ABSTRACT The adverse implications of climate change can exacerbate socially uneven distributions of vulnerability. Therefore, climate adaptation programs are maladaptive if benefits are captured by privileged social groups, contributing to heightened socio-economic inequality and leaving the plight of highly vulnerable population segments unaddressed. This paper examines this potential using the case of Birsa Munda Krishi Kranti Yojana, an irrigation subsidy program for Scheduled Tribe farmers administered by the Government of Maharashtra, India. We investigated this scheme in Talasari block, an impoverished rural sub-administrative area 135 km north of Mumbai. The research shows that benefits from the scheme tended to flow towards more well-off agricultural households, notwithstanding checks-and-balances within the program that sought to prioritise the needs of poorer farmers. In turn, these distributional effects contributed to intensified agrarian class stratification by providing more well-off farmers with enhanced capabilities to respond to climate stresses, shedding important conceptual insights into the interplay of climate change and government policy for class mobility within smallholder and tribal populations. The evidence from this paper highlights the imperative for inclusive agricultural development and raises questions about agricultural subsidy programs as policy levers to address climate adaptation.

ABSTRACT Women in developing countries are disproportionately vulnerable to climate risks. The perception of these risks – which can vary by gender – shapes how people decide to adapt, which in turn drives how these risks are realised as impacts and consequences. This paper examines: (1) the differences of perception between women and men about climate risks; (2) if these differences can be explained by a variety of socio-economic factors; and (3) whether the gendered perception gap could be eliminated by a targeted communication intervention that informed participants about long-term climate risks in the region and was delivered by a local news weather anchor. We examined these questions through pre- and post-intervention surveys with 724 inhabitants of peri urban Can Tho, in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Results show that women were less familiar with climate risks in their community. The gendered perception gap was partially attributed to differences in education, livelihoods, and access to information. This gap was partially eliminated after the communication intervention, which suggests that a targeted communication intervention can enhance capacity to adapt to climate risks. This research provides valuable insights for climate communicators, especially for those working with non-WIERD populations, and can support adaptability for vulnerable populations.

ABSTRACT Addressing the climate crisis requires renewable energy, however, developing renewable energy should be equitable. In this article, we analyze a 15-year-old transnational hydroelectric power development conflict involving Indigenous rights in Mapuche-Williche territory, Chile and a Norwegian state-owned company, Statkraft. We seek to advance the field of energy justice by evaluating injustices in this transnational conflict. At the heart of the conflict is a threatened Ngen Kintuantü (the spirit guardian Kintuantü), which is part of a ceremonial and pilgrimage site of utmost importance in Williche territory. We argue that epistemic justice – the radical inclusion of different ways of knowing – can be a central tenet to understanding and redressing the harms connected to energy development, especially via networks of solidarity with Indigenous rights claims. Yet currently, the right to consent for energy projects, – which is informed by the international legal mechanism Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and Chile’s codification of a less stringent Indigenous consultation – is limited by its formation within liberal legality. Despite these limitations, the Traditional Organization of the Ayllarewe of Ngen Mapu Kintuantü, an organization of Mapuche-Williche communities, is crafting and demanding their own form of territorial consultation. Drawing from a solidarity network of research across the Global South and North, we find that existing tools like FPIC can and must be strengthened through Indigenous and local guidance, but that justice, in a broader sense, cannot be achieved without returning land and broader legal reforms.

ABSTRACT Although many studies on social vulnerability focus on mitigating negative effects and crisis management in terms of the physical, economic, structural, and non-structural resilience of countries we found limited research on the effects of these indicators on terrorism that has a great unfavourable footprint on human, global, and environmental security. Furthermore, despite the differing outlooks of the various countries, the last three factors; the physical indicator is the preeminent threat multiplier worldwide. Climate change further exacerbates this vulnerability for all. In this study, we aimed to visualize the four components of “The Commonwealth Universal Vulnerability Index (UVI)” and the “Global Terrorism Index (GTI)” and revealed the effects of independent variables on dependent variable. To actualize this, we obtained valid data of these variables concerning 109 countries covering the term of 2010–2018 and analyzed using Logarithmic Multiple Linear Regression (LMLR). We found that while climate change aggravates terrorism in one way, economy, and non-structural resilience affect terrorism in a negative direction at the 95% confidence interval. However, we did not encounter a statistically meaningful relationship between terrorism and structural resilience, which enables robust human development, market connectivity, and demographic structure.

ABSTRACT Attention to the linkages between climate change and human mobility practices – including immobility – has mounted as climate-related mobility becomes more evident. Research and policy engagement have followed, with increasing recognition of the complexity of climate-related mobility countering simplistic causal models. In this introduction and special section, we seek specifically to highlight the relationship between governance and climate-related mobility. The relevance of governance, which we consider broadly through the lens of political authority, is a growing undercurrent in climate mobility research. This special section seeks therefore to explicitly theorize the role of governance in shaping climate-related mobility and examine it empirically, building on recent developments within the literature. Through a theoretical and analytical discussion in this introduction and four empirically based contributions from South to North America and West Africa to the Horn of Africa, it unfolds diverse perspectives and approaches to the role of governance in mobility contexts and practices, particularly in relation to slow-onset climate change. Ultimately, this special section seeks to engage scholars in further theorizing of the relationship between governance and climate-related mobility.

ABSTRACT Carbon emission efficiency (CEE) and its stochastic convergence are important indicators for achieving the strategic goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Thus, this paper firstly estimates the CEE of 30 provinces in China from 1995 to 2019 with the super efficiency of the SBM model. Then the panel unit root test method is adopted to test its stochastic convergence. The results show that the overall CEE has not reached the effective level, and the CEE level varies greatly among regions. There is a stochastic divergence of CEE in most regions from 1995 to 2001. While the CEE of most regions changes to convergence after 2002. From 1995 to 2019, the CEE of the western, northeast, and southwest regions diverge. While the CEE of the national level, the eastern, central regions, and the other six regions in the eight major economic zones converged stochastically. Among the divergent areas, the CEE of Heilongjiang, Guangxi, and Sichuan provinces are the main contributors to the CEE divergence. Therefore, it is the key to narrowing the differences in regional low-carbon development in China by significantly improving the CEE of each province.

ABSTRACT Loss and damage (L&D) has emerged as a focus for climate justice within the international policy arena and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings. L&D proposals often centre on a liberal conception of distributive justice, arguing that high-emitting parties must compensate those most vulnerable to climate change, who typically bear the least responsibility for it. This frame positions climate justice as reparations, financial support for adaptation, and other forms of restitution for impacted communities. I support L&D action and agree that responsible parties should pay. However, I urge caution about the underlying assumptions of liberal justice. What is of commensurate value for communities that lose access to sites of deep biocultural and spiritual heritage because of climate change? In considering this question, I draw from research on Indigenous land rights and restitution politics in Latin America to illustrate how L&D proposals and policies can learn from Indigenous experiences navigating the pursuit of justice through courts. I examine limitations of liberal justice to highlight pathways for thinking climate justice otherwise. Lessons from Indigenous land restitution make clear that rethinking the framing of L&D policy is essential to avoid replicating the logics that drive destructive development and resultant social inequality.

ABSTRACT Economic analyses of losses and damages or post-disaster needs assessments (PDNAs) are silent about the longstanding reparatory claims related to the legacies of African enslavement, colonial violence and indigenous dispossession that compound uneven racialized geographies in the Caribbean. This paper unpacks these so-called ‘objective’ valuations drawing attention to their (neo)liberal framings, technocratic underpinnings, and historical origins in the Caribbean plantation economy. Using case studies of catastrophic hurricanes Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Dorian (2019) in Haiti, Antigua and Barbuda, and The Bahamas respectively, the paper exposes critical tensions, knowledge hierarchies, and contradictions embedded within empirical assessments that justify and prioritize preferred policies of powerful international development, financial and governance institutions. PDNAs under-value and neglect important community and local knowledge, solidarity practices, cultural institutions, and relational ethics in the face of climate disasters in these Caribbean islands. Taking a Black geographies and political economy approach, the paper addresses the limitations and risks associated with PDNAs, deemed political tools or technologies of climate disaster that reinforce oppression. To advance an emancipatory climate justice agenda to enable more radical reparative measures and possibilities, the paper suggests that analyses and political strategy must be grounded in people's history, cultural, ethical, and communal governance practices.

ABSTRACT At COP27, Parties agreed to establish a fund for loss and damage. During the COP28 opening plenary, the Loss and Damage Fund was operationalised. Despite this progress, significant questions about access to funding remain unanswered. We engage with a key term in the decision texts – particularly vulnerable. How Parties frame and define the term ‘particularly vulnerable’ will influence funding allocation and devising eligibility or exclusion. We advance arguments against narrow, country-specific definitions of particularly vulnerable. To this end, we outline a brief history of the term particularly vulnerable and present insights from the existing climate fund allocations. We also engage with the emerging science of losses and damages, and critically unpack the implications of defining particularly vulnerable for loss and damage funding. We argue that it is possible to understand particularly vulnerable in a legally and politically just manner, while highlighting the limitations of excessive reliance or hopefulness around state actions, especially domestic remedies, in addressing vulnerability in specific communities. We recognise that the funds, as they have been pledged now, will not reach all vulnerable people. However, such limitation reinforces our argument that funding and support should be provided wherever vulnerability exists even if it increases liability of states.

ABSTRACT The study focuses on the top 20 carbon emission-increasing nations across continents from 2000 to 2021 and the effects of gross domestic product, energy consumption, and trade openness on carbon emissions. The study uses a panel dataset and multiple linear regression analysis to pinpoint the significant factors influencing each nation's carbon emissions. The findings indicate that China, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea in Asia; Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and the Seychelles in Africa; Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Chile, and Panama in America; Albania, Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia in Europe; and Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu in Oceania have a highly significant impact on carbon emissions in their respective regions. Energy consumption significantly increases carbon emissions in all countries except Panama and Kazakhstan, where it only significantly impacts GDP-related carbon emissions. These insights lay the groundwork for policymakers to prioritise sustainable development, reduce carbon emissions in their decision-making processes, and establish comprehensive strategies that reconcile ecological concerns with socioeconomic goals by understanding the intricate dynamics between gross domestic product, energy use, trade openness, and carbon emissions.