This study examines the impact of the first state-level climate change adaptation planning mandate in the United States, California’s Senate Bill 379 (SB379). We analyze the content of local plans before and after the mandate and compare the quality of the mandated plans with a sample of voluntary climate change adaptation plans developed by local governments across the U.S. The research finds that plans developed after the mandate incorporated more climate adaptation strategies, a greater variety of strategy types, and addressed a wider range of climate hazards. The mandate is associated with increased “mainstreaming” of climate adaptation, primarily through add-on and programmatic strategies. SB379-mandated plans scored higher overall compared to voluntary climate plans from other states but lower on addressing uncertainty. The findings indicate that state mandates like SB379 can effectively catalyze local climate adaptation planning, but challenges remain in achieving high-quality, actionable plans across diverse communities.
Climate change disinformation, defined as the strategic production and dissemination of false or misleading claims about climate science, impacts, and policy, erodes public understanding, frustrates evidence-based policymaking, and obstructs collective action. This review synthesizes the literature on climate disinformation to develop an integrated account of how it is produced, circulated, and sustained. The analysis draws on three complementary strands: a synthesis of literature on the structural drivers of climate disinformation; a qualitative thematic synthesis of two case framings, denialist discourse and the framing of climate policy as an economic and liberty threat, interpreted through the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal (PESTEL) framework; and a focused Web of Science synthesis of eight studies on platform mechanisms of climate disinformation in social and hybrid media. Together, the three strands point to a layered, structurally sustained phenomenon in which political-economic, rhetorical, and platform-mechanical processes reinforce each other. Funding sustains the organizations that develop rhetorical repertoires; those repertoires furnish content that platforms amplify; and platform incentives reward the most emotionally charged versions of those repertoires. Message-level remedies such as inoculation and consensus messaging are effective but insufficient on their own; durable responses require pairing them with transparency in advocacy funding, structural reform of platform amplification, and media and information literacy. The review argues that effective response to climate disinformation requires treating it as a system rather than a sequence of claims and identifies integrated empirical designs and comparative research beyond the Global North as priorities for future work.
Tackling climate change requires integrated approaches that combine mitigation and adaptation strategies and take into account local climatic, socio-economic, environmental and political contexts. The paper assesses how high-resolution multi-sectoral modelling and participatory bottom-up co-creation can be integrated into a unified methodological framework to identify synergies and trade-offs between climate mitigation and adaptation at the local level based on three European projects DISTENDER, KNOWING, and NEVERMORE. The projects develop methodologies and tools that serve to improve the understanding of climate risks in a multi-scale approach, assess the effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation measures as well as their interdependencies, and involve stakeholders in the development of a set of strategies. Through workshops, consultations and co-creation exercises, the projects foster collaboration between scientists, policy makers, businesses and local communities thereby ensuring the sustainability and applicability of the resulting methodologies, strategies and tools. Each project employs a transdisciplinary research approach that integrates climate modeling, socioeconomic analysis and participatory processes to identify synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation actions. To support decision making, the projects develop various digital tools, such as decision support systems (DSS), interactive applications and knowledge databases. These tools synthesize complex climate data, socioeconomic indicators, relevant adaption and mitigation policy measures, and future scenarios into accessible formats for policy makers as well as civil society. The paper summarizes and analyses the approaches and results of the three projects and their contributions to the advancement of knowledge on climate risks and the development of actions against climate change.
Understanding how climate change beliefs and behaviors interact is central to effective mitigation and adaptation; and climate policy and literature often model belief as causally prior to action. We examine potential bidirectional feedback between belief and behavior among Iowa farmers, using data from a longitudinal panel survey on cover crop adoption and climate change beliefs in a high-constraint decision environment where conservation practices involve substantial financial and operational considerations. Using a structural model that explicitly addresses reverse causality between beliefs and behavior, we find evidence of a pronounced asymmetry in the 2020 data: adoption of conservation practices is associated with sizable increases in climate change acceptance, approximately 0.65 points on a five-point scale, whereas climate beliefs have no statistically detectable effect on adoption once practical constraints are considered. In the 2013 data, neither pathway is statistically distinguishable from zero. Survey data from Iowa farmers across 2011–2020 show declining climate skepticism over the period. Together, these results suggest that behavioral engagement, often enabled by policy incentives, can facilitate belief updating, a pattern consistent with cognitive dissonance and experiential learning processes, whereas motivations based on belief alone may be insufficient to overcome practical barriers. The findings highlight the importance of behavior-oriented policies that complement belief-based climate strategies.
Growing interest in using stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) to reduce the impacts of global warming has been matched by growing concerns about the approach. While much has been written about the challenges of governing SAI research and deployment, there has been little discussion of the challenges posed by governance and operational activities during deployment. This paper illustrates practical management challenges using three U.S. agencies (EPA, NASA, and NOAA) as examples. Although SAI deployment is expected to be governed by international institutions, implementation will require actions by domestic agencies within participating nations. Those agencies, regardless of country, are likely to face comparable national-level challenges, including accountability, transparency, expertise, legal challenges, and political pressures. Scenarios and assessments for SAI deployment will also pose technical challenges. Rapid development and evaluation of scenarios and assessments will be needed to examine unexpected conditions or new technologies and inform effective response decisions during deployment. This paper briefly examines proposed SAI governance approaches, identifies key relevant characteristics of the three agencies, and presents insights into those agencies’ relevance to SAI management and some of the challenges posed in putting governance into practice, and draws additional insights from small-scale outdoor studies. Implications for governance include the need for a permanent SAI management organization with broad expertise, insulating management from inappropriate political interference, and operating within national legal frameworks and political pressures. Research implications include the need for scenarios and assessments specific to SAI and gaining a better understanding of national legal and political environments.
