npj climate actionPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-04-26DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00246-1
Hannes Bluhm, Daniela Wohlschlager, Johanna Pohl, Severin Beucker, Jan Bieser, Daniel Schien, Kelly Widdicks, Adrian Friday, Gordon Shaw Blair
{"title":"Understanding digitalization's environmental impact: why LCA is essential for informed decision-making.","authors":"Hannes Bluhm, Daniela Wohlschlager, Johanna Pohl, Severin Beucker, Jan Bieser, Daniel Schien, Kelly Widdicks, Adrian Friday, Gordon Shaw Blair","doi":"10.1038/s44168-025-00246-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00246-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This comment critiques Gritsenko et al.'s dismissal of environmental assessments such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in analyzing digitalization's environmental impacts. While acknowledging the need for action amidst uncertainty, we argue that LCA yet provides valuable insights into potential impacts, trade-offs, and areas to focus on in a supply chain. Especially in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, LCA helps manage decision-makers' uncertainty and informs targeted measures for sustainable digital infrastructure deployment and use.</p>","PeriodicalId":519998,"journal":{"name":"npj climate action","volume":"4 1","pages":"41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12033082/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144059762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj climate actionPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-08-22DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00283-w
Yee Van Fan, Charlie Wilson, Marina Andrijevic, Henrik Carlsen, Somya Joshi
{"title":"Digital transformation in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.","authors":"Yee Van Fan, Charlie Wilson, Marina Andrijevic, Henrik Carlsen, Somya Joshi","doi":"10.1038/s44168-025-00283-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00283-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Digital transformation refers to the widespread use of digital technologies in ways that reshape societal and economic activity, with significant impacts on sustainable development and climate challenges-both for better and for worse. Using statistical models calibrated to historical evidence in 62 countries across 12 world regions, we project future digital transformation within the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), adding contextual richness to this scenario framework used extensively in global climate research. In some scenarios, we find a pervasive and prolonged digital divide with up to 45% of the assessed population by mid-century still residing in countries with relatively low levels of digital transformation despite ever-deepening digitalisation in wealthier countries. We set out six use cases for how our explicit representation of digital transformation within the SSPs enables quantitative assessment of digitalisation's impact on energy, emissions, climate policy, and Sustainable Development Goals. We also discuss challenges with using empirically calibrated models to project digital transformation given its rapid evolution and socioeconomic implications.</p>","PeriodicalId":519998,"journal":{"name":"npj climate action","volume":"4 1","pages":"79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12370532/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144985650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj climate actionPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-06-26DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00264-z
Aarti Gupta, Max van Deursen
{"title":"Making transparent the accountability deficit in the global climate regime.","authors":"Aarti Gupta, Max van Deursen","doi":"10.1038/s44168-025-00264-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00264-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transparency is often extolled as the key means to secure accountability in the global climate regime. In practice, when transparency reports do reveal politically salient information, the use of such information to enhance accountability may not materialize. Whether the advent of the new enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement will change the prospects for accountability-through-transparency in the climate regime remains to be seen.</p>","PeriodicalId":519998,"journal":{"name":"npj climate action","volume":"4 1","pages":"60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12202474/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144532660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj climate actionPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-24DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00236-3
Beatrice Magistro, Ramit Debnath, Paul O Wennberg, R Michael Alvarez
{"title":"Partisanship overcomes framing in shaping solar geoengineering perceptions: Evidence from a conjoint experiment.","authors":"Beatrice Magistro, Ramit Debnath, Paul O Wennberg, R Michael Alvarez","doi":"10.1038/s44168-025-00236-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44168-025-00236-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The discourse on solar geoengineering (SG) is evolving, yet public perceptions of SG as a climate change solution remain underexplored, especially in the polarized US political landscape. We examine the relative importance of different SG narratives-framed as complementary, substitutive, or posing a moral hazard-and partisan information sources in shaping public attitudes. Using a conjoint experiment with 2123 American voters, we find that partisan alignment with the information source plays a decisive role in shaping trust in the messenger and support for SG, overshadowing any impact of message framing. Both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to trust the messenger and support SG when the information comes from a copartisan source. However, despite these strong partisan influences, policy preferences remain consistent with ideological baselines. These findings highlight the importance of partisanship in shaping perceptions of emerging climate technologies such as SG, even in contexts of low public awareness, and underscore the challenges of depolarizing public discourse on climate change solutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":519998,"journal":{"name":"npj climate action","volume":"4 1","pages":"29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11932920/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143723086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj climate actionPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-01DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00307-5
Paul Hagenström, Nathalie Pettorelli, Idil Boran, Peter Bridgewater, Deborah Delgado Pugley, Hollie Folkard-Tapp, Angel Hsu, Pablo Imbach, Marcel T J Kok, Stacy D VanDeveer, Oscar Widerberg, Sander Chan
{"title":"From pledges to places: action agendas need spatial data to integrate climate and biodiversity action.","authors":"Paul Hagenström, Nathalie Pettorelli, Idil Boran, Peter Bridgewater, Deborah Delgado Pugley, Hollie Folkard-Tapp, Angel Hsu, Pablo Imbach, Marcel T J Kok, Stacy D VanDeveer, Oscar Widerberg, Sander Chan","doi":"10.1038/s44168-025-00307-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44168-025-00307-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As COP30 approaches, policymakers must ensure that the integration of climate and biodiversity action by non-state and subnational actors is anchored in spatial data. Otherwise, we cannot see where change is happening, how effective it is, or who bears costs and benefits. The UNFCCC Global Climate Action and CBD Action Agenda Portals should lead by requiring spatial details on implementation, enabling more credible and participatory monitoring, analysis, and collaboration.</p>","PeriodicalId":519998,"journal":{"name":"npj climate action","volume":"4 1","pages":"100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12581375/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145446909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}