The projected impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions pose a significant threat to marine life and biodiversity. Ocean warming might affect fish stocks, their health and migratory routes. Ocean acidification and de-oxygenation are two phenomena that affect certain marine species as well as entire marine ecosystems. Rebuilding of overexploited and depleted fisheries and managing fisheries sustainably will require comprehensive governance structures for port, flag, coastal and market States, which also need to address the causes and impacts of climate change. Addressing both concerns under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) could open opportunities for comprehensive and synergetic regulation. This Chapter addresses potential synergies between oceans and climate governance. Suggestions to this end include (i) increasing ocean-based renewable energy, (ii) decarbonizing ocean-based transport, (iii) pursuing integrated management of fisheries and aquaculture, and (iv) enhancing CO2 uptake in ocean ecosystems.

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class on Earth. They play important roles in ecosystems and are often cited as sentinels of environmental health. Around 84% of the 8208 amphibian species have been assessed by The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with 41% categorised as threatened with extinction. As is the case with other species, the main threatening process for many amphibians is habitat destruction, disturbance and fragmentation. However, amphibians are also highly vulnerable to emerging infectious diseases, climate change, invasive species and pollution. These threats often interact, resulting in complex impacts on amphibian populations. Fortunately, there are several initiatives (IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group (ASG), Amphibian Survival Alliance (ASA) and the Amphibian Ark(AArk)) focused on understanding and protecting the many threatened species through global coordination, conservation planning, habitat protection, supporting conservation action, fundraising, emergency rescues and captive breeding for conservation. Diverse amphibian lifestyles, coupled with the complexity of threats, means that different species will respond in different ways and in different places. Consequently there are likely to be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in a changing world, rather than complete extinction of a class. Amphibian conservation therefore remains one of the greatest challenges of our times.

The impact of climate change on the distribution of fish stocks and other marine species is a pervasive problem that causes governance issues and threatens the rule of law for the oceans. Fish moving across static jurisdictional and management boundaries may become unregulated and risk being overexploited. Shifting fish stocks threaten the certainty, predictability and stability of the international fisheries legal framework, and undermine conservation and management measures by coastal States and regional fisheries organisations, impeding sustainable exploitation and conservation of global fish stocks. This chapter assesses whether and to what extent the international legal framework adequately places an obligation upon States to adapt to the complexities caused by MLRs shifting their location, to maintain the rule of law. It assesses whether the key principles and obligations under the international framework are fit for purpose to address these issues. It indicates that there is a general obligation on States, either individually or collectively, to adapt the management of marine living resources to the effects of climate change. It concludes with potential solutions which may strengthen an adaptive response.

This chapter will provide details and discussion about methods and actions currently employed in the conservation of animals and plants, together with a list and discussion of species which have benefitted most from these conservation methods.

At COP26, countries representing 70% of the global economy agreed to work together to cross the tipping points where clean technologies outcompete the fossils in each greenhouse gas emitting sector of the global economy. This could mark the start of a new era for climate change diplomacy. Success will need support from all sides.

The trade that destroys forests is worth a hundred times the money that is spent on protecting them. This will only change if the top producer and consumer countries of forest-risk commodities agree steps to shift global markets towards sustainability. We brought these countries together for the first time, to see if it could be done.

People often assume that to give ourselves a fighting chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, we need either inspired political leadership, or a moral revolution in society. Both would be nice to have, but there are more plausible ways to make faster progress. They involve thinking differently. We need science that gives us risk assessment instead of prediction; economics that understands change instead of assuming stability; and diplomacy that focusses on international collaboration instead of unilateral national action.

The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

Most research into the impacts of climate change concentrates on what would happen at low degrees of change. We know a great deal about best-case scenarios. Thanks to wilful ignorance among policymakers, and the cultural preferences of scientists, worst-case scenarios are much less considered. We know the least about what matters most.

In the economy as in ecosystems, one tipping point can lead on to another. Creating cascades of change throughout the global economy is perhaps the only imaginable way we could make the transition to zero emissions at the pace required. This should be the focus of climate change diplomacy throughout this decade. If enough of the world joins in, we might just have a chance.

Humanity’s situation with climate change is sometimes compared to that of a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. Most of our climate science takes the form of prediction: telling the frog that in five minutes’ time he will be a little bit warmer. We need more risk assessment: telling the frog that the worst that could happen is he could boil to death, and that this is becoming increasingly likely over time. This approach can give a much clearer picture of the risks of climate change to human health, food security, and coastal cities.

The first twenty years of international negotiation on climate change took an approach that was guaranteed to fail: attempting to solve an immensely complex issue through a single, legally binding agreement. The history of diplomacy in trade and security shows that success requires a different approach: breaking a problem up into manageable parts, and growing agreement gradually, strengthening it as parties’ interests increasingly converge.

Neither scientists, nor economists, nor insurers, nor military planners have assessed the risks of climate change in full. Heads of government are left to guess. A clear understanding of the scale of the risks will not on its own guarantee a proportionate response. But unless we have such an understanding, we can hardly be surprised if our response is inadequate.

A movement is gathering to overthrow the intellectual incumbents of economics. Started by students, advanced by academics, and funded by philanthropists, until recently it has remained largely unnoticed by governments. Now the world’s largest emerging economies are starting to take an interest. For the sake of avoiding dangerous climate change, the revolution cannot come too soon.

The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

The year 2021 saw extreme weather events outside the range of what experts had thought possible, signs of a growing acknowledgment among scientists of the need to take risk assessment more seriously, and the launch of a new initiative that might finally tell heads of government what they need to know.

We are at war with life. The Earth ecosystem, our common home, is being destroyed by industrial technologies which have led to massive pollution of all ecosystems, greenhouse effect, deforestation, impoverishment of the soil, overexploitation of fresh water, acidification of the ocean. We are now engaged in a sixth mass extinction. It is time to recognise the ongoing ecocide, the destruction of our common home, as a crime. It is also time to relearn to live in harmony with Nature, to recognise its intrinsic value and its right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, in all its life forms. The Rights of Nature allow us to protect the rights of future generations, human and non-human. This chapter presents various new initiatives and legal cases from around the world to that end.

This chapter will assess climate change as a concern for business, both as a stand-alone issue and as part of the broader shift that scientists are calling the Anthropocene. It begins by examining the extent to which the market – comprised of corporations, the government and non-governmental organisations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transactions, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, banks, etc., is the cause of the climate crisis, but also discussing the extent to which the market must also be the solution. It then presents two models for examining the role that business can play in addressing the climate crisis. The first is Enterprise Integration, which works by fitting climate concerns within existing business objectives and parameters. The second is Market Transformation, which is based on the premise that systemic change is necessary to address the systems challenge of climate change. The chapter concludes with a call for business students and business leaders to think of their career as a vocation or a calling, one that recognises the vast power that business has to solve our climate challenges or bring us to ruin.

This chapter discusses Rushdie’s work in the context of ecocritical considerations, which have increasingly preoccupied critics in the age of the Anthropocene. The representations of Rushdie’s urban and rural environments directly intersect with issues around environmental toxification, droughts, and famines. This is explored through urban planning and the spectre of postcolonial developmental policies, through, for example, the building of hydroelectric dams. Yet Rushdie brings to these considerations a further dimension in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, where these issues take most prominence. The metaphors of ground splitting, earthquakes, and environmental disaster are here closely intertwined. Shalimar the Clown engages with the toxification of the Kashmir valley through military hardware, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, featuring a gardener as its central character, also considers the post-apocalyptic world of New York, when the known world is altered after New York is hit by a storm. This little explored aspect of Rushdie’s work opens up a new critical conceptual dimension and illuminates important environmental concerns of his later novels.

Conceptual and technological advances have provided many new insights into desert dune processes and dynamics. Future prospects for desert dune studies will involve increasingly sophisticated models based on a wide variety of field and remote sensing datasets. Greater integration of research with environmental management in drylands will bring benefits to all.