This study investigates the causal impact of temperature on labour productivity within Indonesia’s household-based enterprises. We combine rich, household-based data on micro and small enterprises from the Indonesian Family Life Survey with historical temperature data to estimate the effect of temperature on labour productivity, which we measure as revenue and revenue per worker. Our empirical strategy leverages plausibly exogenous, time-varying temperature fluctuations within specific geographic areas. The findings reveal a significant negative relationship: a 1°C increase in the 12-month average temperature deviation is associated with a 14 per cent reduction in enterprise revenue and a 21 per cent decrease in revenue per worker. Furthermore, we find that the effect of temperature on labour productivity follows an inverted U-shape and disproportionately impacts smaller businesses. Our study highlights the vulnerability of the informal sector to rising temperatures and underscores the urgent need for targeted policies aimed at enhancing the climate resilience of household-based enterprises.

In the face of an escalating climate crisis, climate litigation is increasingly being utilized as a means to set boundaries to States’ lack of climate action. In what stands as one of the most consequential climate cases to date, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) determined in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland that individuals have a human right to protection against the adverse effects of climate change. Through an in-depth analysis of the judgment, this Article explains the Court’s ruling that effective protection of human rights requires States to base their emissions reduction targets on a quantification of their fair share national carbon budgets in relation to the remaining global carbon budget for 1.5oC. This has far-reaching implications for the scrutiny of States’ emissions reduction targets. The Article shows that, as a consequence of the rapidly depleting remaining carbon budget for 1.5oC, States may no longer be able to remain within their fair share through domestic reductions alone. In such circumstances, States need to contribute to emissions reductions outside of their territory and reduce their domestic emissions at their highest level of ambition.

Coral bleaching is a complex physiological response to environmental stressors, primarily temperature fluctuations, that induces oxidative damage, disrupting the intracellular symbiotic relationship between corals and their dinoflagellate algae and/or reducing the algae’s photosynthetic pigments. Coral recovery from bleaching often depends on the re-establishment of this symbiosis, with associated fauna potentially influencing coral resilience by either mitigating or exacerbating bleaching effects. Yet this subject remains underexplored, particularly regarding invertebrates. Here, we investigated the physiological response of the ten-ray star coral Madracis decactis to thermal stress and the impact of the coral-associated crab Mithraculus forceps on its recovery from bleaching. In a laboratory experiment, we subjected coral fragments to a 21-day thermal stress, followed by a 4-week recovery period, and assessed key parameters of the coral–algae symbiosis and the oxidative-stress response. Our results showed that heat stress caused severe impacts on coral physiology, with persistent bleaching effects on the coral–algae symbiosis and no signs of recovery. Additionally, we found that the presence of Mi. forceps had a negligible effect on Ma. decactis fragments, with no influence on the coral’s overall condition or recovery from thermal bleaching under the conditions tested. However, more complex ecological scenarios may reveal context-dependent crab roles that could influence coral recovery, highlighting the need for studies that incorporate broader biotic and abiotic interactions.

Protecting biodiversity on the planet through business involvement is a priority for many governments and citizens. To do this requires balancing different social, financial, and ecological objectives with economic output. This editorial questions what is the right way to do this based on considering different forms of capital, such as natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial. This enables renewed interest in the natural environment in terms of business involvement in issues such as climate change and the circular economy.

Understanding the values held by negotiating parties is central to the design and success of international climate change agreements. However, empirical understandings of these values – and the manners by which they structure negotiating countries’ value networks and interactions over time – are severely limited. In addressing this shortcoming, this paper uses keyword-assisted topic models to extract value networks for the 13 most recent Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It then uses network analysis tools to unpack these networks in relation to influential values, countries, and time. In doing so, it demonstrates that countries’ core climate change values (i) can be accurately recovered from COP High-level Segment (HLS) speeches and (ii) can, in turn, be used to understand the structure of negotiation networks at the UNFCCC. Analysis of the corresponding value networks for COPs 16–28 indicates that initially central values of “Fairness” and “Power” have increasingly given way to values associated with the “Environment” and “Achievement.” Thus, countries at the UNFCCC have increasingly eschewed values associated with common but differentiated responsibilities in favor of a consensus over the urgency of collectively combating climate change. These and related insights illustrate our approach’s potential for recovering and understanding value networks within climate change negotiations – a critical first step for any successful climate change agreement.

Climate change driven by human activity has emerged as a determinant factor in the acceleration of global biodiversity loss, with bird species among the most impacted vertebrate groups. Parrots (family Psittacidae) are particularly vulnerable due to their specialised habitats, strong dependence on forested ecosystems, and additional pressures such as illegal wildlife trade and hunting. This review assesses the current scientific understanding of how climate change affects the biodiversity, distribution, physiology, and conservation status of Psittacidae worldwide. An extensive literature search was conducted covering publications from 2000 to 2022 to synthesise key findings on habitat loss, changing climatic patterns, morphological adaptations, and species resilience. Habitat loss was indicated as the predominant threat, compounded by climate-induced alterations in breeding and foraging behaviours. The review emphasises the need for integrated conservation actions, including habitat restoration, ecological corridors, and community involvement. By identifying research gaps and future directions, this paper contributes to strengthening global strategies for Psittacidae conservation under climate change scenarios.

Drought is a critical issue for global agriculture making the development of drought-resilient crop varieties crucial. Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is a highly drought tolerant cereal crop with the potential to serve as a model for identifying drought-tolerant genes. Investigating drought-induced gene expression changes in S. bicolor can inform breeding strategies aimed at enhancing resilience in other crops in the Poaceae family. Our aim was to identify the genes and networks that are differentially expressed in drought stressed sorghum across multiple tissue types, not just leaves. Previously, we reported differences in phenotype in terms of biomass, photosynthetic traits and the concentration of specialized metabolites (dhurrin and phenolics) between well-watered and water-limited plants. Here, differential gene expression analysis was conducted for drought-stressed S. bicolor variety BTx623 using edgeR. Gene ontology enrichment analysis and Weighted Gene Correlation Network Analysis (WGCNA) were conducted to identify the over-represented functions of the differentially expressed genes and to identify clusters of genes that behave together as a response to drought, respectively. Gene expression changes were largely confined to the root (56 genes were found to be differentially expressed), with little differential expression in the leaves or sheaths and no significant differences in expression of key dhurrin pathway genes. Together, these results indicate that drought tolerance in the cultivated sorghum reference genotype BTx623 is associated primarily with root-specific transcriptional responses and provide a tissue-resolved baseline for future comparative analyses across sorghum genotypes and wild relatives differing in drought sensitivity and HCN potential.

Why do we see such strong backlashes against carbon taxes in rural areas? In this article, we focus on the role of perceptions in rural communities that the government unfairly advantages the urban centres of political and economic power. We argue that when people living in rural areas perceive of unequal treatment by the state, they are less supportive of carbon taxes, because they believe that carbon taxes unfairly punish those that have already been disadvantaged by the state. We carry out a survey with a representative sample of around 3000 respondents from the United Kingdom to test our argument. We provide observational and experimental evidence showing that for those living in rural areas, increased perceptions of unequal treatment by the state reduce the perceived fairness of carbon taxes and substantially lower support for carbon taxation. Our results suggest that tackling deep-rooted resentments around unequal treatment in rural areas is crucial for building broad public support for carbon taxation.