mobility in Metastable Oxide Thin Films for Energy Applications

Johanna Nordlander , Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Physics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Advancements in clean, sustainable energy technology are critical to mitigating increasing global power usage. A promising technology with a variety of potential applications for green electricity are solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), which have superior conversion efficiency and pollution-free exhaust. To promote this technology, new oxide material classes that allow oxygen transport closer to room temperature are needed. This project hopes to use state-of-the-art thin-film synthesis techniques to engineer oxides that will let the team construct lower-temperature conductors.

Prospecting for Functional Materials in the Entomology Collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology

Naomi Pierce , Sidney A. and John H. Hessel Professor of Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Curator of Lepidoptera in the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows

The ability to predict, prevent, or alleviate impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly critical as extreme weather events grow more frequent. Biomimetic design focuses on examining natural structures with useful properties, such as butterfly-wing scales, to develop new materials. Exploring natural features that have evolved over millions of years provides insight into their chemical and structural variation. This project will utilize a previously developed imaging platform with the extensive collections in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology to model nanostructures producing various features, and use that data to train a new AI algorithm to predict microscopic features from structural, color, and pattern properties. This data can then be applied to specific purposes, such as reducing ultraviolet and infrared ray absorption or increasing the efficiency of cells used in solar panels. A more comprehensive understanding of natural structures will promote development of new biologically inspired materials that can reduce reliance on fossil fuels and ultimately mitigate the effects of climate change.

Martha Schwartz (left) and Edith Katz.

Linear Urban Forest

Martha Schwartz , Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, with co-investigator Edith Katz, Teaching Associate, Harvard Graduate School of Design

The effects of global warming are being felt widely, especially in cities, and the urban heat island effect is projected to have the most serious effects on human health. The heat island effect is the difference between temperature changes over vegetated land areas versus those over urban landscapes, where there is more solar radiation is absorbed. This causes urban areas to become warmer than surrounding, less-dense areas. By using Springfield, Massachusetts, as a test site, this project will explore the effects of afforestation by studying the results of planting connected lanes of trees throughout the city. The research will look toward the near future of automatic vehicles and smart transportation that will allow cities to “harvest” a lot of space in their public rights-of-way, creating room for linear urban afforestation.

As part of the project, the team plans to measure the reduction in heat and air pollution, absorption and control of storm water, reduction of energy use, increase of urban biodiversity, and CO₂ mitigation. This study will open up new ways of viewing a city’s public landscapes not just as amenities, but as spaces to regenerate natural systems as pathways to more climate equity and a more integrated balance with nature.

Shaojie Song (left) and J. William Munger.

Courtesy photo (left); photo by Ian MacLellan

Using In Situ Observations to Identify Methane Sources in the Beijing Region

Shaojie Song , Research Associate, Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, with co-investigator J. William Munger , Senior Research Fellow in Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Human activities concentrated in cities are dominant sources of carbon dioxide and methane, the greenhouse gases that affect climate. Urban areas account for 70 percent of Earth’s greenhouse gases, but knowing exactly where emissions come from is essential for developing effective and affordable management plans. This project will use atmospheric measurements to assess methane sources in the Beijing region, where government policy mandated a shift from coal to natural gas in district heating plants and building boilers. The goal of the project, a collaboration of the SEAS-based Harvard-China Project and the Tsinghua University School of Environment, is to determine whether the coal-to-gas conversion has had its intended effect on greenhouse gas reduction or inadvertently created a new greenhouse gas source. The work will prepare the team for future research on poorly understood dimensions of the second-most-powerful greenhouse gas emissions in China and identifying effective and affordable mitigation solutions.

Using Volcanic Vents to Combat Climate Change

Benton Taylor , Assistant Professor, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Anthropogenic increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) are currently the strongest drivers of global climate change. This additional CO₂ makes plant photosynthesis more efficient and plants may naturally mitigate global warming by growing larger and capturing some portion of CO₂. Tropical forests have an immense potential to naturally mitigate climate change by increasing plant carbon capture in response to rising CO₂, but logistical constraints prevent large-scale CO₂-enrichment experiments to test this in the tropics. Volcanic vents that naturally release CO₂ into the surrounding forests provide an innovative, cost-effective, immediate way to assess the forests’ responses to an increasingly CO₂-enriched world. The project plans to establish vegetation census plots at forests in both elevated CO₂ conditions (simulating future atmospheric conditions) and ambient CO₂ (current condition) sites to determine their growth and carbon-capturing responses to long-term CO₂ enrichment. Understanding these responses will 1) dramatically improve our ability to predict global climate change in Earth system models, 2) provide insight into the future dynamics of the tropical forest biome, and 3) identify direct-management strategies to maximize their future carbon-capturing potential.

Exploring Magnetic Topological Insulators for Ultra-Low-Energy Information Technologies

Christian Tzschaschel , Postdoctoral Researcher, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Rapid advances in information technology are accompanied by a dramatic increase in energy costs from data storage, transfer, and processing. To keep energy consumption connected to the increasing amount of data at a sustainable level requires a breakthrough in technology. This project aims to reduce the ecological footprint of information technology by finding new materials to efficiently control magnetism. Specifically, the project will explore the new class of magnetic topological insulators, in which the electrical control of magnetism is predicted to be particularly efficient. Combining electrical transport measurements and nonlinear optical techniques not only will allow for the development of a fundamental understanding of the magnetoelectric coupling in these materials, it will also demonstrate their feasibility for ultra-low energy applications.

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A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures

Kashif abbass.

1 School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094 People’s Republic of China

Muhammad Zeeshan Qasim

2 Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Xiaolingwei 200, Nanjing, 210094 People’s Republic of China

Huaming Song

Muntasir murshed.

3 School of Business and Economics, North South University, Dhaka, 1229 Bangladesh

4 Department of Journalism, Media and Communications, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Haider Mahmood

5 Department of Finance, College of Business Administration, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, 173, Alkharj, 11942 Saudi Arabia

Ijaz Younis

Associated data.

Data sources and relevant links are provided in the paper to access data.

Climate change is a long-lasting change in the weather arrays across tropics to polls. It is a global threat that has embarked on to put stress on various sectors. This study is aimed to conceptually engineer how climate variability is deteriorating the sustainability of diverse sectors worldwide. Specifically, the agricultural sector’s vulnerability is a globally concerning scenario, as sufficient production and food supplies are threatened due to irreversible weather fluctuations. In turn, it is challenging the global feeding patterns, particularly in countries with agriculture as an integral part of their economy and total productivity. Climate change has also put the integrity and survival of many species at stake due to shifts in optimum temperature ranges, thereby accelerating biodiversity loss by progressively changing the ecosystem structures. Climate variations increase the likelihood of particular food and waterborne and vector-borne diseases, and a recent example is a coronavirus pandemic. Climate change also accelerates the enigma of antimicrobial resistance, another threat to human health due to the increasing incidence of resistant pathogenic infections. Besides, the global tourism industry is devastated as climate change impacts unfavorable tourism spots. The methodology investigates hypothetical scenarios of climate variability and attempts to describe the quality of evidence to facilitate readers’ careful, critical engagement. Secondary data is used to identify sustainability issues such as environmental, social, and economic viability. To better understand the problem, gathered the information in this report from various media outlets, research agencies, policy papers, newspapers, and other sources. This review is a sectorial assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches worldwide in the aforementioned sectors and the associated economic costs. According to the findings, government involvement is necessary for the country’s long-term development through strict accountability of resources and regulations implemented in the past to generate cutting-edge climate policy. Therefore, mitigating the impacts of climate change must be of the utmost importance, and hence, this global threat requires global commitment to address its dreadful implications to ensure global sustenance.

Introduction

Worldwide observed and anticipated climatic changes for the twenty-first century and global warming are significant global changes that have been encountered during the past 65 years. Climate change (CC) is an inter-governmental complex challenge globally with its influence over various components of the ecological, environmental, socio-political, and socio-economic disciplines (Adger et al.  2005 ; Leal Filho et al.  2021 ; Feliciano et al.  2022 ). Climate change involves heightened temperatures across numerous worlds (Battisti and Naylor  2009 ; Schuurmans  2021 ; Weisheimer and Palmer  2005 ; Yadav et al.  2015 ). With the onset of the industrial revolution, the problem of earth climate was amplified manifold (Leppänen et al.  2014 ). It is reported that the immediate attention and due steps might increase the probability of overcoming its devastating impacts. It is not plausible to interpret the exact consequences of climate change (CC) on a sectoral basis (Izaguirre et al.  2021 ; Jurgilevich et al.  2017 ), which is evident by the emerging level of recognition plus the inclusion of climatic uncertainties at both local and national level of policymaking (Ayers et al.  2014 ).

Climate change is characterized based on the comprehensive long-haul temperature and precipitation trends and other components such as pressure and humidity level in the surrounding environment. Besides, the irregular weather patterns, retreating of global ice sheets, and the corresponding elevated sea level rise are among the most renowned international and domestic effects of climate change (Lipczynska-Kochany  2018 ; Michel et al.  2021 ; Murshed and Dao 2020 ). Before the industrial revolution, natural sources, including volcanoes, forest fires, and seismic activities, were regarded as the distinct sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, and H 2 O into the atmosphere (Murshed et al. 2020 ; Hussain et al.  2020 ; Sovacool et al.  2021 ; Usman and Balsalobre-Lorente 2022 ; Murshed 2022 ). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) struck a major agreement to tackle climate change and accelerate and intensify the actions and investments required for a sustainable low-carbon future at Conference of the Parties (COP-21) in Paris on December 12, 2015. The Paris Agreement expands on the Convention by bringing all nations together for the first time in a single cause to undertake ambitious measures to prevent climate change and adapt to its impacts, with increased funding to assist developing countries in doing so. As so, it marks a turning point in the global climate fight. The core goal of the Paris Agreement is to improve the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 °C over pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C (Sharma et al. 2020 ; Sharif et al. 2020 ; Chien et al. 2021 .

Furthermore, the agreement aspires to strengthen nations’ ability to deal with the effects of climate change and align financing flows with low GHG emissions and climate-resilient paths (Shahbaz et al. 2019 ; Anwar et al. 2021 ; Usman et al. 2022a ). To achieve these lofty goals, adequate financial resources must be mobilized and provided, as well as a new technology framework and expanded capacity building, allowing developing countries and the most vulnerable countries to act under their respective national objectives. The agreement also establishes a more transparent action and support mechanism. All Parties are required by the Paris Agreement to do their best through “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the coming years (Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2020 ). It includes obligations that all Parties regularly report on their emissions and implementation activities. A global stock-take will be conducted every five years to review collective progress toward the agreement’s goal and inform the Parties’ future individual actions. The Paris Agreement became available for signature on April 22, 2016, Earth Day, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. On November 4, 2016, it went into effect 30 days after the so-called double threshold was met (ratification by 55 nations accounting for at least 55% of world emissions). More countries have ratified and continue to ratify the agreement since then, bringing 125 Parties in early 2017. To fully operationalize the Paris Agreement, a work program was initiated in Paris to define mechanisms, processes, and recommendations on a wide range of concerns (Murshed et al. 2021 ). Since 2016, Parties have collaborated in subsidiary bodies (APA, SBSTA, and SBI) and numerous formed entities. The Conference of the Parties functioning as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) convened for the first time in November 2016 in Marrakesh in conjunction with COP22 and made its first two resolutions. The work plan is scheduled to be finished by 2018. Some mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce the emission in the prospective of Paris agreement are following firstly, a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, secondly, to aim to limit the rise to 1.5 °C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change, thirdly, on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognizing that this will take longer for developing countries, lastly, to undertake rapid reductions after that under the best available science, to achieve a balance between emissions and removals in the second half of the century. On the other side, some adaptation strategies are; strengthening societies’ ability to deal with the effects of climate change and to continue & expand international assistance for developing nations’ adaptation.

However, anthropogenic activities are currently regarded as most accountable for CC (Murshed et al. 2022 ). Apart from the industrial revolution, other anthropogenic activities include excessive agricultural operations, which further involve the high use of fuel-based mechanization, burning of agricultural residues, burning fossil fuels, deforestation, national and domestic transportation sectors, etc. (Huang et al.  2016 ). Consequently, these anthropogenic activities lead to climatic catastrophes, damaging local and global infrastructure, human health, and total productivity. Energy consumption has mounted GHGs levels concerning warming temperatures as most of the energy production in developing countries comes from fossil fuels (Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2022 ; Usman et al. 2022b ; Abbass et al. 2021a ; Ishikawa-Ishiwata and Furuya  2022 ).

This review aims to highlight the effects of climate change in a socio-scientific aspect by analyzing the existing literature on various sectorial pieces of evidence globally that influence the environment. Although this review provides a thorough examination of climate change and its severe affected sectors that pose a grave danger for global agriculture, biodiversity, health, economy, forestry, and tourism, and to purpose some practical prophylactic measures and mitigation strategies to be adapted as sound substitutes to survive from climate change (CC) impacts. The societal implications of irregular weather patterns and other effects of climate changes are discussed in detail. Some numerous sustainable mitigation measures and adaptation practices and techniques at the global level are discussed in this review with an in-depth focus on its economic, social, and environmental aspects. Methods of data collection section are included in the supplementary information.

Review methodology

Related study and its objectives.

Today, we live an ordinary life in the beautiful digital, globalized world where climate change has a decisive role. What happens in one country has a massive influence on geographically far apart countries, which points to the current crisis known as COVID-19 (Sarkar et al.  2021 ). The most dangerous disease like COVID-19 has affected the world’s climate changes and economic conditions (Abbass et al. 2022 ; Pirasteh-Anosheh et al.  2021 ). The purpose of the present study is to review the status of research on the subject, which is based on “Global Climate Change Impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures” by systematically reviewing past published and unpublished research work. Furthermore, the current study seeks to comment on research on the same topic and suggest future research on the same topic. Specifically, the present study aims: The first one is, organize publications to make them easy and quick to find. Secondly, to explore issues in this area, propose an outline of research for future work. The third aim of the study is to synthesize the previous literature on climate change, various sectors, and their mitigation measurement. Lastly , classify the articles according to the different methods and procedures that have been adopted.

Review methodology for reviewers

This review-based article followed systematic literature review techniques that have proved the literature review as a rigorous framework (Benita  2021 ; Tranfield et al.  2003 ). Moreover, we illustrate in Fig.  1 the search method that we have started for this research. First, finalized the research theme to search literature (Cooper et al.  2018 ). Second, used numerous research databases to search related articles and download from the database (Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus Index Journals, Emerald, Elsevier Science Direct, Springer, and Sciverse). We focused on various articles, with research articles, feedback pieces, short notes, debates, and review articles published in scholarly journals. Reports used to search for multiple keywords such as “Climate Change,” “Mitigation and Adaptation,” “Department of Agriculture and Human Health,” “Department of Biodiversity and Forestry,” etc.; in summary, keyword list and full text have been made. Initially, the search for keywords yielded a large amount of literature.

Methodology search for finalized articles for investigations.

Source : constructed by authors

Since 2020, it has been impossible to review all the articles found; some restrictions have been set for the literature exhibition. The study searched 95 articles on a different database mentioned above based on the nature of the study. It excluded 40 irrelevant papers due to copied from a previous search after readings tiles, abstract and full pieces. The criteria for inclusion were: (i) articles focused on “Global Climate Change Impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures,” and (ii) the search key terms related to study requirements. The complete procedure yielded 55 articles for our study. We repeat our search on the “Web of Science and Google Scholars” database to enhance the search results and check the referenced articles.

In this study, 55 articles are reviewed systematically and analyzed for research topics and other aspects, such as the methods, contexts, and theories used in these studies. Furthermore, this study analyzes closely related areas to provide unique research opportunities in the future. The study also discussed future direction opportunities and research questions by understanding the research findings climate changes and other affected sectors. The reviewed paper framework analysis process is outlined in Fig.  2 .

Framework of the analysis Process.

Natural disasters and climate change’s socio-economic consequences

Natural and environmental disasters can be highly variable from year to year; some years pass with very few deaths before a significant disaster event claims many lives (Symanski et al.  2021 ). Approximately 60,000 people globally died from natural disasters each year on average over the past decade (Ritchie and Roser  2014 ; Wiranata and Simbolon  2021 ). So, according to the report, around 0.1% of global deaths. Annual variability in the number and share of deaths from natural disasters in recent decades are shown in Fig.  3 . The number of fatalities can be meager—sometimes less than 10,000, and as few as 0.01% of all deaths. But shock events have a devastating impact: the 1983–1985 famine and drought in Ethiopia; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar in 2008; and the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti and now recent example is COVID-19 pandemic (Erman et al.  2021 ). These events pushed global disaster deaths to over 200,000—more than 0.4% of deaths in these years. Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, but such high losses of human life are. Historical evidence shows that earlier disaster detection, more robust infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response programmers have substantially reduced disaster deaths worldwide. Low-income is also the most vulnerable to disasters; improving living conditions, facilities, and response services in these areas would be critical in reducing natural disaster deaths in the coming decades.

Global deaths from natural disasters, 1978 to 2020.

Source EMDAT ( 2020 )

The interior regions of the continent are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures (Dimri et al.  2018 ; Goes et al.  2020 ; Mannig et al.  2018 ; Schuurmans  2021 ). Weather patterns change due to the shortage of natural resources (water), increase in glacier melting, and rising mercury are likely to cause extinction to many planted species (Gampe et al.  2016 ; Mihiretu et al.  2021 ; Shaffril et al.  2018 ).On the other hand, the coastal ecosystem is on the verge of devastation (Perera et al.  2018 ; Phillips  2018 ). The temperature rises, insect disease outbreaks, health-related problems, and seasonal and lifestyle changes are persistent, with a strong probability of these patterns continuing in the future (Abbass et al. 2021c ; Hussain et al.  2018 ). At the global level, a shortage of good infrastructure and insufficient adaptive capacity are hammering the most (IPCC  2013 ). In addition to the above concerns, a lack of environmental education and knowledge, outdated consumer behavior, a scarcity of incentives, a lack of legislation, and the government’s lack of commitment to climate change contribute to the general public’s concerns. By 2050, a 2 to 3% rise in mercury and a drastic shift in rainfall patterns may have serious consequences (Huang et al. 2022 ; Gorst et al.  2018 ). Natural and environmental calamities caused huge losses globally, such as decreased agriculture outputs, rehabilitation of the system, and rebuilding necessary technologies (Ali and Erenstein  2017 ; Ramankutty et al.  2018 ; Yu et al.  2021 ) (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). Furthermore, in the last 3 or 4 years, the world has been plagued by smog-related eye and skin diseases, as well as a rise in road accidents due to poor visibility.

Main natural danger statistics for 1985–2020 at the global level

Key natural hazards statistics from 1978 to 2020
Country	1978 change	2018	Absolute change	Relative
Drought	63	0	− 63	− 100%
Earthquake	25,162	4,321	− 20,841	− 83%
Extreme temperature	150	536	+ 386	+ 257%
Extreme weather	3676	1,666	− 2,010	− 55%
Flood	5,897	2,869	− 3,028	− 51%
Landslide	86	275	+ 189	+ 220%
Mass movement	50	17	− 33	− 66%
Volcanic activity	268	878	+ 610	+ 228%
Wildfire	2	247	+ 245	+ 12,250%
All − natural disasters	35,036	10,809	− 24,227	− 69%

Source: EM-DAT ( 2020 )

Climate change and agriculture

Global agriculture is the ultimate sector responsible for 30–40% of all greenhouse emissions, which makes it a leading industry predominantly contributing to climate warming and significantly impacted by it (Grieg; Mishra et al.  2021 ; Ortiz et al.  2021 ; Thornton and Lipper  2014 ). Numerous agro-environmental and climatic factors that have a dominant influence on agriculture productivity (Pautasso et al.  2012 ) are significantly impacted in response to precipitation extremes including floods, forest fires, and droughts (Huang  2004 ). Besides, the immense dependency on exhaustible resources also fuels the fire and leads global agriculture to become prone to devastation. Godfray et al. ( 2010 ) mentioned that decline in agriculture challenges the farmer’s quality of life and thus a significant factor to poverty as the food and water supplies are critically impacted by CC (Ortiz et al.  2021 ; Rosenzweig et al.  2014 ). As an essential part of the economic systems, especially in developing countries, agricultural systems affect the overall economy and potentially the well-being of households (Schlenker and Roberts  2009 ). According to the report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, i.e., CH 4, CO 2 , and N 2 O, are increased in the air to extraordinary levels over the last few centuries (Usman and Makhdum 2021 ; Stocker et al.  2013 ). Climate change is the composite outcome of two different factors. The first is the natural causes, and the second is the anthropogenic actions (Karami 2012 ). It is also forecasted that the world may experience a typical rise in temperature stretching from 1 to 3.7 °C at the end of this century (Pachauri et al. 2014 ). The world’s crop production is also highly vulnerable to these global temperature-changing trends as raised temperatures will pose severe negative impacts on crop growth (Reidsma et al. 2009 ). Some of the recent modeling about the fate of global agriculture is briefly described below.

Decline in cereal productivity

Crop productivity will also be affected dramatically in the next few decades due to variations in integral abiotic factors such as temperature, solar radiation, precipitation, and CO 2 . These all factors are included in various regulatory instruments like progress and growth, weather-tempted changes, pest invasions (Cammell and Knight 1992 ), accompanying disease snags (Fand et al. 2012 ), water supplies (Panda et al. 2003 ), high prices of agro-products in world’s agriculture industry, and preeminent quantity of fertilizer consumption. Lobell and field ( 2007 ) claimed that from 1962 to 2002, wheat crop output had condensed significantly due to rising temperatures. Therefore, during 1980–2011, the common wheat productivity trends endorsed extreme temperature events confirmed by Gourdji et al. ( 2013 ) around South Asia, South America, and Central Asia. Various other studies (Asseng, Cao, Zhang, and Ludwig 2009 ; Asseng et al. 2013 ; García et al. 2015 ; Ortiz et al. 2021 ) also proved that wheat output is negatively affected by the rising temperatures and also caused adverse effects on biomass productivity (Calderini et al. 1999 ; Sadras and Slafer 2012 ). Hereafter, the rice crop is also influenced by the high temperatures at night. These difficulties will worsen because the temperature will be rising further in the future owing to CC (Tebaldi et al. 2006 ). Another research conducted in China revealed that a 4.6% of rice production per 1 °C has happened connected with the advancement in night temperatures (Tao et al. 2006 ). Moreover, the average night temperature growth also affected rice indicia cultivar’s output pragmatically during 25 years in the Philippines (Peng et al. 2004 ). It is anticipated that the increase in world average temperature will also cause a substantial reduction in yield (Hatfield et al. 2011 ; Lobell and Gourdji 2012 ). In the southern hemisphere, Parry et al. ( 2007 ) noted a rise of 1–4 °C in average daily temperatures at the end of spring season unti the middle of summers, and this raised temperature reduced crop output by cutting down the time length for phenophases eventually reduce the yield (Hatfield and Prueger 2015 ; R. Ortiz 2008 ). Also, world climate models have recommended that humid and subtropical regions expect to be plentiful prey to the upcoming heat strokes (Battisti and Naylor 2009 ). Grain production is the amalgamation of two constituents: the average weight and the grain output/m 2 , however, in crop production. Crop output is mainly accredited to the grain quantity (Araus et al. 2008 ; Gambín and Borrás 2010 ). In the times of grain set, yield resources are mainly strewn between hitherto defined components, i.e., grain usual weight and grain output, which presents a trade-off between them (Gambín and Borrás 2010 ) beside disparities in per grain integration (B. L. Gambín et al. 2006 ). In addition to this, the maize crop is also susceptible to raised temperatures, principally in the flowering stage (Edreira and Otegui 2013 ). In reality, the lower grain number is associated with insufficient acclimatization due to intense photosynthesis and higher respiration and the high-temperature effect on the reproduction phenomena (Edreira and Otegui 2013 ). During the flowering phase, maize visible to heat (30–36 °C) seemed less anthesis-silking intermissions (Edreira et al. 2011 ). Another research by Dupuis and Dumas ( 1990 ) proved that a drop in spikelet when directly visible to high temperatures above 35 °C in vitro pollination. Abnormalities in kernel number claimed by Vega et al. ( 2001 ) is related to conceded plant development during a flowering phase that is linked with the active ear growth phase and categorized as a critical phase for approximation of kernel number during silking (Otegui and Bonhomme 1998 ).

The retort of rice output to high temperature presents disparities in flowering patterns, and seed set lessens and lessens grain weight (Qasim et al. 2020 ; Qasim, Hammad, Maqsood, Tariq, & Chawla). During the daytime, heat directly impacts flowers which lessens the thesis period and quickens the earlier peak flowering (Tao et al. 2006 ). Antagonistic effect of higher daytime temperature d on pollen sprouting proposed seed set decay, whereas, seed set was lengthily reduced than could be explicated by pollen growing at high temperatures 40◦C (Matsui et al. 2001 ).

The decline in wheat output is linked with higher temperatures, confirmed in numerous studies (Semenov 2009 ; Stone and Nicolas 1994 ). High temperatures fast-track the arrangements of plant expansion (Blum et al. 2001 ), diminution photosynthetic process (Salvucci and Crafts‐Brandner 2004 ), and also considerably affect the reproductive operations (Farooq et al. 2011 ).

The destructive impacts of CC induced weather extremes to deteriorate the integrity of crops (Chaudhary et al. 2011 ), e.g., Spartan cold and extreme fog cause falling and discoloration of betel leaves (Rosenzweig et al. 2001 ), giving them a somehow reddish appearance, squeezing of lemon leaves (Pautasso et al. 2012 ), as well as root rot of pineapple, have reported (Vedwan and Rhoades 2001 ). Henceforth, in tackling the disruptive effects of CC, several short-term and long-term management approaches are the crucial need of time (Fig.  4 ). Moreover, various studies (Chaudhary et al. 2011 ; Patz et al. 2005 ; Pautasso et al. 2012 ) have demonstrated adapting trends such as ameliorating crop diversity can yield better adaptability towards CC.

Schematic description of potential impacts of climate change on the agriculture sector and the appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures to overcome its impact.

Climate change impacts on biodiversity

Global biodiversity is among the severe victims of CC because it is the fastest emerging cause of species loss. Studies demonstrated that the massive scale species dynamics are considerably associated with diverse climatic events (Abraham and Chain 1988 ; Manes et al. 2021 ; A. M. D. Ortiz et al. 2021 ). Both the pace and magnitude of CC are altering the compatible habitat ranges for living entities of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial regions. Alterations in general climate regimes influence the integrity of ecosystems in numerous ways, such as variation in the relative abundance of species, range shifts, changes in activity timing, and microhabitat use (Bates et al. 2014 ). The geographic distribution of any species often depends upon its ability to tolerate environmental stresses, biological interactions, and dispersal constraints. Hence, instead of the CC, the local species must only accept, adapt, move, or face extinction (Berg et al. 2010 ). So, the best performer species have a better survival capacity for adjusting to new ecosystems or a decreased perseverance to survive where they are already situated (Bates et al. 2014 ). An important aspect here is the inadequate habitat connectivity and access to microclimates, also crucial in raising the exposure to climate warming and extreme heatwave episodes. For example, the carbon sequestration rates are undergoing fluctuations due to climate-driven expansion in the range of global mangroves (Cavanaugh et al. 2014 ).

Similarly, the loss of kelp-forest ecosystems in various regions and its occupancy by the seaweed turfs has set the track for elevated herbivory by the high influx of tropical fish populations. Not only this, the increased water temperatures have exacerbated the conditions far away from the physiological tolerance level of the kelp communities (Vergés et al. 2016 ; Wernberg et al. 2016 ). Another pertinent danger is the devastation of keystone species, which even has more pervasive effects on the entire communities in that habitat (Zarnetske et al. 2012 ). It is particularly important as CC does not specify specific populations or communities. Eventually, this CC-induced redistribution of species may deteriorate carbon storage and the net ecosystem productivity (Weed et al. 2013 ). Among the typical disruptions, the prominent ones include impacts on marine and terrestrial productivity, marine community assembly, and the extended invasion of toxic cyanobacteria bloom (Fossheim et al. 2015 ).

The CC-impacted species extinction is widely reported in the literature (Beesley et al. 2019 ; Urban 2015 ), and the predictions of demise until the twenty-first century are dreadful (Abbass et al. 2019 ; Pereira et al. 2013 ). In a few cases, northward shifting of species may not be formidable as it allows mountain-dwelling species to find optimum climates. However, the migrant species may be trapped in isolated and incompatible habitats due to losing topography and range (Dullinger et al. 2012 ). For example, a study indicated that the American pika has been extirpated or intensely diminished in some regions, primarily attributed to the CC-impacted extinction or at least local extirpation (Stewart et al. 2015 ). Besides, the anticipation of persistent responses to the impacts of CC often requires data records of several decades to rigorously analyze the critical pre and post CC patterns at species and ecosystem levels (Manes et al. 2021 ; Testa et al. 2018 ).

Nonetheless, the availability of such long-term data records is rare; hence, attempts are needed to focus on these profound aspects. Biodiversity is also vulnerable to the other associated impacts of CC, such as rising temperatures, droughts, and certain invasive pest species. For instance, a study revealed the changes in the composition of plankton communities attributed to rising temperatures. Henceforth, alterations in such aquatic producer communities, i.e., diatoms and calcareous plants, can ultimately lead to variation in the recycling of biological carbon. Moreover, such changes are characterized as a potential contributor to CO 2 differences between the Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods (Kohfeld et al. 2005 ).

Climate change implications on human health

It is an understood corporality that human health is a significant victim of CC (Costello et al. 2009 ). According to the WHO, CC might be responsible for 250,000 additional deaths per year during 2030–2050 (Watts et al. 2015 ). These deaths are attributed to extreme weather-induced mortality and morbidity and the global expansion of vector-borne diseases (Lemery et al. 2021; Yang and Usman 2021 ; Meierrieks 2021 ; UNEP 2017 ). Here, some of the emerging health issues pertinent to this global problem are briefly described.

Climate change and antimicrobial resistance with corresponding economic costs

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an up-surging complex global health challenge (Garner et al. 2019 ; Lemery et al. 2021 ). Health professionals across the globe are extremely worried due to this phenomenon that has critical potential to reverse almost all the progress that has been achieved so far in the health discipline (Gosling and Arnell 2016 ). A massive amount of antibiotics is produced by many pharmaceutical industries worldwide, and the pathogenic microorganisms are gradually developing resistance to them, which can be comprehended how strongly this aspect can shake the foundations of national and global economies (UNEP 2017 ). This statement is supported by the fact that AMR is not developing in a particular region or country. Instead, it is flourishing in every continent of the world (WHO 2018 ). This plague is heavily pushing humanity to the post-antibiotic era, in which currently antibiotic-susceptible pathogens will once again lead to certain endemics and pandemics after being resistant(WHO 2018 ). Undesirably, if this statement would become a factuality, there might emerge certain risks in undertaking sophisticated interventions such as chemotherapy, joint replacement cases, and organ transplantation (Su et al. 2018 ). Presently, the amplification of drug resistance cases has made common illnesses like pneumonia, post-surgical infections, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc., too difficult and costly to be treated or cure well (WHO 2018 ). From a simple example, it can be assumed how easily antibiotic-resistant strains can be transmitted from one person to another and ultimately travel across the boundaries (Berendonk et al. 2015 ). Talking about the second- and third-generation classes of antibiotics, e.g., most renowned generations of cephalosporin antibiotics that are more expensive, broad-spectrum, more toxic, and usually require more extended periods whenever prescribed to patients (Lemery et al. 2021 ; Pärnänen et al. 2019 ). This scenario has also revealed that the abundance of resistant strains of pathogens was also higher in the Southern part (WHO 2018 ). As southern parts are generally warmer than their counterparts, it is evident from this example how CC-induced global warming can augment the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains within the biosphere, eventually putting additional economic burden in the face of developing new and costlier antibiotics. The ARG exchange to susceptible bacteria through one of the potential mechanisms, transformation, transduction, and conjugation; Selection pressure can be caused by certain antibiotics, metals or pesticides, etc., as shown in Fig.  5 .

A typical interaction between the susceptible and resistant strains.

Source: Elsayed et al. ( 2021 ); Karkman et al. ( 2018 )

Certain studies highlighted that conventional urban wastewater treatment plants are typical hotspots where most bacterial strains exchange genetic material through horizontal gene transfer (Fig.  5 ). Although at present, the extent of risks associated with the antibiotic resistance found in wastewater is complicated; environmental scientists and engineers have particular concerns about the potential impacts of these antibiotic resistance genes on human health (Ashbolt 2015 ). At most undesirable and worst case, these antibiotic-resistant genes containing bacteria can make their way to enter into the environment (Pruden et al. 2013 ), irrigation water used for crops and public water supplies and ultimately become a part of food chains and food webs (Ma et al. 2019 ; D. Wu et al. 2019 ). This problem has been reported manifold in several countries (Hendriksen et al. 2019 ), where wastewater as a means of irrigated water is quite common.

Climate change and vector borne-diseases

Temperature is a fundamental factor for the sustenance of living entities regardless of an ecosystem. So, a specific living being, especially a pathogen, requires a sophisticated temperature range to exist on earth. The second essential component of CC is precipitation, which also impacts numerous infectious agents’ transport and dissemination patterns. Global rising temperature is a significant cause of many species extinction. On the one hand, this changing environmental temperature may be causing species extinction, and on the other, this warming temperature might favor the thriving of some new organisms. Here, it was evident that some pathogens may also upraise once non-evident or reported (Patz et al. 2000 ). This concept can be exemplified through certain pathogenic strains of microorganisms that how the likelihood of various diseases increases in response to climate warming-induced environmental changes (Table ​ (Table2 2 ).

Examples of how various environmental changes affect various infectious diseases in humans

Environmental modifications	Potential diseases	The causative organisms and pathway of effect
Construction of canals, dams, irrigation pathways	Schistosomiasis	Snail host locale, human contact
	Malaria	Upbringing places for mosquitoes
	Helminthiases	Larval contact due to moist soil
	River blindness	Blackfly upbringing
Agro-strengthening	Malaria	Crop pesticides
	Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever	Rodent abundance, contact
Suburbanization	Cholera	deprived hygiene, asepsis; augmented water municipal assembling pollution
	Dengue	Water-gathering rubbishes Aedes aegypti mosquito upbringing sites
	Cutaneous leishmaniasis	PSandfly vectors
Deforestation and new tenancy	Malaria	Upbringing sites and trajectories, migration of vulnerable people
	Oropouche	upsurge contact, upbringing of directions
	Visceral leishmaniasis	Recurrent contact with sandfly vectors
Agriculture	Lyme disease	Tick hosts, outside revelation
Ocean heating	Red tide	Poisonous algal blooms

Source: Aron and Patz ( 2001 )

A recent example is an outburst of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Republic of China, causing pneumonia and severe acute respiratory complications (Cui et al. 2021 ; Song et al. 2021 ). The large family of viruses is harbored in numerous animals, bats, and snakes in particular (livescience.com) with the subsequent transfer into human beings. Hence, it is worth noting that the thriving of numerous vectors involved in spreading various diseases is influenced by Climate change (Ogden 2018 ; Santos et al. 2021 ).

Psychological impacts of climate change

Climate change (CC) is responsible for the rapid dissemination and exaggeration of certain epidemics and pandemics. In addition to the vast apparent impacts of climate change on health, forestry, agriculture, etc., it may also have psychological implications on vulnerable societies. It can be exemplified through the recent outburst of (COVID-19) in various countries around the world (Pal 2021 ). Besides, the victims of this viral infection have made healthy beings scarier and terrified. In the wake of such epidemics, people with common colds or fever are also frightened and must pass specific regulatory protocols. Living in such situations continuously terrifies the public and makes the stress familiar, which eventually makes them psychologically weak (npr.org).

CC boosts the extent of anxiety, distress, and other issues in public, pushing them to develop various mental-related problems. Besides, frequent exposure to extreme climatic catastrophes such as geological disasters also imprints post-traumatic disorder, and their ubiquitous occurrence paves the way to developing chronic psychological dysfunction. Moreover, repetitive listening from media also causes an increase in the person’s stress level (Association 2020 ). Similarly, communities living in flood-prone areas constantly live in extreme fear of drowning and die by floods. In addition to human lives, the flood-induced destruction of physical infrastructure is a specific reason for putting pressure on these communities (Ogden 2018 ). For instance, Ogden ( 2018 ) comprehensively denoted that Katrina’s Hurricane augmented the mental health issues in the victim communities.

Climate change impacts on the forestry sector

Forests are the global regulators of the world’s climate (FAO 2018 ) and have an indispensable role in regulating global carbon and nitrogen cycles (Rehman et al. 2021 ; Reichstein and Carvalhais 2019 ). Hence, disturbances in forest ecology affect the micro and macro-climates (Ellison et al. 2017 ). Climate warming, in return, has profound impacts on the growth and productivity of transboundary forests by influencing the temperature and precipitation patterns, etc. As CC induces specific changes in the typical structure and functions of ecosystems (Zhang et al. 2017 ) as well impacts forest health, climate change also has several devastating consequences such as forest fires, droughts, pest outbreaks (EPA 2018 ), and last but not the least is the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. The rising frequency and intensity of another CC product, i.e., droughts, pose plenty of challenges to the well-being of global forests (Diffenbaugh et al. 2017 ), which is further projected to increase soon (Hartmann et al. 2018 ; Lehner et al. 2017 ; Rehman et al. 2021 ). Hence, CC induces storms, with more significant impacts also put extra pressure on the survival of the global forests (Martínez-Alvarado et al. 2018 ), significantly since their influences are augmented during higher winter precipitations with corresponding wetter soils causing weak root anchorage of trees (Brázdil et al. 2018 ). Surging temperature regimes causes alterations in usual precipitation patterns, which is a significant hurdle for the survival of temperate forests (Allen et al. 2010 ; Flannigan et al. 2013 ), letting them encounter severe stress and disturbances which adversely affects the local tree species (Hubbart et al. 2016 ; Millar and Stephenson 2015 ; Rehman et al. 2021 ).

Climate change impacts on forest-dependent communities

Forests are the fundamental livelihood resource for about 1.6 billion people worldwide; out of them, 350 million are distinguished with relatively higher reliance (Bank 2008 ). Agro-forestry-dependent communities comprise 1.2 billion, and 60 million indigenous people solely rely on forests and their products to sustain their lives (Sunderlin et al. 2005 ). For example, in the entire African continent, more than 2/3rd of inhabitants depend on forest resources and woodlands for their alimonies, e.g., food, fuelwood and grazing (Wasiq and Ahmad 2004 ). The livings of these people are more intensely affected by the climatic disruptions making their lives harder (Brown et al. 2014 ). On the one hand, forest communities are incredibly vulnerable to CC due to their livelihoods, cultural and spiritual ties as well as socio-ecological connections, and on the other, they are not familiar with the term “climate change.” (Rahman and Alam 2016 ). Among the destructive impacts of temperature and rainfall, disruption of the agroforestry crops with resultant downscale growth and yield (Macchi et al. 2008 ). Cruz ( 2015 ) ascribed that forest-dependent smallholder farmers in the Philippines face the enigma of delayed fruiting, more severe damages by insect and pest incidences due to unfavorable temperature regimes, and changed rainfall patterns.

Among these series of challenges to forest communities, their well-being is also distinctly vulnerable to CC. Though the detailed climate change impacts on human health have been comprehensively mentioned in the previous section, some studies have listed a few more devastating effects on the prosperity of forest-dependent communities. For instance, the Himalayan people have been experiencing frequent skin-borne diseases such as malaria and other skin diseases due to increasing mosquitoes, wild boar as well, and new wasps species, particularly in higher altitudes that were almost non-existent before last 5–10 years (Xu et al. 2008 ). Similarly, people living at high altitudes in Bangladesh have experienced frequent mosquito-borne calamities (Fardous; Sharma 2012 ). In addition, the pace of other waterborne diseases such as infectious diarrhea, cholera, pathogenic induced abdominal complications and dengue has also been boosted in other distinguished regions of Bangladesh (Cell 2009 ; Gunter et al. 2008 ).

Pest outbreak

Upscaling hotter climate may positively affect the mobile organisms with shorter generation times because they can scurry from harsh conditions than the immobile species (Fettig et al. 2013 ; Schoene and Bernier 2012 ) and are also relatively more capable of adapting to new environments (Jactel et al. 2019 ). It reveals that insects adapt quickly to global warming due to their mobility advantages. Due to past outbreaks, the trees (forests) are relatively more susceptible victims (Kurz et al. 2008 ). Before CC, the influence of factors mentioned earlier, i.e., droughts and storms, was existent and made the forests susceptible to insect pest interventions; however, the global forests remain steadfast, assiduous, and green (Jactel et al. 2019 ). The typical reasons could be the insect herbivores were regulated by several tree defenses and pressures of predation (Wilkinson and Sherratt 2016 ). As climate greatly influences these phenomena, the global forests cannot be so sedulous against such challenges (Jactel et al. 2019 ). Table ​ Table3 3 demonstrates some of the particular considerations with practical examples that are essential while mitigating the impacts of CC in the forestry sector.

Essential considerations while mitigating the climate change impacts on the forestry sector

Attributes		Description	Forestry example
Purposefulness	Autonomous	Includes continuing application of prevailing information and techniques in retort to experienced climate change	Thin to reduce drought stress; construct breaks in vegetation to Stop feast of wildfires, vermin, and ailments
Timing	Preemptive	Necessitates interactive change to diminish future injury, jeopardy, and weakness, often through planning, observing, growing consciousness, structure partnerships, and ornamental erudition or investigation	Ensure forest property against potential future losses; transition to species or stand erections that are better reformed to predictable future conditions; trial with new forestry organization practices
Scope	Incremental	Involves making small changes in present circumstances to circumvent disturbances and ongoing to chase the same purposes	Condense rotation pauses to decrease the likelihood of harm to storm Events, differentiate classes to blowout jeopardy; thin to lessening compactness and defenselessness of jungle stands to tension
Goal	Opposition	Shield or defend from alteration; take procedures to reservation constancy and battle change	Generate refugia for rare classes; defend woodlands from austere fire and wind uproar; alter forest construction to reduce harshness or extent of wind and ice impairment; establish breaks in vegetation to dampen the spread of vermin, ailments, and wildfire

Source : Fischer ( 2019 )

Climate change impacts on tourism

Tourism is a commercial activity that has roots in multi-dimensions and an efficient tool with adequate job generation potential, revenue creation, earning of spectacular foreign exchange, enhancement in cross-cultural promulgation and cooperation, a business tool for entrepreneurs and eventually for the country’s national development (Arshad et al. 2018 ; Scott 2021 ). Among a plethora of other disciplines, the tourism industry is also a distinct victim of climate warming (Gössling et al. 2012 ; Hall et al. 2015 ) as the climate is among the essential resources that enable tourism in particular regions as most preferred locations. Different places at different times of the year attract tourists both within and across the countries depending upon the feasibility and compatibility of particular weather patterns. Hence, the massive variations in these weather patterns resulting from CC will eventually lead to monumental challenges to the local economy in that specific area’s particular and national economy (Bujosa et al. 2015 ). For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report demonstrated that the global tourism industry had faced a considerable decline in the duration of ski season, including the loss of some ski areas and the dramatic shifts in tourist destinations’ climate warming.

Furthermore, different studies (Neuvonen et al. 2015 ; Scott et al. 2004 ) indicated that various currently perfect tourist spots, e.g., coastal areas, splendid islands, and ski resorts, will suffer consequences of CC. It is also worth noting that the quality and potential of administrative management potential to cope with the influence of CC on the tourism industry is of crucial significance, which renders specific strengths of resiliency to numerous destinations to withstand against it (Füssel and Hildén 2014 ). Similarly, in the partial or complete absence of adequate socio-economic and socio-political capital, the high-demanding tourist sites scurry towards the verge of vulnerability. The susceptibility of tourism is based on different components such as the extent of exposure, sensitivity, life-supporting sectors, and capacity assessment factors (Füssel and Hildén 2014 ). It is obvious corporality that sectors such as health, food, ecosystems, human habitat, infrastructure, water availability, and the accessibility of a particular region are prone to CC. Henceforth, the sensitivity of these critical sectors to CC and, in return, the adaptive measures are a hallmark in determining the composite vulnerability of climate warming (Ionescu et al. 2009 ).

Moreover, the dependence on imported food items, poor hygienic conditions, and inadequate health professionals are dominant aspects affecting the local terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Meanwhile, the greater dependency on ecosystem services and its products also makes a destination more fragile to become a prey of CC (Rizvi et al. 2015 ). Some significant non-climatic factors are important indicators of a particular ecosystem’s typical health and functioning, e.g., resource richness and abundance portray the picture of ecosystem stability. Similarly, the species abundance is also a productive tool that ensures that the ecosystem has a higher buffering capacity, which is terrific in terms of resiliency (Roscher et al. 2013 ).

Climate change impacts on the economic sector

Climate plays a significant role in overall productivity and economic growth. Due to its increasingly global existence and its effect on economic growth, CC has become one of the major concerns of both local and international environmental policymakers (Ferreira et al. 2020 ; Gleditsch 2021 ; Abbass et al. 2021b ; Lamperti et al. 2021 ). The adverse effects of CC on the overall productivity factor of the agricultural sector are therefore significant for understanding the creation of local adaptation policies and the composition of productive climate policy contracts. Previous studies on CC in the world have already forecasted its effects on the agricultural sector. Researchers have found that global CC will impact the agricultural sector in different world regions. The study of the impacts of CC on various agrarian activities in other demographic areas and the development of relative strategies to respond to effects has become a focal point for researchers (Chandioet al. 2020 ; Gleditsch 2021 ; Mosavi et al. 2020 ).

With the rapid growth of global warming since the 1980s, the temperature has started increasing globally, which resulted in the incredible transformation of rain and evaporation in the countries. The agricultural development of many countries has been reliant, delicate, and susceptible to CC for a long time, and it is on the development of agriculture total factor productivity (ATFP) influence different crops and yields of farmers (Alhassan 2021 ; Wu  2020 ).

Food security and natural disasters are increasing rapidly in the world. Several major climatic/natural disasters have impacted local crop production in the countries concerned. The effects of these natural disasters have been poorly controlled by the development of the economies and populations and may affect human life as well. One example is China, which is among the world’s most affected countries, vulnerable to natural disasters due to its large population, harsh environmental conditions, rapid CC, low environmental stability, and disaster power. According to the January 2016 statistical survey, China experienced an economic loss of 298.3 billion Yuan, and about 137 million Chinese people were severely affected by various natural disasters (Xie et al. 2018 ).

Mitigation and adaptation strategies of climate changes

Adaptation and mitigation are the crucial factors to address the response to CC (Jahanzad et al. 2020 ). Researchers define mitigation on climate changes, and on the other hand, adaptation directly impacts climate changes like floods. To some extent, mitigation reduces or moderates greenhouse gas emission, and it becomes a critical issue both economically and environmentally (Botzen et al. 2021 ; Jahanzad et al. 2020 ; Kongsager 2018 ; Smit et al. 2000 ; Vale et al. 2021 ; Usman et al. 2021 ; Verheyen 2005 ).

Researchers have deep concern about the adaptation and mitigation methodologies in sectoral and geographical contexts. Agriculture, industry, forestry, transport, and land use are the main sectors to adapt and mitigate policies(Kärkkäinen et al. 2020 ; Waheed et al. 2021 ). Adaptation and mitigation require particular concern both at the national and international levels. The world has faced a significant problem of climate change in the last decades, and adaptation to these effects is compulsory for economic and social development. To adapt and mitigate against CC, one should develop policies and strategies at the international level (Hussain et al. 2020 ). Figure  6 depicts the list of current studies on sectoral impacts of CC with adaptation and mitigation measures globally.

Sectoral impacts of climate change with adaptation and mitigation measures.

Conclusion and future perspectives

Specific socio-agricultural, socio-economic, and physical systems are the cornerstone of psychological well-being, and the alteration in these systems by CC will have disastrous impacts. Climate variability, alongside other anthropogenic and natural stressors, influences human and environmental health sustainability. Food security is another concerning scenario that may lead to compromised food quality, higher food prices, and inadequate food distribution systems. Global forests are challenged by different climatic factors such as storms, droughts, flash floods, and intense precipitation. On the other hand, their anthropogenic wiping is aggrandizing their existence. Undoubtedly, the vulnerability scale of the world’s regions differs; however, appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures can aid the decision-making bodies in developing effective policies to tackle its impacts. Presently, modern life on earth has tailored to consistent climatic patterns, and accordingly, adapting to such considerable variations is of paramount importance. Because the faster changes in climate will make it harder to survive and adjust, this globally-raising enigma calls for immediate attention at every scale ranging from elementary community level to international level. Still, much effort, research, and dedication are required, which is the most critical time. Some policy implications can help us to mitigate the consequences of climate change, especially the most affected sectors like the agriculture sector;

Warming might lengthen the season in frost-prone growing regions (temperate and arctic zones), allowing for longer-maturing seasonal cultivars with better yields (Pfadenhauer 2020 ; Bonacci 2019 ). Extending the planting season may allow additional crops each year; when warming leads to frequent warmer months highs over critical thresholds, a split season with a brief summer fallow may be conceivable for short-period crops such as wheat barley, cereals, and many other vegetable crops. The capacity to prolong the planting season in tropical and subtropical places where the harvest season is constrained by precipitation or agriculture farming occurs after the year may be more limited and dependent on how precipitation patterns vary (Wu et al. 2017 ).

The genetic component is comprehensive for many yields, but it is restricted like kiwi fruit for a few. Ali et al. ( 2017 ) investigated how new crops will react to climatic changes (also stated in Mall et al. 2017 ). Hot temperature, drought, insect resistance; salt tolerance; and overall crop production and product quality increases would all be advantageous (Akkari 2016 ). Genetic mapping and engineering can introduce a greater spectrum of features. The adoption of genetically altered cultivars has been slowed, particularly in the early forecasts owing to the complexity in ensuring features are expediently expressed throughout the entire plant, customer concerns, economic profitability, and regulatory impediments (Wirehn 2018 ; Davidson et al. 2016 ).

To get the full benefit of the CO 2 would certainly require additional nitrogen and other fertilizers. Nitrogen not consumed by the plants may be excreted into groundwater, discharged into water surface, or emitted from the land, soil nitrous oxide when large doses of fertilizer are sprayed. Increased nitrogen levels in groundwater sources have been related to human chronic illnesses and impact marine ecosystems. Cultivation, grain drying, and other field activities have all been examined in depth in the studies (Barua et al. 2018 ).

• The technological and socio-economic adaptation

The policy consequence of the causative conclusion is that as a source of alternative energy, biofuel production is one of the routes that explain oil price volatility separate from international macroeconomic factors. Even though biofuel production has just begun in a few sample nations, there is still a tremendous worldwide need for feedstock to satisfy industrial expansion in China and the USA, which explains the food price relationship to the global oil price. Essentially, oil-exporting countries may create incentives in their economies to increase food production. It may accomplish by giving farmers financing, seedlings, fertilizers, and farming equipment. Because of the declining global oil price and, as a result, their earnings from oil export, oil-producing nations may be unable to subsidize food imports even in the near term. As a result, these countries can boost the agricultural value chain for export. It may be accomplished through R&D and adding value to their food products to increase income by correcting exchange rate misalignment and adverse trade terms. These nations may also diversify their economies away from oil, as dependence on oil exports alone is no longer economically viable given the extreme volatility of global oil prices. Finally, resource-rich and oil-exporting countries can convert to non-food renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro, coal, wind, wave, and tidal energy. By doing so, both world food and oil supplies would be maintained rather than harmed.

IRENA’s modeling work shows that, if a comprehensive policy framework is in place, efforts toward decarbonizing the energy future will benefit economic activity, jobs (outweighing losses in the fossil fuel industry), and welfare. Countries with weak domestic supply chains and a large reliance on fossil fuel income, in particular, must undertake structural reforms to capitalize on the opportunities inherent in the energy transition. Governments continue to give major policy assistance to extract fossil fuels, including tax incentives, financing, direct infrastructure expenditures, exemptions from environmental regulations, and other measures. The majority of major oil and gas producing countries intend to increase output. Some countries intend to cut coal output, while others plan to maintain or expand it. While some nations are beginning to explore and execute policies aimed at a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuel production, these efforts have yet to impact major producing countries’ plans and goals. Verifiable and comparable data on fossil fuel output and assistance from governments and industries are critical to closing the production gap. Governments could increase openness by declaring their production intentions in their climate obligations under the Paris Agreement.

It is firmly believed that achieving the Paris Agreement commitments is doubtlful without undergoing renewable energy transition across the globe (Murshed 2020 ; Zhao et al. 2022 ). Policy instruments play the most important role in determining the degree of investment in renewable energy technology. This study examines the efficacy of various policy strategies in the renewable energy industry of multiple nations. Although its impact is more visible in established renewable energy markets, a renewable portfolio standard is also a useful policy instrument. The cost of producing renewable energy is still greater than other traditional energy sources. Furthermore, government incentives in the R&D sector can foster innovation in this field, resulting in cost reductions in the renewable energy industry. These nations may export their technologies and share their policy experiences by forming networks among their renewable energy-focused organizations. All policy measures aim to reduce production costs while increasing the proportion of renewables to a country’s energy system. Meanwhile, long-term contracts with renewable energy providers, government commitment and control, and the establishment of long-term goals can assist developing nations in deploying renewable energy technology in their energy sector.

Author contribution

KA: Writing the original manuscript, data collection, data analysis, Study design, Formal analysis, Visualization, Revised draft, Writing-review, and editing. MZQ: Writing the original manuscript, data collection, data analysis, Writing-review, and editing. HS: Contribution to the contextualization of the theme, Conceptualization, Validation, Supervision, literature review, Revised drapt, and writing review and editing. MM: Writing review and editing, compiling the literature review, language editing. HM: Writing review and editing, compiling the literature review, language editing. IY: Contribution to the contextualization of the theme, literature review, and writing review and editing.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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NOAA seeks proposals to advance climate science, resilience

Climate program office opens 2024 funding opportunity.

NOAA Climate Program Office has announced new funding opportunities for research to advance our understanding of Earth’s climate system. The collage shows examples of weather, ocean, fisheries habitat and climate priorities for interdisciplinary research. (Image credit: NOAA)

The NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) announced today that its Fiscal Year 2024 grant competitions are open. 

This year’s notice of funding opportunity consists of six competitions to advance understanding of Earth’s climate system through interdisciplinary, integrated scientific research. The goal is to boost society’s ability to understand, plan for and respond to climate variability as well as extreme weather, water and climate events caused by climate change. 

“The rising toll of climate impacts present a significant challenge to human and environmental health, public safety, economic vitality and national and international security,” said Emily Menashes, a deputy assistant administrator for NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. “The Climate Program Office’s annual investment in advancing the nation’s climate science and services shows our continued dedication to providing the information and services needed to protect people, property, infrastructure and natural resources.”

The competitions for this year are:

• Improving understanding of urban air composition, the impact of climate change on urban air quality and use of this research to mitigate air pollution.
• Advancing understanding of ocean variability and change in support of NOAA’s Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative .
• Advancing an integrated NOAA capability for climate predictions and projections in support of NOAA's Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative . 
• Advancing understanding of multi-year to decadal climate variability and predictability for the U.S. climate.
• Improving NOAA climate models and applications.
• Offering an early career opportunity for exceptional research in Earth system model development and application.

Through its annual grant competitions, CPO seeks and funds innovative researchers across the nation to conduct cutting-edge research on a range of topics. The researchers eligible to apply include partners across NOAA as well as tribal nations and the broader academic, federal, international and private sector communities. 

“These Climate Program Office funding opportunities play a critical role in advancing science and informing decisions for climate adaptation, resilience and mitigation,” said Wayne Higgins, Ph.D., director of the NOAA Climate Program Office. “The funded projects will meet urgent climate challenges, incubate innovative advancements in Earth system and social science, support world-class assessment reports and help grow the next generation of experts supporting NOAA.”

Letters of intent for all but the “Understanding urban air in a changing climate”  competition are due August 18, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET . Letters of intent for the “Understanding urban air in a changing climate” competition are due September 11, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET . 

Full applications for all competitions are due November 17, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET . 

Prior to submitting letters of intent, applicants are encouraged to learn more about CPO , its programs and specific priorities for FY 2024. Several of this year’s competitions align with five urgent, climate-related challenges facing society that CPO has prioritized: 1) extreme heat, health, and compounding hazards; 2) droughts, floods, water availability and quality; 3) coastal changes and inundation; 4) changes in marine and freshwater ecosystems; and 5) mitigation strategies to lessen or avoid risks by slowing or stopping the human causes of global warming.

CPO programs are a vital part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and NOAA’s mission to build a Climate-Ready Nation. 

Learn more about CPO's FY 2024 competitions and how to apply.

Media contact

Monica Allen,  monica.allen@noaa.gov , (202) 379-6693

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Call for proposals: to draft a new global research agenda for climate and health

Deadline: 1 december 2023.

Climate change is now recognized as one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, and protecting health from its impacts is an emerging priority for the public health community. The potential range and magnitude of associated health risks should be central to the rationale for actions to mitigate the occurrence of climate change and to adapt to effects that are already happening. The evidence base on climate change and health has grown rapidly and has recently been summarized through the 6 th  Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Research has mainly concentrated on the identification, characterization, and quantification of the linkages between climate and health, with less focus on applied research to lessen associated health risks. Research output in the peer-reviewed literature is predominantly supply driven by researchers, rather than demand driven by policy makers. This results in weak or unbalanced coverage of the priority issues identified by governments or other decision-makers and misses the opportunity to increase engagement and co-ownership through the co-development of research agendas between the end-users and the producers of evidence. To address these issues, a set of global research priorities in climate change and health shall be identified, and a new research agenda developed aiming to guide funders and decision makers of research in climate change and health for strengthening the evidence for international and national action on climate change and health.

Complete description [pdf]

Duties and responsibilities

WHO Climate Change and Health (CCH) team would like to engage with a consultant to contribute to the implementation of the following activities:

• Facilitate the preparation and implementation of the consultation processes with a wide range of experts and relevant stakeholders on research priorities (at regional and global levels) in climate change and health, including also identification and selection of participants, preparation of input documents, consultation meetings, design and analysis of online surveys and drafting of outcome reports.
• Prepare and implement a process on foresight in climate change and health research with experts and relevant stakeholders, including also identification and selection of participants, preparation of input documents, meetings and drafting of outcome reports.
• Draft the final modular research agenda (website and report).

Qualifications, experience, skills and languages

Educational Qualifications

• Essential: Minimum first university degree in public health, environmental health, climate science, health research, environmental and earth sciences, biology, or equivalent.
• Desirable: Advanced university degree in public health, environmental health, climate science, health research, environmental and earth sciences, biology, or equivalent.
• Essential: 5 to 10 years of relevant experience in stakeholder consultations and research in public health, environment, climate change, and health, including environmental health, preferably at an international level.  
• Prior publications (thesis, reports, scientific articles, policy briefs, or similar) as author on topics related to climate change and health
• Previous work experience within WHO or another UN agency
• Experience in stakeholder consultations at international level

Skills/Knowledge

• Technical knowledge of health linkages with climate change, social and environmental determinants of health, One Health, Planetary Health, and with climate change mitigation and adaptation action.
• Excellent interpersonal, collaborative, and communication skills.
• Good writing skills in the preparation of technical and scientific reports, project briefs, peer-reviewed publications, etc.
• Ability to work in international settings with staff from various geographical regions.
• Knowledge of stakeholder consultation processes.
• Fundamental data analysis and data management skills.

Languages and level required

Essential: Expert knowledge of English.

Desirable: Knowledge of another WHO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish).

Period:  9 months (from January 2024)

Technical Supervision

The Climate Change and Health team.

If you are interested, please send your CV and a short cover letter highlighting your relevant experience by 1 December 2023 to  [email protected]  and add "Consultancy on research agenda" to the email's subject.

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Call for proposals: Case studies to advance research on climate change adaptation strategies and their impact on public health

The call for applications is closed. Submissions are being reviewed by the project’s Steering Committee. Applicants will be notified in January 2024 regarding the status of their submission.

Instrucciones detalladas en español

As part of the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative and in collaboration with partner NIH Institutes and Centers, the Center for Global Health Studies (CGHS) of the Fogarty International Center (FIC) within the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is inviting submissions for a collection of case studies on adaptation strategies that respond to the impact of climate change on public health. For the purposes of this call, adaptation is broadly defined as the process of adjustment to actual and potential climate-led impacts. A case study approach is particularly useful when there is a need to explore in-depth information of a topic or event, identify gaps in current literature, and lessons learnt in multiple settings (see reference 1 ).This collection is intended to shed light on current knowledge and the potential for research to increase our understanding of climate change adaptation and its impact on health. For instance, research is needed to:

• Increase our knowledge of evidence-based adaptation strategies that impact health;
• Support the use of innovative research approaches which incorporate quantitative and/or qualitative assessments to better understand the impact of climate adaptation strategies on health outcomes;
• Increase our understanding of the impacts of climate change adaptation on health among populations disproportionately impacted by climate change, including those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and under-resourced and marginalized populations globally;
• Encourage use of implementation science methodologies to translate adaptation strategies promote the uptake, scale-up, and spread across different contexts; and
• Increase opportunities to strengthen climate and health research capacity and support scholars from LMICs to study climate adaptation and health and publish their results.

This project will contribute to building a solutions-oriented evidence base focused on the threats to health from global climate change. The overarching goal of this collection is to identify and understand current or historical climate adaptation strategies that address deteriorating health outcomes due to climate-led stressors, thereby contributing to the scientific evidence base on the topic. Accordingly, the collection will help identify research priorities and future research needs in this area.

Researchers, practitioners, and implementers from any country, especially LMICs, are encouraged to submit case study proposals by November 13, 2023 . The final collection of cases will include a variety of adaptation strategies focused on diverse health outcomes across different geographical areas, with special attention to adaptation strategies that focus on reducing the impacts of climate change on health among under-resourced and marginalized populations. A Steering Committee of experts in the field and CGHS staff will select 8-12 proposals to be developed into full case studies. CGHS will engage with leading climate and health-focused journals to explore the potential of publishing the selected case studies. Limited financial support may be available to support the development of the case studies (further details are included below).

Climate change has exacerbated health risks and adverse health outcomes that vary temporally and spatially. Existing evidence confirms an unprecedented rise in the incidence of climate-led stressors including, but not limited to, increased ambient temperatures, extreme and erratic precipitation, extreme weather events, sea level rise, wildfires, and desertification. These stressors have exacerbated exposure to conditions such as non-optimal temperatures (especially heat), reduced air quality, food and water systems disruption, migration and internal displacements, resource conflicts, disrupted healthcare systems, and changes in infectious agents. This has led to worsening public health outcomes such as premature mortality, heat-related illnesses, exacerbation of non-communicable diseases, increased vector-borne diseases, poor maternal and child health outcomes, malnutrition, and mental health consequences (see reference 2 ). Health inequities, primarily a function of social, political, economic, behavioral, and institutional factors, have further deteriorated due to climate change. There exists a broad consensus that adverse consequences for health are already occurring, with the greatest impacts affecting LMICs and communities who have been historically marginalized in places all around the globe. These climate shifts will continue to worsen in many places for decades to come. This calls for urgent attention to identify effective adaptation practices that can mitigate public health risks and consequences due to climate change in multiple geographical areas.

Adaptation and health outcomes

Adaptation is broadly defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the process of adjustment to actual and potential climate-led impacts (see reference 3 ). Examples of adaptation strategies include, but are not limited to, heat-resistant crops, behavior change, effective climate communication and awareness building, green infrastructure, wetland restoration, coastal land preservation, health system resilience (both structural and functional), health workforce capacity-building, and microfinancing (see reference 4 and reference 5 ). While adaptation may not reduce the larger climate-led stressors, they tend to minimize the exposure pathways, thereby abating the adverse consequences of climate change on human and natural systems.

While many climate adaptation strategies are being developed and deployed globally, few are designed to directly address health outcomes. The selected case studies will offer new insights on: 1) adaptation strategies that appear particularly promising with respect to impact on health; 2) theoretical and methodological challenges in studying the impact of climate adaptation on health; 3) innovative research approaches and methods that can be deployed to study climate adaptation and health; 4) strategies to understand how and why adaptation interventions impact health; and 5) implementation science approaches to enable translation of adaptation strategies across different contexts, geographies, and areas of health.

Completed case studies will be made widely available to the public and will be disseminated to key stakeholders including academic researchers, funders, policymakers, and communities most impacted by climate change.

The overall objective of this project is to identify and understand current or historical adaptation responses that can be better harnessed to address deteriorating health outcomes using relevant and appropriate research approaches and methodologies. The specific aims of this collection of cases are to:

• Center the importance of examining the health as a critical outcome in the larger climate adaptation research and implementation agenda.
• Encourage scholars and funders to conduct and support more high-quality adaptation research as it relates to climate and health, especially in LMICs that are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
• Review current adaptation strategies to improve our understanding of adaptive capacity of populations most at risk of climate change impacts.
• Identify how and when the impact of climate-led adaptation responses on public health outcomes has been or can be assessed through research.

Submissions may utilize diverse approaches and methods, including, but not limited to, use of longitudinal data, a counterfactual and/or comparison area, qualitative research, community engaged/community based participatory research, and/or implementation science. Please note that this collection does not support primary data collection or human subjects research. Applicants may conduct analyses on previously collected data or previously completed research. They may also conduct interviews or focus group interviews as long as those activities do not constitute primary data collection or human subjects research.

Eligibility

This call is open to researchers, practitioners, and implementers from any country and applicants from LMICs ( as defined by the World Bank ) are especially encouraged to submit a proposal. Studies focusing on an LMIC must include an author from that country or region. Submissions are welcome from high-income countries (HICs), especially those that focus on marginalized populations and from authors underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral sciences. However, the collection will prioritize submissions focused on LMIC adaptations and climate health threats, written by authors from those countries and regions.

This call is not intended to support original research. Rather, applicants are invited to develop analytical case studies of climate change adaptation strategies that have already been deployed. However, strong case studies analyzing ongoing adaptation strategies may be considered if the deployment will be completed prior to the final submission deadline. Case studies may analyze adaptation strategies deployed by the applicants themselves or by carefully studying adaptation strategies deployed by others.

The application process involves two stages of submission. In the first stage, we welcome the submission of an application proposal as a Microsoft Word or PDF document (2 pages maximum, excluding the appendix). The application proposal must include the following components:

• Description of the geographical area where the adaptation strategy was deployed, and the demography of the populations studied.
• Description of the adaptation strategy and how it was implemented.
• Justification for the adaptation strategy, including any evidence to support its efficacy, how it is likely to address the problem under investigation, why it was chosen, etc.
• Discussion of climate-led stressors and exposure pathways related to the adaptation strategy.
• Discussion of the relevant health outcomes and how they were assessed.
• Description of the additional analyses to be undertaken by the submitting team to improve assessment of the health outcomes and or other variables associated with the adaptation strategy.
• Discussion of how the additional analysis this case study will contribute to understanding the scientific landscape, identifying gaps, and/or elucidating future research opportunities in the field.
• Source of the data to be used to construct the case study.
• Appendix 1 – Background and expertise of the authors contributing to the case study (1 paragraph for each author).
• Appendix 2 – CV (max. 2 pages) of the contributing authors.

In the second stage, selected application proposals will be invited to submit a complete case study. A draft framework for the case study is discussed below.

Case study format

• The abstract should include the following: background/context, approach, discussion, and lessons learned.
• Geographical area and the demography of target populations.
• Climate stressors experienced by the population and the exposure pathways.
• Adaptation strategy, how it was chosen, timeframe of implementation, and how it was implemented, (e.g., justification, multi-level and multi-sectoral adaptation approaches, level of adaptation taking place, sectors engaged, etc.).
• Summary of current health condition of the population with reference to the health outcomes of interest.
• Discuss whether and how communities were involved in the planning and implementation of the adaptation and/or their response to it.
• Discuss the study design, methods, measurements, and the justification of the selected approach to assessing the impact of adaptation responses on health outcomes for the case study.
• Discuss how the adaptation responses addressed the key health risks.
• Examine the role of multiple social, economic, behavioral, and institutional drivers in the community and how they interact with climate stressors, exposure pathways, and health outcomes.
• Examine the unintended consequences of adaptation responses on health outcomes (i.e., maladaptation).
• Discussion of how this case study contributes to understanding the scientific landscape, identifying gaps, and/or elucidating future research opportunities in the field.
• Examine how the adaptation strategies discussed are relevant/applicable to different countries and contexts.
• Share key lessons learned by the team throughout the process.
• Discuss key challenges in developing the case study to examine the impact of climate change adaptation on health outcomes.
• Share insights on scientific workforce capacity needed to conduct adaptation research.
• Future directions including key remaining challenges/unmet needs.

Selection process and criteria

Applications will be distributed to the Steering Committee and reviewed based on the following criteria:

• Scientific and public health relevance of the case study.
• Innovative and scientific approach used to develop the case study.
• Case study location (preference will be given to locations that are underrepresented in the literature, e.g., LMICs).
• Extent to which the proposal discusses specific health impacts associated with the adaptation strategy.
• Focus on underrepresented, under-resourced, marginalized, and at-risk populations.
• Extent to which the case study discusses a specific climate change adaptation measure(s) or strategy addressing a specific climate hazard.
• Relevance of case study to future research and priority areas within the climate change and health landscape.
• Diversity of the submitting authors in terms of geographic locations, interdisciplinarity of teams, areas of expertise (preference will be given to authors under-represented in the field, e.g., authors from LMICs).

The Steering Committee and CGHS staff will ultimately select 8-12 application proposals to be developed into full case studies. This selection will be made with the goal of creating a diverse collection based on the geographic location of the case study, the geographic locations of authors and their institutions, adaptation strategies described, relevant climate stressors and exposure pathways, and health outcomes assessed.

Financial support

Updated September 20, 2023

Limited financial support is available for costs associated with developing and writing a case study for this project. Eligible costs include part-time salary support for a research assistant (e.g., an intern, student, or analyst) and/or limited travel/meeting expenses. Funds may NOT be used for primary research or for the development, deployment, or testing of an adaptation strategy. Use of these funds is subject to NIH approval. Maximum costs that can be requested per case study are $15,000, inclusive of indirect costs. All publication costs, including open access fees, will be separately covered by NIH. Questions regarding how these funds can be used should be emailed to [email protected] .

Use and dissemination

CGHS will work with a leading climate and health-focused, open-access and peer-reviewed journal(s) to explore publication of these case studies. If accepted for publication, the authors will work with CGHS to adjust the structure of the case studies to suit the journal's format. All publication costs, including open access fees, will be separately covered by NIH.

The final collection of cases may also be used as a compilation of white papers, policy briefs, or education tools. There may be future opportunities to present the case study as part of a webinar series or at relevant conferences.

Proposed timeline

• Call for case studies issued: August 14, 2023
• Application proposal due: November 13, 2023
• Steering Committee review and response to application proposals: January 2024
• Draft of complete case studies due to CGHS: May 2024
• Review by Steering Committee: June 2024
• Final draft of case study submitted to journal: August 2024

This is a tentative timeline and is subject to change.

Instructions for submission

Please submit your proposal in two parts:

• Complete an online form with basic information about the submitting team and the case study at this link: https://forms.office.com/g/10r9wRQMjJ
• Send an email to [email protected] with the lead submitter’s surname and the title of the application proposal in the subject of the email (e.g., Einstein_Theory of Relativity). Attach one file that includes your application proposal and the Appendix materials (e.g., CV for each team member) as an attached Microsoft Word or PDF document.

By submitting an application, an applicant affirms their ability and commitment to completing a case study within the specified timeline. They affirm the inclusion of their case study in any and all resulting deliverables, whether online or in print.

Please send questions by email to [email protected] .

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Updated December 7, 2023

Innovation Responds to Climate Change Proposals

• Original Paper
• Published: 02 September 2024

Cite this article

• Greg Tindall 1 ,
• Rebel A. Cole 2 &
• David Javakhadze   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1580-6309 3  

Climate change is an ethical and moral challenge of a global scale due to its potentially catastrophic implications for human welfare. Understanding forces that drive corporate adaptation to climate change is an important research topic in business ethics. In this paper, we propose that shareholder climate-related proposals could be a catalyst for corporate innovations in technologies mitigating climate change. Our results, based on the analysis of US firms, indicate that corporations respond positively to these proposals by producing more climate-related patents and citations. We also uncover potential casual channels of influence. Further, we find that corporate governance moderates the documented effects. These proposals lead to a more efficient and valuable innovation output, but lower firm performance in the short term. The real effect that shareholder proposals have on innovation gains clarity in the context of climate change, contributing to the discussion of investor “voice.”

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• Medical Ethics

Data availability

The data that has been used is confidential, from restricted-access sources.

Xiao and Shailer ( 2022 ) provide a novel systematic investigation of factors influencing stakeholders’ perceptions of the credibility of corporate sustainability reports.

What are shareholder proposals, and what makes them interesting? Established in 1942 (and amended several times), Rule 14a-8 was designed to give small shareholders a voice and managers ample opportunity to listen before being heard at annual meetings. The Rule now permits a shareholder to make a proposal of 500 words or less, if any of the following ownership amount and time requirements are met: 1) at least $2,000 in market value for at least three years; 2) or at least $15,000 for at least two years; 3) or at least $25,000 for at least one year. The proposal must be received at the company’s principal executive offices not less than 120 calendar days before the release of company's annual proxy statement, with shareholder intent to maintain the requisite interest through the annual meeting. For more formation, please see the Code of Federal Regulations, (Title 17, Volume 3, Sect. 240.14a-8, www.govinfo.gov ).

Theoretical perspectives on management’s response to stakeholder demands are influenced by corporate purpose.

Literature presents opposing views: Friedman’s ( 1970 ) profit-focused shareholder priority versus Stout’s ( 2013 )

inclusive stakeholder approach considering broader goals. See discussion on the subject in Clarke ( 2020 ).

The climate-related proposals to Chevron reflect this shift in emphasis toward a direct assessment of financial risk, from one of simple emission disclosure. From 1999 to 2009, requests for a “Report on Greenhouse Gas Emissions” were recurrent. Beginning in 2010, Chevron saw “Stockholder Proposals Regarding Financial Risks from Climate Change.”

Two examples from the 2016 proxy season highlight shareholder demands for innovation. Shareholders of Ameren Corp proposed “ITEM (4): SHAREHOLDER PROPOSAL RELATING TO A REPORT ON AGGRESSIVE RENEWABLE ENERGY ADOPTION.” Shareholders in AES Corp sponsored “PROPOSAL 4: A REPORT ON COMPANY POLICIES AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES” targeting the firm’s energy policies and emphasis on renewable sources.

In 2010, St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order requested a study “on how ExxonMobil, within a reasonable timeframe, can become the recognized industry leader in developing and making available the necessary technology (such as enhanced sequestration, engineered geothermal and the development of other renewable energy sources) to enable the U.S.A. to become energy independent in an environmentally sustainable way. By 2017, The New York State Common Retirement Fund sponsored the climate proposal that gained substantial press coverage, which essentially made a similar request: “…an annual assessment of the long-term portfolio impacts of technological advances and global climate change policies…” Further, the Board for Fluor Corporation has stated its opposition to repeated proposals from 2016 to 2018 requesting GHG reduction goals, by “Creating Technology to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” more specifically, by investing in NuScale Power, LLC along with Rolls-Royce.

We emphasize that climate-friendly boards and heightened managerial perceptions of climate risk are potential mechanisms. We argue that shareholder proposals positively influence these factors. However, we acknowledge without direct demonstration that these mechanisms, in turn, enhance innovations, considering them as established facts based on prior research (Homroy and Slechten, 2019 ; Sautner et al., 2023 ).

We considered using alternate terms such as “greenhouse gases” or “carbon emissions,” but due to the content of the DEF14A filing, it is not possible to ensure that a term appears directly within a shareholder proposal or management’s response to one without visual inspection, thus hand-collection. Often, the proposals are only a small portion of the DEF14A which often presents year-end results at the annual meeting. Further, word lists invariably subject samples to gaming. “Climate Change” has fairly unambiguous meaning to management and is the phrase used by both the SEC and USPTO.

We also consider that firm innovation may not have a perfect memory of a pressure over the past 25 years of all proposals related to climate change. For robustness, we construct the same three-year, backward average but for only the last three years as well as the last five years. The results that follow remain unchanged. We also use lagged proposals as a proxy for shareholder pressure on climate-related issues for additional robustness, and our main findings are qualitatively similar. These results are not reported for brevity but are presented in online Appendix 1 .

In fact, of the 1.9 million patents we examine from 1994 to 2019, only 8 begin with the Y02 classification, even though 105,737 patents contain the Y02 classification in the CPC coding scheme. For example, patent 5,426,677 appears to be primarily concerned with Physics, the G classification, (G21C1/09; G21C17/00; G21Y2002/202; G21Y2002/204; G21Y2004/304; Y02E30/40), but also has a Climate Mitigation (Y02) component. Disentangling truncation bias by year-technology for the Y02 classification is not feasible for this paper. Further, from our discussions with the USPTO, the first classification tends to be more dominant than the last.

In unreported results, we also construct dependent variables looking forward five years to allow more time for the stockholder pressure to influence innovative behavior.

As Wooldridge ( 2012 ) explains, “sometimes log(1 + y) is used, but interpretation of the coefficients is difficult.” (p. 216) However, this practice is commonplace in corporate finance settings. For robustness, the inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS), as suggested by Burbidge et al. ( 1988 ) and proposed by Johnson ( 1949 ), for zero-value observations is used to log transform both the logged dependent variables and the independent variable of interest, Pressure . The IHS transformation is sinh-1(x) = log(x + (× 2 + 1)1/2). The results using IHS for OLS regressions suggest that the coefficients tend to overstate the economic impact of models (3) and (6) of Table  2 as well as models with Y02 Counts pct and Y02 Cites pct as dependent variables, while understate the coefficients of models with Y02 Top 1 pct and Y02 Top 10 pct as dependent variables (Appendix B ), but the statistical inference remains unchanged in sign or significance.

The Pope’s sentiment also intuitively satisfies the exclusion restriction as it is unlikely to directly influence corporate innovations. To gain some reassurance on the (notorious) exclusion restriction, we divide the sample along the lines of Religious Social Capital considered by Rupasingha et al. ( 2006 ) and obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s number of establishments in religious organizations (NAICS 813110), also examined by Grennan ( 2022 ) along with other donor-advised funds. In splitting the sample between More and Less Religious at the county level, we find that firms headquartered in less religious counties have a more acute influence on climate innovations when the Pope serves as an instrument. We would expect the Pope to have a stronger influence in more religious counties, if the Pope were directly influencing management to develop climate technologies and bypassing proposals made by shareholders who are not concentrated near headquarters. Since we find the opposite, we feel better about the exclusion restriction, instead of relying only on our (notorious) intuitions for justification.

We implement causal mediation analysis using the ivmediate command in Stata (e.g., Dippel, Ferrara, and Heblich, 2020 ), allowing us to estimate the treatment effect and determine the proportion attributable to a mediator. The primary advantage, as noted, is that despite both the treatment and mediator being endogenous, a single instrument can accurately detect both causal treatment and mediation effects. However, the method does not produce the first-stage result of the IV regression. Instead, it reports the F-test of excluded instruments directly from the first stage to assess instrument strength, which suffices to establish validity. In our models, detailed in Table  4 , the F-tests from the first stage across all models greatly exceed the conventional cutoff value of 10, ensuring the validity of the instrument. Nevertheless, we manually performed IV regressions and confirmed that our instrument, PopeUS, significantly and positively affects both Pressure and mediators.

In the results, not tabulated for brevity, we re-estimate the same model as in Panel A but with firm fixed effects. We find significant causal mediation effects of Pressure on Y02 Counts that pass through Ind Dir Exp. In parallel to Panel B, we re-estimated the same model with firm fixed effects using CC Bigrams as a mediator and found nearly full mediation. Additionally, we detected marginal mediation in the model with Y02 Cites as a dependent variable using CC Bigrams as a mediator, but not Ind Dir Exp. Thus, the results of firm fixed effects analysis are more suggestive in this case.

We also perform robustness checks of our mediation analysis using alternative measures of shareholder proposals (three-year backward averages for the last three and five years, and lagged proposals). We find statistically significant mediation in all cases, with the mediated effect ranging from 0.54 to 0.91 of the total effect. We also limit the sample to firms that have ever received a proposal related to climate change during our sample period and find the proportion of the total effect mediated varies from 0.62 to 0.74 of the total effect. Finally, using the percentage of votes at the annual meetings in favor of a climate-related proposal collected by ISS (ISS Vote For), the mediated effect ranges from 0.83 to 0.90 of the total effect. We estimate these models using industry fixed effects, with industries identified using 3-digit SIC codes. Overall, our results are in line with our main findings.

To ensure our results are not due to selection of matching estimator, we also employ entropy balancing, nearest neighbor, propensity score, and the CEM (Blackwell et al., 2009 ) and find our results to be robust. The main advantage of EBCT, of course, is that it allows us to match on our continuous treatment variable ( Pressure ), instead of a binary one required for the other estimators.

We note that, following the approach of Faleye et al., ( 2014 ), we also examined the short-term performance implications of the change in patent counts attributable to shareholder climate-related proposals. That is, we regress our performance metrics on predicted patent counts as well as patent cites, where the predicted values are from the regression of innovation variables in our shareholder proposal measures. Our findings remain consistent.

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Appendix a: description of variables and sources.

Variables	Description	Source
Innovation
Y02 counts	The average, from t + 1 to t + 3, of the natural log of one plus the number of patents with the Y02 classification for each firm by the date the patent is filed, adjusted for truncation bias
Y02 cites	The average, from t + 1 to t + 3, of the natural log of one plus the number of patent citation with the Y02 classification for each firm by the date the patent is filed, adjusted for truncation bias
Climate-related proposals
Pressure	The average, from t to t-2, of the natural log of one plus running total of the number of climate-related proposals that a firm receives over entire sample period: (1) by allowing the running total to equal zero in years where no climate proposals appear at an annual meeting and (2) by resuming the running total when proposals resurface at subsequent annual meetings	SEC’s Edgar website and SeekEdgar cloud technology
Controls
Size	The average, from t to t-2, of the natural log of one plus total revenues	Compustat
R&D/assets	The average, from t to t-2, of Research and development expense divided by beginning assets	Compustat
Tobin’s Q	The average, from t to t-2, of Tobin’s Q, calculated as the Market Value of Equity minus the Book Value of Equity plus Book Value of Assets divided by Book Value of Assets	Perfect & Wiles, ; Baker, Wurgler and Stein, 2003
Firm Age	The average, from t to t-2, of the natural log of one plus the number of years that a firm is listed in Compustat	Compustat
Revenue growth	The average, from t to t-2, of the change in revenues from the end of each year	Compustat
Stock return	The average, from t to t-2, of the annual change in the adjusted stock price	Compustat
Leverage	The average, from t to t-2, of total Liabilities divided by total Assets	Compustat
Cash surplus	The average, from t to t-2, of Cash Surplus, calculated as the net cash from operations minus depreciation plus research and development scaled by total assets	Compustat

Appendix B: Shareholder Climate-Related Proposals and Corporate Innovations—Alternative Models

This table shows the results of ordinary least square regressions with Innovation as the dependent variable based on the patent data by date filed with the US Patent Office containing the Y02 (climate change). In Columns (1)–(4), dependent variables are Y02 Count Pct —the percent of a firm’s Y02 patents in a given year relative to all of that firm’s patents filed in the same year, Y02 Cite Pct —the percent of a firm’s Y02 patent citations in a given year relative to all of that firm’s patent citations filed in the same year, Y02 Top 1—the natural log of one plus the number of Y02 patents whose citations were in the top 1 percent of all Y02 patents in a given year, Y02 Top 10 —the natural log of one plus the number of Y02 patents whose citations were in the top 10 percent of all Y02 patents in a given year, respectively. Pressure is the natural log of one plus a three-year, backward average of an accumulated total of the climate-related shareholder proposals that a firm has received from 1994 to 2019. The control variables are also averaged over three years and include Size, R&D, Tobin’s Q, Age, Revenue Growth, Stock Returns, Leverage and Cash Surplus, as defined in Appendix A. t-statistic, based on robust standard errors, adjusted for heteroskedasticity and clustered at the industry-year level, are reported in brackets below the coefficients. ***, **, and * indicate significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Y02 counts pct	Y02 cites pct	Y02 top 1 pct	Y02 top 10 pct
Pressure	0.028***	0.025**	0.04**	0.084**
	(2.808)	(2.294)	(2.421)	(2.497)
Size	0.008***	0.009***	0.013***	0.024***
	(4.676)	(4.791)	(2.719)	(2.619)
R&D/Assets	− 0.055**	− 0.043	− 0.147	0.467*
	(− 2.213)	(− 1.482)	(− 1.25)	(1.876)
Tobin's Q	0.001**	− 0.001	− 0.001	− 0.004
	(2.448)	(− 1.121)	(− 0.48)	(− 0.754)
Age	0.007	0.016***	0.024**	0.149***
	(1.33)	(2.628)	(2.183)	(4.091)
Sales Growth	0.002**	0.002**	0.002*	0.005**
	(2.215)	(2.219)	(1.683)	(2.172)
Stock Return	0.002	0.003*	0.005	0.007
	(1.077)	(1.697)	(1.552)	(0.996)
Leverage	− 0.003	0.000	− 0.015*	− 0.067***
	(− 0.761)	(− 0.049)	(− 1.862)	(− 2.826)
Cash Surplus	− 0.014	− 0.012	− 0.014	− 0.078
	(− 1.149)	(− 0.823)	(− 0.473)	(− 1.119)
Obs	13,527	13,527	13,527	13,527
R-squared	0.666	0.644	0.663	0.845
Firm FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Industry-year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

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Tindall, G., Cole, R.A. & Javakhadze, D. Innovation Responds to Climate Change Proposals. J Bus Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05808-7

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• 06 September 2024

How to change people’s minds about climate change: what the science says

• Alix Soliman

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How you deliver climate messaging matters, in terms of changing minds, researchers are finding. Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty

Telling people that scientists almost unanimously agree that human-caused climate change is happening can help to nudge their thinking in that direction. A study published last month in Nature Human Behaviour 1 , tested this ‘consensus message’ across 27 countries and found that the people least familiar with the message or who were sceptical of climate science were the most likely to change their perspective when presented with it.

Climate-communication researchers who spoke to Nature ’s news team say that the findings add to a growing body of social science identifying the best strategies to help people come to grips with the concept that climate change is real — but that consensus messaging doesn’t always translate to a lasting shift in perspective.

For an enduring shift, they suggest, the message needs to be personally relevant. That’s because “ climate change is affecting the people and places and things that we love right now”, says Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, Connecticut.

Communicating consensus

Many studies have found that informing people of the scientific consensus on climate change can shift their attitude 2 , 3 . But most have focused on climate opinions in the United States. Bojana Većkalov, a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, and her colleagues wanted to see whether that messaging works cross-culturally.

False statements about climate change trip people up

They shared an online survey through social media and e-mail newsletters, and then analysed 10,527 responses from people across 27 countries. Respondents estimated the proportion of climate scientists who they think agree that human-caused climate change exists. They then ranked how confident they were in their estimates and shared their own opinions. Afterwards, the researchers showed the participants several facts, including that 97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is real 4 , and then re-polled them.

The fact that some — including those who are politically conservative — shifted their views is a “testament to the universal cultural authority of science”, Većkalov says.

David Holmes, a media sociologist and the chief executive of the non-profit organization Climate Communications Australia in Melbourne, says that this study “reconfirmed previous studies” showing that consensus messaging works, even on a global scale. He wishes, however, that the team could have teased out country-level trends or discerned whether various cultural attitudes had an impact on the results. The study also didn’t test whether the change was lasting.

Personal relevance

What’s clear from this study and others, however, is that climate-communication strategies have become more sophisticated as researchers have learnt what works. Gone are the days of showing a polar bear clinging to a melting ice sheet to explain the seriousness of the situation. It’s important to talk about global warming, “not as a polar bear issue, but as a people issue”, Leiserowitz says.

The rise of eco-anxiety: scientists wake up to the mental-health toll of climate change

An emerging area of research that shows promise, researchers say, is how personal conversations help. Start with things your audience cares about, such as food prices, national security or fishing, says Matthew Goldberg, a climate-communication researcher at Yale University. “There is a climate-change angle to almost everything,” he adds.

Montana Burgess is the executive director at Neighbours United, a non-profit advocacy organization in Castlegar, Canada. The organization created a climate-conversation toolkit after having success running a campaign persuading people in a rural town in Canada to support a renewable-energy policy. Burgess says that one top strategy is to “get out of talking-point fact land” by exchanging personal stories. For instance, because wildfires have worsened in Canada, there are now “six weeks of the year where it’s too smoky and hot to let my kid go outside, and my kid has asthma”, Burgess says. She remembers only a handful of smoky days when she was growing up, so she shares that experience to help people process the changes they are seeing.

The next step is to listen carefully and “connect the dots” between a person’s experience and local climate information, Goldberg says.

This strategy is based on a landmark study 5 in which canvassers went door-to-door and had ten-minute conversations with voters in Miami, Florida, that were geared towards reducing prejudice towards transgender people. After sharing their views, voters were asked to talk about a time they faced judgment for being different than others. The conversations increased support for a non-discrimination law, and social acceptance persisted when participants were re-surveyed three months later. Using this strategy with climate change specifically is still being systematically tested.

Leiserowitz has a personal experience that suggests the strategy will work. He has a family member who used to deny climate change. “It has taken me about 20 years of slow, careful, loving, supportive conversations” to change their mind, he says.

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Postdoctoral Associate- Genetic Epidemiology

Houston, Texas (US)

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

NOMIS Foundation ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship

The NOMIS Foundation ETH Fellowship Programme supports postdoctoral researchers at ETH Zurich within the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life ...

Zurich, Canton of Zürich (CH)

Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich

13 PhD Positions at Heidelberg University

GRK2727/1 – InCheck Innate Immune Checkpoints in Cancer and Tissue Damage

Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg (DE) and Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

Medical Faculties Mannheim & Heidelberg and DKFZ, Germany

Postdoctoral Associate- Environmental Epidemiology

Open faculty positions at the state key laboratory of brain cognition & brain-inspired intelligence.

The laboratory focuses on understanding the mechanisms of brain intelligence and developing the theory and techniques of brain-inspired intelligence.

Shanghai, China

CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT)

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Global Centers (GC)

View guidelines, important information about nsf’s implementation of the revised 2 cfr.

NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website . These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Important information for proposers

All proposals must be submitted in accordance with the requirements specified in this funding opportunity and in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. It is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets these requirements. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Supports innovative collaborative international centers for interdisciplinary use-inspired research to address global bioeconomy challenges, in partnership with funding agencies in Canada, Japan, Republic of Korea, Finland and the United Kingdom.

Use-Inspired Research Addressing Global Challenges through the Bioeconomy

This solicitation describes an ambitious program to fund international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers that will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired bioeconomy research to address one or more global challenges identified by the scientific community. Here, the "used-inspired" nature of the research refers to project outcomes leading to foreseeable benefits to society. This program will prioritize research collaborations that foster team science and community-engaged research, use knowledge-to-action frameworks whose rationale, conceptualization, and research directions are driven by the potential use of the results as illustrated by Pasteur’s Quadrant (see Stokes, Donald E. (1997), "Pasteur's Quadrant - Basic Science and Technological Innovation," Brooking Institution Press, p.196. ISBN 9780815781776). Proposals should also indicate how research will be co-generated with communities and stakeholders identified in the proposal. The proposed research should maximize the benefits of international, interdisciplinary collaborations, and describe the roles and responsibilities of each national team in achieving the goals of the proposed Global Center. Global Centers projects involving partnership between the U.S. and two or more partner countries are strongly encouraged. Global challenges must be addressed through international collaboration and researchers are encouraged to develop international teams to address research questions that can only be addressed through multilateral efforts.

The topic for the 2024 competition of the Global Centers program is Addressing Global Challenges through the Bioeconomy and may include research from any combination of research disciplines supported by NSF. The Bioeconomy is the share of the economy based on products, services, and processes derived from living systems. Research investments to advance the bioeconomy serve to accelerate scientific discovery and to enable the harnessing, engineering, and rational modulation of biological systems to create goods and services that contribute to the agriculture, health, security, manufacturing, energy, and environmental sectors of the global economy; or that provide access to unique systems that help us understand the processes and issues that we can use biotechnology to solve. Bioeconomy is built on the foundation of biotechnology and biomanufacturing, and in addition to biological science and engineering includes contributions from fields such as chemistry, materials science, geosciences, mathematics, data sciences, humanities, and the social sciences.

The world is facing many serious challenges, including, but not limited to, adapting to or mitigating the effect of climate change, developing clean energy approaches, identifying and advancing sustainable food systems, addressing water insecurity, exploring solutions to emerging infectious diseases, creating resource efficiency, sustaining biodiversity, addressing inequalities in access to biotechnologies, and developing a circular bioeconomy. For example, bio-based materials offer heightened biodegradability and biosafety as compared to reusable plastic materials that shed microplastics during use and washing and affect water security and human health.

This Global Centers solicitation in Bioeconomy offers a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of scientists, educators, and practitioners to use knowledge of the bioeconomy to co-develop and execute a research plan for an international center that will address a global challenge facing humanity. The Global Centers program is meant to support multidisciplinary research that can only be achieved through international partnerships uniting complementary areas of expertise, and/or facilitating access to unique expertise or resources of the participating countries. The proposal should explain how the center will maximize the benefits of international collaborations and describe the unique contributions and the roles and responsibilities of each national team in achieving the goals of the proposed Global Center. Successful proposals will describe how the center will tackle a global challenge that can only be addressed through the diversity of knowledge, skills, and resources united in this center.

Addressing global challenges requires international engagement and must go beyond production of data to demonstrate how co-generation and co-production of research with stakeholder groups can maximize the chances of research outcomes being taken up by target groups and applied to address the global challenge. Because change requires human involvement, this process, described as the Knowledge to Action framework explicitly recognizes the need to involve appropriate scientific experts and practitioners who study and work with humans in implementing the human action aspect of the framework. Examples of human action include (but are not limited to) studies in human and societal behavior, in policy, economics, psychology, anthropology, or education. Proposals are expected to describe a center that fully integrates human action elements with the knowledge generation portions of the center to produce a holistic, multi-disciplinary center that is greater than the sum of its parts. The center should offer a plan of research in which disciplines are integrated and complement and support each other to produce world class research, train the next generation of workforce, and use best practices to ensure that participant communities and stakeholder groups are involved in all stages of the research process so that outcomes are aligned with their needs and readily adoptable.

Within the general theme of Bioeconomy, proposals submitted in the framework of this call must be centered on either or both of the two subtopics: Subtopic 1 : Leveraging Biodiversity Across the Tree of Life to Power the Bioeconomy; and Subtopic 2: Biofoundries, using the Design-Build-Test-Learn process in biology. All proposals must integrate both of the two crosscutting themes into the proposed work: Crosscutting Theme A: Public engagement and co-generation of research activities to strengthen the global science and technology enterprise; and  Crosscutting Theme B: Workforce Development and Education.  See Section II, Program Description for details.

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Global centers webinar recording 2024, global centers faqs fy24, program contacts.

For inquiries regarding Canadian involvement in this program, contact: [email protected]

For questions related to Finland (RCF) involvement in this program, contact: [email protected]

For enquiries related to UK involvement in this program, contact: [email protected]

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		(703) 292-2232	CISE/IIS
EDU		(703) 292-4690	EDU/EES
ENG		(703) 292-2667
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• The Need for Humanitarian Research: Addressing Emerging Challenges in a Complex World

The landscape of humanitarian assistance is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by a complex interplay of evolving crises, diverse actors, and emerging global threats. Traditional approaches to humanitarian aid are proving inadequate in the face of increasingly multifaceted and protracted emergencies, ranging from armed conflicts to natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. In this context, the need for robust humanitarian research is more critical than ever. 

Research plays a vital role in providing a deeper understanding of the root causes of conflict, identifying future drivers of humanitarian aid, and developing evidence-based strategies that can be translated into meaningful operational changes. It is imperative for humanitarian researchers to examine the changing nature of humanitarian assistance, the complexity of humanitarian settings, and the necessity of data-driven approaches to navigate the profound challenges faced by the sector.

The Changing Nature of Humanitarian Assistance

Humanitarian assistance today is characterized by a shift from short-term emergency relief to more prolonged and multidimensional responses. Crises are increasingly marked by chronic, intersecting factors such as conflict, climate change, economic instability, and political stalemates. This evolving context requires a corresponding shift in how humanitarian interventions are conceptualized, designed, and implemented. Research is crucial in understanding these changes and guiding the development of adaptive strategies.

One significant change is the growing recognition of the importance of addressing the root causes of crises rather than merely responding to their symptoms. Humanitarian research is essential in uncovering these underlying factors, which often involve complex historical, socio-political, and economic dimensions. For example, understanding the drivers of conflict in a region such as the Sahel, where climate change, resource scarcity, and governance challenges intersect, can help aid organizations develop more effective interventions that address not only immediate needs but also long-term resilience.

Moreover, the humanitarian sector is witnessing an expansion in the range and diversity of actors involved in crisis response, from international organizations and governments to local NGOs, private sector entities, and affected communities themselves. This pluralistic landscape requires coordination and a shared understanding of needs and priorities, which can only be achieved through comprehensive research. By generating reliable data and insights, research facilitates evidence-based decision-making, helping to align efforts across different stakeholders and ensuring that aid is delivered where it is most needed.

The Complexity of Humanitarian Settings

Humanitarian settings today are marked by unprecedented complexity. Conflicts are more protracted and fragmented, with non-state actors playing increasingly prominent roles, complicating negotiations and access to affected populations. In many cases, humanitarian workers face constraints that severely limit their ability to operate safely and effectively, such as deliberate attacks, bureaucratic impediments, and restricted access imposed by governments or armed groups.

Additionally, many crises now occur in urban settings, where the dynamics of vulnerability and resilience differ significantly from those in rural areas. Urban humanitarianism involves unique challenges, including dense populations, diverse needs, complex social networks, and the potential for rapid disease transmission. Research is critical in navigating these complexities, as it provides the data necessary to understand the nuances of urban crises and to design interventions that are appropriate to the context.

The intersection of these challenges calls for a nuanced understanding that can only be achieved through dedicated research. For instance, understanding the motivations and capacities of non-state armed actors, the dynamics of local power structures, or the coping mechanisms of urban populations in crisis settings requires in-depth qualitative and quantitative research. Without such insights, humanitarian interventions risk being ineffective, inappropriate, or even harmful.

Understanding the Root Causes of Conflict

To address the massive humanitarian challenges effectively, there is an urgent need for research that goes beyond surface-level analysis and delves into the root causes of conflict. Conflicts are seldom caused by a single factor; rather, they result from a complex interplay of historical grievances, social inequalities, political marginalization, and economic deprivation. Understanding these root causes is critical for designing interventions that do not merely provide temporary relief but contribute to sustainable peace and development.

For example, in the context of protracted conflicts like those in Syria, Yemen, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, research can help identify the underlying drivers of violence and instability, such as resource competition, ethnic tensions, or exclusionary governance practices. By illuminating these factors, humanitarian research can inform strategies that address the systemic issues at the heart of these conflicts, promoting more durable solutions and reducing the likelihood of recurring violence.

Future Drivers of Humanitarian Aid

The future drivers of humanitarian aid are becoming increasingly evident, with the climate crisis, constrained access, and political stalemates emerging as key factors shaping the landscape. The climate crisis, in particular, represents a profound and growing challenge to the humanitarian sector. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, and as rising sea levels and changing weather patterns threaten livelihoods, displacement and humanitarian needs are expected to increase dramatically. Research is essential in understanding these trends, predicting their impacts, and developing strategies to mitigate and adapt to them.

Similarly, constrained access due to political dynamics, conflict, or government restrictions is a significant barrier to effective humanitarian action. Research is needed to explore innovative ways to reach populations in hard-to-access areas, whether through new technologies, such as remote sensing and digital platforms, or through negotiating strategies that build trust and foster cooperation with local actors.

Political stalemates, where humanitarian access and assistance are impeded by geopolitical interests and power struggles, also require a research-based approach. Understanding the political economy of conflict and the incentives and disincentives that drive different actors is crucial for navigating these complex environments and finding pathways for constructive engagement.

The Need for Evidence-Based Approaches

In a world of constrained resources and growing needs, the humanitarian sector must prioritize evidence-based approaches to maximize the impact of limited resources. Research provides the evidence base needed to inform strategic decisions, design effective interventions, and monitor and evaluate their outcomes. It allows humanitarian organizations to learn from past experiences, adapt to changing contexts, and ensure that their actions are guided by the best available knowledge.

For instance, research on the effectiveness of different aid modalities—such as cash transfers versus in-kind assistance—can help organizations choose the most appropriate and cost-effective methods for delivering aid. Similarly, studies on community engagement strategies can enhance efforts to build trust and cooperation with local populations, thereby improving the relevance and acceptance of humanitarian interventions.

Furthermore, research is essential for translating findings into operational changes and improvements. It is not enough to generate knowledge; there must be mechanisms for ensuring that research findings are effectively disseminated, understood, and acted upon by humanitarian practitioners. This requires a strong culture of learning and adaptation within humanitarian organizations, as well as partnerships between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice.

The need for humanitarian research has never been more critical. As the nature of crises becomes more complex and interconnected, and as new challenges such as climate change, constrained access, and political stalemates emerge, the humanitarian sector must rely on robust, evidence-based approaches to navigate these challenges. Research provides the foundation for understanding the root causes of conflict, anticipating future drivers of humanitarian need, and designing effective interventions that can adapt to rapidly changing contexts. To meet the massive humanitarian challenges of our time, we must invest in research that not only generates knowledge but also translates it into meaningful operational changes that improve the lives of those most in need.

Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH 

Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 

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