Agriculture is often described as one of the sectors most vulnerable to future climate change, and its vulnerability is commonly assessed through quantitative indices. However, such indices differ significantly depending on their selected indicators, weighting mechanisms, and summarizing methods, often leading to divergent assessments of vulnerability for the same geographic area. The use of generic indicators might also lead to a loss of information about contextual risks and vulnerabilities. This may reduce the perceived usefulness of indices among stakeholders.

This study analyses the role of indicators in assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change. It analyses how indices are understood and used through three separate focus group sessions, involving agricultural experts professionally active in south-eastern Sweden. The paper presents how agricultural practitioners perceive a set of common vulnerability indicators, presented through a visualization tool, and their relevance, logic, and applicability to assess and address vulnerability to climate change. The results of this study contribute with perspectives on (i) the relevance and applicability of the commonly used generic indicators for agricultural vulnerability (ii) the assumed correlation of indicators with climate vulnerability and (iii) the identification of missing vulnerability indicators. The study finds that commonly used vulnerability indicators are perceived hard to apply in practice, as definitions and thresholds are often depending on the geographical and temporal scale, as well as the regional context. Additional exposure factors that were identified included extreme events, such as heavy precipitation and external factors such as global food demand and trade-patterns. Further, participants expressed that it is important to include indices that combine effects of multiple climatic changes and in-direct factors, such as policies, regulations and measures. Inherent complexities, context dependencies, and multiple factors should further be included, but entail difficulties in developing suitable indicators. These factors must be addressed by a broader set of qualitative and quantitative indicators, and greater flexibility in the assessment methodology. The interactive vulnerability assessments presented in this paper indicate a need for an integration of quantitative and qualitative aspects and how such indicators could be developed and applied.

Societal transformation is one of the most topical concepts in sustainability research and policy-making. Used in many ways, it indicates that nonlinear systematic changes are needed in order to fully address global environmental and human development challenges. This paper explores what sustainability transformations mean for lay focus group participants in Cabo Verde, China, Fiji, Sweden, and the USA. Key findings include: (a) Tightly linked to interpersonal relationships, sustainability was seen as going beyond the Sustainable Development Goals to include a sense of belonging; (b) transformations were framed as fundamental changes from today’s society, but most participants stated that transformation pathways need to splice new structures into the old; (c) new technologies are key engines of change. Yet, the most common drivers were awareness, education, and knowledge sharing; and (d) regardless of whether state-centric or decentralized governance was preferred, personal action was seen as essential. The focus groups displayed a shared understanding across the geographical settings; a common realization of profound sustainability predicaments facing societies across the world; and a desire for fundamental change towards a more sustainable way of life.

While energy-sector emissions remain the biggest source of climate change, many least-developed countries still invest in fossil-fuel development paths. These countries generally have high levels of fossil fuel technology lock-in and low capacities to change, making the shift to sustainable energy difficult. Tanzania, a telling example, is projected to triple fossil-fuel power production in the next decade. This article assesses the potential to use internationally supported Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) to develop solar energy in Tanzania and contribute to transformational change of the electricity supply system. By assessing the cultural legitimacy of NAMAs among key stakeholders in the solar energy sector, we analyse the conditions for successful uptake of the concept in (1) national political thought and institutional frameworks and (2) the solar energy niche. Interview data are analysed from a multi-level perspective on transition, focusing on its cultural dimension. Several framings undermining legitimacy are articulated, such as attaching low-actor credibility to responsible agencies and the concept’s poor fit with political priorities. Actors that discern opportunities for NAMAs could, however, draw on a framing of high commensurability between experienced social needs and opportunities to use NAMAs to address them through climate compatible development. This legitimises NAMAs and could challenge opposing framings.

When do states allow nonstate actors (NSAs) to observe negotiations at intergovernmental meetings? Previous studies have identified the need for states to close negotiations when the issues under discussion are sensitive. This paper argues that sensitivity alone cannot adequately explain the dynamic of closing down negotiations to observers. Questions that have received little attention in the literature include which issues are considered sensitive and how the decision is made to move the negotiations behind closed doors. This paper examines the practices of NSA involvement in climate diplomacy from three analytical perspectives: functional efficiency, political dynamics, and historical institutionalism. Based on interviews and UNFCCC documents, this paper suggests that to understand the issue of openness in negotiations, institutional factors and the politics of NSA involvement need to be better scrutinized. The paper shows that each perspective has particular advantages when analyzing different dimensions of the negotiations, with implications of how we understand the role of NSAs in global environmental governance.

Finance is at the heart of UN climate diplomacy. Through the long-term finance pledge, developed countries have committed to mobilize USD 100 billion annually from 2020 onwards to support climate action in developing countries. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is also expected to become a key player in the climate finance landscape. This viewpoint presents the views of representatives of developed and developing countries’ governments on how the annual sum of USD 100 billion should be dispensed by the GCF, based on a survey conducted at the 2013 UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw. Respondents’ give their views on (1) the mitigation/adaptation ratio in GCF support and (2) the public/private ratio in financial sources. Respondents from developing countries would prefer to channel a substantially higher amount of the long-term finance pledge through the GCF. The extent to which the long-term finance pledge should be governed by the GCF is contentious, because governments pledge long-term finance without specifying the mitigation/adaptation ratio, whereas the GCF Board is tasked with balancing the allocation of its funds between adaptation and mitigation. This contention is fuelled by the fact that developing countries have a greater say in the allocation of funds from the GCF than from alternative sources of finance for the long-term finance pledge. We suggest that it is time to (1) reformulate the pledge to clarify its mitigation/adaptation ratio and (2) agree to definitions of key concepts such as “climate finance” and “private finance” to allow for more distinct negotiating positions on sources of finance.

Climate engineering (geoengineering) has been widely discussed as a potential instrument for curbing global warming if politics fails to deliver green house gas emission reductions. This debate has lost momentum over the last couple of years, but is now being renewed in the wake of the December 2015 Paris climate change agreement. Resurgent interest primarily stems from two elements of the Paris agreement. First, by defining the long term goal as “achiev[ing] a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases” instead of decarbonization, the agreement can be interpreted as providing leeway for climate engineering proposals. Second, the agreement formulated a temperature goal of “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. In response, several scientists argued that these goals may require climate engineering.

As these discussions will affect the forthcoming review of pathways toward 1.5°C warming, this policy brief takes stock of climate engineering. It draws on the expertise of Linköping University’s Climate Engineering (LUCE) interdisciplinary research programme. The brief provides an overview of the status of academic debate on climate engineering regarding bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS);  stratospheric aerosol injection; and mass media reporting and public engagement.

As experiences of implementation of climate change adaptation are accumulating, there is a need toincrease the understanding of the potential negative consequences of adaptation actions that mightoccur, and the capacity of research to assess them. Maladaptation used in this context has remainedelusively defined and sparingly used, and therefore difficult to apply. Based on a literature review, wediscuss the conceptual boundaries of maladaptation and how it can be used to analyse negativeoutcomes of adaptation and propose a refined definition. We present a typology of maladaptation thatdistinguishes between three types of maladaptive outcomes – rebounding vulnerability, shiftingvulnerability and eroding sustainable development, and argue that maladaptation can be defined as a resultof an intentional adaptation policy or measure directly increasing vulnerability for the targeted and/orexternal actor(s), and/or eroding preconditions for sustainable development by indirectly increasing society’svulnerability. We note that the recognition of adaptation as an intentional action and the importance ofsetting clear spatial and temporal boundaries, as well as thresholds, are key to analysing negativeoutcomes.

Drawing on concepts in political economy, political ecology, justice theory, and critical development studies, the authors offer the first comprehensive, systematic exploration of the ways in which adaptation projects can produce unintended, undesirable results.

Globalization processes have rendered non-state actors an integral part of global governance. The body of literature that has examined non-state actor involvement in global governance has focused mainly on whether and how non-state actors can influence states. Less attention has been paid to the comparative advantages of non-state actors to answer questions about agency across categories of non-state actors, and more precisely what governance activities non-state actors are perceived to fulfil. Using unique survey material from two climate change conferences, we propose that different categories of non-state actors have distinct governance profiles. We further suggest that the different governance profiles are derived from particular power sources and that agency is a function of these profiles. The study thereby contributes to a strand in the literature focusing on the authority of non-state actors in climate governance and broadens the methodological toolkit for studying the “governors” of global governance.

Initiatives to adapt to the effects of climate change are growing in number but may fail to achieve the desired outcomes unless critical competing interests are taken into account during the planning process.