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706 results
Feeding Us Greenwash: An analysis of misleading claims in the food sector
The report highlights a disconnect between business-as-usual growth projections for animal agriculture and climate science, which predicts significant production losses and stranded assets. A survey of 201 investors reveals that while 82% view climate change as a material risk to meat and dairy investments, 55% believe investors are not sufficiently addressing these risks. The document emphasizes the critical need for methane reduction, noting that livestock is responsible for 32% of anthropogenic methane emissions, and calls for financial institutions to demand transparent reporting and support a transition toward alternative proteins.
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Document type: Report
Examens locaux volontaires des progrès vers les Objectifs de développement durable
The document serves as a handbook for Canadian municipalities to implement the 'localization' of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs). It outlines a 'basic recipe' for successful VLRs, including the establishment of local priorities, partnerships, inclusive participation, and data collection. A central theme is the necessity of integrating Indigenous knowledge and leadership to ensure the process supports transformative reconciliation. The guide synthesizes global and regional resources and provides case studies from cities such as Kelowna, Winnipeg, Espoo, and Malmö to illustrate best practices in data visualization, community storytelling, and the 'Leave No One Behind' (LNOB) principle.
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Document type: Guide
Voluntary Local Reviews of Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals
The document serves as a guide for Canadian municipalities to localize the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the creation of Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs). It outlines a 'basic recipe' for successful VLRs, including the identification of local priorities, the establishment of partnerships, participatory processes, and the use of diverse data indicators. A central theme is the necessity of integrating transformative reconciliation and Indigenous leadership into the VLR process to ensure inclusivity and respect for Indigenous data sovereignty. The handbook synthesizes global and regional resources and provides case studies from cities such as Kelowna, Winnipeg, Malmö, and Espoo to illustrate good practices in reporting and community engagement.
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Document type: Guide
THE IMPACTS OF PERMAFROST THAW ON NORTHERN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
The report documents how permafrost degradation affects Northern Indigenous communities in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut. It identifies critical impacts across five themes: hunting, trapping, and fishing; travel and access; food sovereignty; cultural continuity; and infrastructure. Key findings include the loss of traditional food storage (permafrost lockers), increased travel risks and costs due to slumping and boggy ground, and significant financial burdens on homeowners for building maintenance. The report argues that current policy is too technocentric and fails to account for the social and cultural dimensions of infrastructure and the cumulative effects of colonial history and climate change.
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Document type: Report
Accessibility in the Legal Amazon: Digital Solutions
The document examines the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve economic accessibility in the Legal Amazon. It reviews global evidence showing that mobile and broadband services increase productivity, employment, and market access in developing regions. In the Legal Amazon, the brief identifies significant gaps in 3G/4G mobile internet access in rural areas and broadband access in both urban and rural sectors compared to the rest of Brazil, recommending targeted infrastructure investments to overcome these barriers.
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Document type: Policy brief
Setting a structural agenda for a green economic recovery from COVID-19
The paper argues that COVID-19 recovery should move beyond short-term stimulus to 'structural reforms' that are systemic, long-lasting, and general purpose. It introduces a 'Green Structural Recovery Menu' featuring ten high-level measures, including green fiscal reform and natural capital investment. The authors provide a toolkit of prioritisation criteria—categorised as conventional, advanced, and systemic/political—to help governments align policies with specific goals like job creation or planetary boundaries. The report identifies significant gaps in current agendas, particularly regarding gender integration, nature-based solutions, and support for MSMEs. It also addresses the financing challenge for the global south, suggesting debt-for-nature swaps and blended finance. Case studies from countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, and Pakistan illustrate the practical challenges and mixed results of implementing these reforms.
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Document type: Research paper
How will Sweden’s ambitious climate targets change how we eat and get around?
The document identifies significant implementation gaps in Sweden's path to a fossil-free welfare society by 2045, specifically within the food and transport sectors. In transport, it highlights a lack of tailored strategies for rural populations and a reliance on reactive policies to manage fuel price shocks. In the food sector, it notes a critical absence of clear consumption-based emission targets and a failure to address the need for significant dietary shifts, such as reducing animal protein intake.
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Document type: Policy brief
Urban sustainability metrics
The document examines how cities can measure sustainability using indexes and indicator systems, presenting a synthesized list of 310 indicators across four themes: environment, social, economy, and governance. It proposes a cyclical 'indicator pathway' for municipal decision-making, involving baseline definition, ex-ante impact assessment during planning, and ex-post impact assessment after project completion. The text notes a global trend toward increased municipal monitoring but highlights a lack of commonly accepted reporting criteria and challenges with non-SMART indicators.
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Document type: Fact sheet
The Potential of Hybrid Clean Energy Systems to Advance Energy and Climate Justice
The document examines how hybrid clean energy systems—specifically pairing solar generation with geothermal district heating and cooling—can address systemic energy injustices. It highlights that low-income communities and communities of color face higher risks from extreme heat and aging gas infrastructure, such as leaks in Massachusetts. The author advocates for a holistic approach, citing a Massachusetts pilot project that repurposes gas rights-of-way for geothermal networks and research from Croatia showing the efficiency of solar-geothermal hybrids. Such systems can reduce energy costs, eliminate methane emissions, and improve security through microgrid capabilities, provided that new market frameworks and data-processing technologies are implemented to manage the complexity of distributed energy systems.
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Document type: Briefing
BIGGER, CLEANER, SMARTER
The report argues that Canada's electricity systems must become "bigger, cleaner, and smarter" to serve as the backbone of a net zero economy by 2050. It identifies 'safe bets'—commercially available solutions like wind, solar, and energy efficiency—and 'wild cards'—emerging or high-barrier technologies like small modular reactors and carbon capture. The analysis emphasizes that while technical pathways exist, significant social, political, and institutional barriers, such as interregional grid integration and local opposition, must be overcome. It also highlights the unique challenges faced by remote communities and the necessity of Indigenous leadership in the energy transition.
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Document type: Report
A more equal distribution of limited resources and ecological space
The paper examines how the unequal consumption of natural resources and the global carbon budget reinforces systemic inequality and accelerates climate change. It argues that current environmental frameworks, such as the planetary boundaries and the Paris Agreement, often fail to allocate responsibility equitably or address the colonial legacies of the global economic system. The authors call for a transformation of global governance to include marginalized voices and Indigenous knowledge systems, shifting away from a growth-dependent economic model toward one rooted in social justice and cultural reflexivity.
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Document type: Research paper
Co-development of technologies of the future
The report critiques the historical failure of technology transfer in clean energy, agriculture, and health, proposing a 'co-development' model to bridge the gap between developed and developing nations.
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Document type: Report
Making governance better for fair and sustainable consumption
The paper examines the limitations of 'green growth' and absolute decoupling, highlighting how rebound effects and problem shifting hinder environmental progress. It advocates for a transition to 'strong sustainable consumption governance' that combines technological efficiency with modal shifts and absolute reductions in high-impact consumption. The authors emphasize the need to measure consumption-based emissions—which often occur outside the borders of high-income countries—and to reconcile ecological limits with social aspirations to ensure a fair distribution of resources.
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Document type: Research paper
Shifting policy gears to effect global transition towards sustainable lifestyles
The document examines the link between resource-intensive lifestyles of the global rich and environmental degradation, noting that the world has been in 'global ecological overshoot' since 1970. It identifies housing, transport, and food as the primary drivers of lifestyle emissions and proposes a multi-pronged policy approach to shift societal norms. The authors emphasize that a 'just transition' is necessary to avoid marginalizing local communities and to prevent 'neo-consumerism' where green products simply replace unsustainable ones without reducing overall consumption.
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Document type: Research paper
Sustainable consumption and production: the role of supply chains, decent work and digitalization
The document argues for stronger international coordination to manage the environmental and social footprints of global supply chains, moving beyond voluntary commitments toward mandatory due diligence and standardized verification. It emphasizes the necessity of integrating 'decent work' into green economy policies to ensure a just transition, noting that environmental policies often lack social equity. Additionally, it addresses the dual nature of digitalization, which can enhance efficiency but also significantly increase energy consumption and emissions, calling for global governance on 'green artificial intelligence' and standardized environmental footprint methodologies.
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Document type: Research paper
Towards multifunctionality: adaptation beyond the nature–society dichotomy
The document proposes 'multifunctionality'—the simultaneous provision of multiple functions across natural and human traits—as a systemic approach to climate adaptation. It identifies roadblocks in current nature-based solutions (NbS), such as a lack of awareness regarding power relations, insufficient data on co-benefits and costs, and financing gaps. The authors advocate for 'hybrid solutions' that combine green, blue, and grey infrastructure and outline four leverage realms for action: defining beneficiaries, designing for interoperability, monitoring across scales, and governing for connectivity and justice.
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Document type: Research paper
Valuing nature as individuals and communities
The paper examines the historical roots of the human-nature divide, particularly in 'WEIRD' (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) countries, where nature is often viewed instrumentally. It contrasts this with indigenous worldviews that see humans as integral to the biosphere. The authors argue that human-nature connectedness (HNC) is a contextual ability that can be fostered through nature accessibility, authentic education, and the legal recognition of the Rights of Nature to move toward a biocentric model of sustainability.
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Document type: Research paper
SELECTING INDICATORS FOR BASIN HEALTH REPORT CARDS
The document outlines a comprehensive methodology for developing Basin Health Report Cards (BRCs), emphasizing the need for a holistic approach that integrates ecological, social, economic, and governance metrics. It categorizes indicators into six major areas—Water Quality and Quantity, Landscapes and Ecology, Management and Governance, Economy, Social and Cultural, and Health and Nutrition—and distinguishes between prescriptive and adaptive, as well as leading and lagging indicators. The guide details a four-step selection process involving stakeholder values, data scrutiny, threshold setting, and final aggregation. It also highlights emerging innovations, such as the integration of gender perspectives, Indigenous knowledge, and Environmental Justice Indices, to ensure more inclusive and equitable water resource management.
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Document type: Guide
IPCC's upcoming 6th assessment report mitigation of climate change
The briefing highlights that global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, making the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5°C and 2°C increasingly difficult to achieve without significant 'overshoot'. It notes a critical gap in climate finance, where current levels are roughly ten times lower than the estimated USD 6.3 trillion needed annually by 2030. While net-zero commitments and renewable energy deployment have grown substantially, the document warns against an over-reliance on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and emphasizes the need for rapid transformations in energy, agriculture, and urban planning.
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Document type: Briefing
Mobiliser les preuves ACTIVER LE CHANGEMENT SUR LES IMPACTS SANITAIRES DE LA POLLUTION ATMOSPHÉRIQUE LIÉE AU TRAFIC (PALT)
The report synthesizes scientific evidence on the wide-ranging health impacts of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP), emphasizing its disproportionate effect on marginalized populations and its role in exacerbating COVID-19. It advocates for decisive policy, legislative, and regulatory interventions to reduce emissions and protect public health.
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Document type: Report