Grace Nosek, Laura Tozer, John Pierre Craig, Michael Classens, Aden Fisher, Ibtesaam Mohamed Afroz Moosa, Erum Naqvi, Zoha Sojoudi, Ayesha Ali, Imara Ajani Rolston, Eve Tuck
{"title":"Institutional betrayal in climate action: Youth experiences and future pathways","authors":"Grace Nosek, Laura Tozer, John Pierre Craig, Michael Classens, Aden Fisher, Ibtesaam Mohamed Afroz Moosa, Erum Naqvi, Zoha Sojoudi, Ayesha Ali, Imara Ajani Rolston, Eve Tuck","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104497","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104497","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>There is a growing gap between youth and institutions on climate change, evidenced by the significant number of young people around the world who report feeling deeply betrayed by institutional inaction on climate. Young people disproportionately bear the mental and physical consequences of a warming world. They are also disproportionately on the frontlines of pushing for the transformational social, political, and economic change necessary to mitigate the most catastrophic climate harms. Thus, there are compelling moral and practical reasons for centering young people in institutional climate action. Drawing from community-engaged research projects with 93 youth, we use thematic analysis to add rich new qualitative insights into how youth are experiencing institutional betrayal around climate change and how, in turn, that impacts their engagement with institutional climate decision-making. We show that youth feelings of institutional betrayal are broader than previously documented—both in the number and engagement level of youth who feel betrayed and in the range of institutions that provoke feelings of betrayal and skepticism. We argue that this betrayal is driven in part by a gap in language and visions of climate action between youth and institutions. Youth perceive a profound disconnect between their expansive vision for climate justice and institutions’ narrow, technical, and often profit-driven responses, which they see as centering already-privileged publics. We offer strategies institutions might adopt to avoid deepening mistrust and instead build authentic partnerships with young people, particularly through a focus on local, tangible, climate action framed by deep commitment to systemic change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"184 ","pages":"Article 104497"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149142095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jianxun Yang, Yifan Chen, Zhan Zhao, Miaomiao Liu, Wen Fang, Zongwei Ma, Jun Bi
{"title":"Integrating socioeconomic considerations into the air quality standard revisions: Evidence from policy review and meta-analysis","authors":"Jianxun Yang, Yifan Chen, Zhan Zhao, Miaomiao Liu, Wen Fang, Zongwei Ma, Jun Bi","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104506","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104506","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Air quality standards continue to tighten globally, yet their revision is shaped not only by scientific evidence but also by economic capacity and institutional readiness. This study integrates an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) assessment, cross-national policy review, and a meta-analysis of 57 empirical studies to evaluate how socioeconomic factors influence PM<sub>2.5</sub> standard-setting and pollution control outcomes. We find that most economies begin strengthening standards once per capita GDP exceeds USD 20,000, suggesting a transition from growth-driven pollution to regulation-driven improvement. Case comparisons suggest that revising PM<sub>2.5</sub> standards is a multi-dimensional decision that balances public-health benefits with compliance cost, industrial restructuring needs, employment concerns, and global competitiveness. Economies with well-developed institutions handle these trade-offs more effectively, maintaining policy continuity and demonstrating higher regulatory resilience. Meta-analysis further shows that air pollution policies generally increase GDP, whereas the evidence on employment is mixed, with negative estimates being more prevalent. Market-based instruments are more likely to deliver simultaneous economic and labor benefits. These findings together highlight the need for embedding socioeconomic evaluation within standard-setting, particularly in developing countries where regulation must accompany industrial restructuring and institutional capacity building. The study offers evidence-based insights for designing cleaner-air pathways that are economically viable and socially adaptive.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"184 ","pages":"Article 104506"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149142096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Climate justice and environmental racism: Emissions, impacts, and global inequality","authors":"Antonín Hořčica, Eva Cudlínová","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104501","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104501","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Global climate change reflects inequality between historical emissions responsibility and climate impact, raising questions about climate justice and global environmental racism, which is characterised by unequal exposure of vulnerable populations to environmental risks. No systematic classification framework capturing historical emissions responsibility, climate impacts, and development capacity exists. This study addresses this gap by proposing and validating a 3 × 2 emissions–impacts classification of 172 countries to identify the country groups facing the greatest mismatch between responsibility and vulnerability, test links to lower human development, and derive implications for global climate governance. Historical responsibility is measured by cumulative CO₂ emissions (1750–2023) grouped A/B/C by the modified Pareto rule 80–15–5, while impacts are measured by the Global Climate Risk Index (GCRI, 1993–2022) and divided binarily into high and low using a value-weighted 80/20 threshold. The Human Development Index (HDI, 2023) serves as an interpretative indicator of adaptive capacity. Results confirm a persistent asymmetry: 55 C-High countries with minimal responsibility and highest impacts show the lowest HDI scores, while 7 largest-emitters (A-Low group) and 22 medium-emitters (B-Low group) combine higher historical responsibility with low impacts. HDI differences are significant (C-High vs. A+B: p < 0.001, r = 0.526), and the model is stable across seven threshold specifications. The findings support targeting Loss and Damage Fund resources at disadvantaged countries, directing mitigation obligations towards high-responsibility economies, and moving climate policy beyond the growth paradigm towards postgrowth alternatives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"184 ","pages":"Article 104501"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149142094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hannah E. Garbutt, Eranga K. Galappaththi, Sithuni M. Jayasekara, Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Thomas W. Crawford
{"title":"Limits and barriers to climate adaptation among Indigenous women: Insights from Vedda communities in Sri Lanka","authors":"Hannah E. Garbutt, Eranga K. Galappaththi, Sithuni M. Jayasekara, Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Thomas W. Crawford","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104478","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104478","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Climate change disproportionately affects Indigenous communities, yet the gendered dimensions of these impacts, including the ways Indigenous women experience and respond, remain underexplored. This study examines how Indigenous Vedda women in Sri Lanka experience climate change, the strategies they employ in response, and the limits and barriers that constrain their adaptive capacity. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and field journaling conducted across four Vedda communities, the study adopts an intersectional and community-engaged approach to center women’s lived experiences. Findings reveal that Vedda women experience climate change primarily through declining agricultural productivity, food insecurity, water scarcity, and emerging health challenges, driven by drought, precipitation variability, and extreme heat. In response, women employ strategies spanning coping (e.g. manually watering plants), adaptive (e.g. collective resource-sharing), and transformative actions (e.g. increased reliance on daily wage jobs and Western medicine). Yet, these responses are often constrained by intersecting financial, institutional, and social/cultural barriers. Limited access to income, inadequate government support, gendered restrictions on mobility, and unequal access to Indigenous knowledge systems restrict women’s ability to move beyond short-term coping strategies. The study further identifies emerging limits to adaptation, where environmental change and structural inequalities together undermine the viability of traditional livelihood practices and knowledge systems. By foregrounding Indigenous women’s perspectives, this research advances an understanding of how intersecting social and ecological factors shape adaptation. Findings highlight the need for climate adaptation policies that are gender-responsive, context-specific, and grounded in Indigenous knowledge, while addressing structural inequalities that constrain adaptive capacity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"183 ","pages":"Article 104478"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148952370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Livia Fritz, Lucilla Losi, Chad M. Baum, Sean Low, Benjamin K. Sovacool
{"title":"Reflecting on the politics and power dynamics of contested climate technologies","authors":"Livia Fritz, Lucilla Losi, Chad M. Baum, Sean Low, Benjamin K. Sovacool","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104448","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104448","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"182 ","pages":"Article 104448"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148636914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Waste and CO2, an intricate relationship. Metrics, policy and technology in the climate-framing of waste","authors":"Laurence Rocher","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104443","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104443","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines to what extent and by what means waste policy and infrastructure have been reframed, influenced or redirected under the climate agenda. It assumes that waste policies and management are increasingly shaped by carbon concerns, according to a process of <em>climatization</em>. Based on expert reports and grey literature, the analysis focuses on three distinct but interrelated factors playing a role in the <em>climatization</em> of waste: metrological standards, mitigation instruments, and technological innovation. This process originated in the early 1990s with the use of greenhouse gas metrics, continued through policy instruments promoted by international climate agreements, and more recently has taken the form of decarbonization technologies. The investigation demonstrates how waste and carbon control intersect and relate to one another. Since CO<sub>2</sub> tends to be increasingly framed as a waste <em>to be managed</em>, the article points to the emergence of a <em>wastification</em> process of carbon, seemingly ignoring learnings from waste management and from waste and discard studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"182 ","pages":"Article 104443"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148636913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reclaiming Ibu Pertiwi: Kendeng women's protest songs as feminist archive of ecological knowledge and climate resilience in Java","authors":"Dewi Candraningrum","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104425","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104425","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the protest songs of the Kartinis of Kendeng, a collective of Javanese women farmers who have resisted limestone quarrying and cement production in the karst mountains of Central Java, Indonesia, as a living archive of ecological knowledge and climate resilience. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2025, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of the tembang “Ibu bumi wis maringi, ibu bumi dilarani, ibu bumi kang ngadili” [Mother Earth has given, Mother Earth has been hurt, Mother Earth will seek justice], the article explores how ecological knowledge is preserved, transmitted, and mobilised through embodied cultural practices. Situated at the intersection of feminist archival studies, Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge scholarship, and gender-responsive climate research, the analysis demonstrates that the Kendeng tembang functions simultaneously as repertoire, archive, and environmental pedagogy. Through song and collective performance, women transmit knowledge of karst hydrology, water stewardship, agrarian cosmology, and ecological responsibility that remains largely absent from formal environmental governance. The article argues that this performative knowledge constitutes a feminist counter-archive through which women assert epistemic authority while advancing a non-anthropocentric environmental ethic that recognises the earth as a moral subject. The Kendeng case contributes to climate resilience scholarship by showing how women’s ecological knowledge supports climate adaptation through the protection of karst water systems and climate mitigation through resistance to carbon-intensive cement extraction. The findings have implications for environmental education, climate governance, and the recognition of performative ecological knowledge in environmental decision-making across Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 104425"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148500419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Max C.J. de Vries, Joanne Vinke-de Kruijf, Leentje Volker, Denie C.M. Augustijn
{"title":"Implementing integrated flood risk management: Operationalising the role of public values","authors":"Max C.J. de Vries, Joanne Vinke-de Kruijf, Leentje Volker, Denie C.M. Augustijn","doi":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104422","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104422","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Climate change and rapid urbanisation increase flood risks, calling for environmental policy practices integrating flood protection and spatial planning. The need to shift towards more integrated flood risk management (FRM) is widely recognised, but it remains challenging in practice. We posit that the role of values in these processes is an important, yet underexplored, governance challenge. As integrated FRM demands collaboration between experts from different domains, who hold distinct values and perspectives, new or different values may need to be identified or prioritised. In this context, this paper addresses the question: <em>How do public values enable or hamper the implementation of integrated FRM?</em> To answer this, we conducted interviews and workshops with flood protection and spatial planning experts involved in an innovation project of the Dutch Flood Protection Programme. Our results show that integrated FRM is hampered by the fact that experts working in the flood protection and spatial planning domains hold different public values. Flood protection is guided by public values such as efficiency and effectiveness, while spatial planning prioritises sustainability and integrality. When reflecting on these public values, experts proposed new values and reconsidered and shifted domain-specific public values to support integrated FRM. This indicates that public value differences are not static but fluid, and that the gap between domains can be bridged when experts engage in collaborative processes, fostering dialogue and reflection on these values. Making public values explicit creates opportunities for better alignment between domains and has the potential to support the implementation of integrated FRM.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":313,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Science & Policy","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 104422"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148500421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}