Search Climate Insights Directory
40 results
Wildcards and Megatrends: Great Power Implosion, Technology and Climate Change
The report identifies several disruptive factors that could alter global trajectories, including the potential implosion of major powers like the US or China, the risks of generative AI, and the accelerating biosphere crisis. It highlights Africa's extreme vulnerability to climate change and warns that AI may exacerbate economic inequality and state surveillance. The text also notes a growing divide between the West and the Global South, driven by perceived self-centeredness during the COVID-19 pandemic and differing geopolitical responses to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
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Document type: Report
Report regarding the possible dissemination of misleading information by TotalEnergies SE in relation to climate and fossil fuels
The document argues that TotalEnergies SE has misled investors by claiming alignment with the Paris Agreement while continuing to increase fossil fuel production. It highlights the systemic financial risk climate change poses to global portfolios and asserts that TotalEnergies' disclosures—including claims about the role of natural gas as a transition fuel and the 'substitution' argument for continued extraction—are inaccurate. The authors call for an AMF investigation into potential breaches of the AMF General Regulations, the European Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), and the French Monetary and Financial Code.
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Document type: Statement
Risk of misleading information disseminated to investors by issuers regarding fossil fuel expansion
The letter argues that high-emitting companies, particularly 'Carbon Majors' like TotalEnergies, provide misleading information to investors regarding their alignment with the Paris Agreement while continuing to expand fossil fuel production. It asserts that climate change poses a systemic financial risk, with potential GDP losses of 50% by 2070-2090, and that current economic models underestimate these damages by ignoring tipping points. The authors highlight a 2025 Paris Judicial Court ruling that TotalEnergies misled consumers and call for ESMA to encourage national authorities to take enforcement action against investor-facing greenwashing to protect market integrity.
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Document type: Statement
Systemic climate adaptation framework
The Stockholm Environment Institute's systemic climate adaptation framework provides a normative guide to make adaptation policy more coherent, equitable, and robust. It is built on three core pillars: systemic risk framing, policy interlinkages, and deep uncertainty management. These pillars translate into six guiding principles—interconnected by design, shared risk ownership, co-benefits and everyday value, no-regrets and anti-maladaptation, equity and just resilience, and adaptive governance under deep uncertainty. The framework is intended as 'adaptable scaffolding' for stress-testing decisions, such as national strategies or investment pipelines, rather than a rigid checklist.
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Document type: Briefing
Beyond hazards and sectors: governing systemic climate risks
The report identifies a recurring 'implementation gap' where adaptation policies increasingly use the language of systemic risk—interconnected hazards, cascading impacts, and deep uncertainty—but continue to operate through hazard- and sector-based routines. Through comparative analysis of the EU, ASEAN, and the US, it finds that mandates, funding, and monitoring systems remain fragmented, often ignoring policy trade-offs and distributional inequities. It concludes by proposing a framework based on systemic risk framing, policy interlinkages, and deep uncertainty management to help decision-makers stress-test investments and avoid maladaptation.
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Document type: Report
Climate Science in Legal Contexts
The document is a comprehensive glossary designed to bridge the communication gap between the scientific and legal communities in the context of climate litigation. It defines key terms across seven thematic areas: foundational scientific concepts, measurement and data methods, climate and environmental science, risk and impact, public health, Indigenous Knowledge, and socioeconomic policy. The guide emphasizes the distinctions between scientific and legal interpretations of terms like 'bias', 'significance', and 'uncertainty', and explains how attribution science and climate modeling can be used to establish causation and responsibility in court.
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Document type: Guide
Temperature overshoot and tipping points
The document explains that limiting global warming to 1.5°C will likely involve 'temperature overshoot', where targets are exceeded before returning to lower levels. Such overshoot increases the risk of triggering irreversible climate tipping points, such as the transformation of the Amazon rainforest into a savanna. The author argues that relying on large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) or geoengineering to correct overshoot is risky and uncertain, emphasizing that immediate, deep emissions cuts are the only reliable way to maintain a habitable planet. It also introduces the concept of 'positive socio-economic tipping points' as a strategic means to accelerate the transition to net zero.
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Document type: Briefing
Climate and Biodiversity in Freefall
The report details how climate change drives biodiversity loss through mechanisms like ocean acidification and species range shifts, while biodiversity loss weakens the planet's carbon sinks. It critically assesses 'false solutions'—including monoculture tree plantations, carbon offsetting, and geoengineering—arguing that these policies often cause further ecological damage and land grabbing. The document calls for a systemic shift toward agroecology, energy sufficiency, and the protection of Indigenous Peoples' land rights to address the polycrisis holistically.
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Document type: Report
Policy interactions in human-landscape systems
The paper argues for greater interdisciplinary integration between natural and social sciences to understand rapidly changing human-landscape systems. It specifically examines how environmental policy research aligns with four key themes: thresholds and tipping points, spatial scales and boundaries, feedback loops, and time scales and lags, aiming to identify research complementarities for future collaborative work.
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Document type: Research paper
WITHIN OUR POWER Cut Emissions Today To Insure Tomorrow
The 2024 Scorecard by Insure Our Future argues that the global insurance industry is in a 'vicious cycle,' where it continues to underwrite fossil fuel expansion while simultaneously withdrawing coverage from communities facing the resulting climate risks. Using climate attribution science, the report estimates that over one-third of weather-related insured losses between 2002 and 2022—approximately $600 billion—are attributable to human-caused climate change. The analysis reveals a stark mismatch in underwriting, with renewable energy premiums representing less than 30% of the size of the fossil fuel insurance market in 2023. For 15 of the 28 major property and casualty insurers analyzed, estimated climate-attributable losses exceeded the premiums they collected from fossil fuel clients. While Generali is noted as the first insurer to restrict oil and gas expansion across the entire value chain, the report concludes that voluntary corporate leadership has stalled, necessitating urgent regulatory intervention to mandate 1.5°C-aligned transition plans and higher capital requirements for fossil fuel exposure.
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Document type: Report
Choisir son scénario climatique
The document outlines a two-step process for choosing climate scenarios that effectively guide greenhouse gas emission reductions. It advises avoiding scenarios produced by entities with conflicts of interest, such as oil and gas companies, and instead prioritizing independent sources like the IEA and IPCC. A robust scenario must have at least a 50% probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C with low or zero 'overshoot' and must rely on limited negative emissions to avoid risking irreversible climate tipping points.
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Document type: Guide
Unnatural Disasters: The Connection Between Extreme Weather and Fossil Fuels
The briefing establishes that fossil fuels are responsible for approximately 70% of carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution, with a small number of companies contributing a disproportionate share. It highlights the role of attribution science in linking specific extreme weather events to climate change and details the growing trend of using the 'polluter pays' principle in litigation and legislation to hold these companies financially accountable. The document further argues that to meet the 1.5C target, global fossil fuel production must decrease significantly by 2030, supported by a transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles.
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Document type: Briefing
Analysis Request for an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change
The document argues that States have a legal obligation under international climate change law and human rights law to implement effective, science-based measures to mitigate climate change, specifically through the phase-out of fossil fuels and the regulation of non-state actors. It asserts that failure to do so constitutes an internationally wrongful act, triggering responsibilities for cessation of harm and full reparation, including financial compensation for loss and damage.
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Document type: Legal commentary
Living Planet Report 2024
The Living Planet Report 2024 documents a 73% average decline in monitored wildlife populations from 1970 to 2020, with freshwater species suffering the most (85%). The report warns that cumulative pressures from habitat loss, overexploitation, and climate change are pushing ecosystems toward irreversible tipping points, such as the potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs. It argues that current national commitments for biodiversity and climate are insufficient, and calls for a systemic transformation of the global food system (the leading cause of habitat loss), the energy system (the primary driver of climate change), and the financial system (which currently provides almost US$7 trillion annually in nature-negative flows).
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Document type: Report
joint-letter-president-vdl-methane-sotu-52f34ea6cc6d9f71.pdf
The document is a joint letter from thirteen environmental and energy organisations urging President von der Leyen to prioritise the reduction of global methane emissions in her final State of the Union address. The authors argue that methane is a critical but overlooked climate threat, being over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and responsible for nearly half of the current net global temperature increase. They specifically call for the adoption of an ambitious EU Methane Regulation by the end of the legislative term to address emissions from the oil, gas, and coal sectors, as well as accelerated progress toward the Global Methane Pledge.
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Document type: Statement
Leadership in the Polycrisis: How UK Defense Training Can Help Us Navigate a Future of Unprecedented Environmental Disruption
The document argues that the 'polycrisis'—a state of complex, compounding environmental risks—requires a new category of leadership capable of managing chaotic conditions. Based on research with approximately thirty senior UK defense personnel, the authors identify three core strengths of military leadership: baseline capabilities (physical/mental resilience, values-based leadership, and storytelling), constant rehearsal (simulations and wargaming), and the 'Mission Command' operational concept. The briefing suggests that civilian leaders can adopt these methods to close the 'imagination gap' and maintain agency during environmental destabilization, while also calling for the defense sector to better integrate sustainability into its own doctrine.
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Document type: Briefing
ucs-jpmorgan-chase-sign-on-letter-april-2023-updated-5b4165886c3578ad.pdf
The document is a formal appeal to JPMorgan Chase shareholders to vote in favor of a resolution that would stop the bank from financing fossil fuel expansion. The signatories argue that continuing to fund new oil, gas, and coal infrastructure is inconsistent with the global scientific consensus required to limit warming to 1.5°C and contributes to environmental injustice and economic risk.
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Document type: Statement
Time To Scale It All Up
The We Mean Business Coalition calls for a massive increase in climate finance, specifically $3 trillion per year, to achieve net zero and address nature loss. The text references 'The Breakthrough Effect' report, which identifies electric vehicles, green ammonia, and plant-based diets as positive tipping points for emissions reduction. It emphasizes the role of the Giving to Amplify Earth Action (GAEA) initiative in leveraging philanthropy to unlock public and private funding. Additionally, it notes that 92% of organizations surveyed in the 'Corporate Minds of Climate' report prioritize long-term decarbonization, and highlights the impact of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), SME Climate Hub, and RE100 in driving corporate climate commitments.
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Document type: Statement
LIVING AMAZON REPORT 2022
The Amazon biome is facing a critical situation due to deforestation, degradation, and climate change, which threaten its role in global climate regulation and its immense biodiversity. Key drivers include cattle ranching, mechanized agriculture, illegal logging, and unsustainable infrastructure projects like dams. The report emphasizes the vital role of indigenous territories and protected areas in maintaining resilience and proposes an integrated landscape management approach, the protection of free-flowing rivers, and the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy to avoid an ecological tipping point.
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Document type: Report
Putting the Nord Stream gas leaks into perspective
The September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline ruptures may represent the largest single methane emitting event ever recorded, with potential losses exceeding 500 kilotonnes of methane. While the exact amount entering the atmosphere is difficult to calculate due to cloud cover, ocean dissolution, and the speed of the event, the climate impact is significant. However, the briefing notes that the oil and gas industry's annual fugitive emissions, flaring, and venting total 82 million tonnes, meaning the industry emits an equivalent amount to the Nord Stream leaks every day. The author argues that up to 85% of these emissions could be cut using existing technology and targeted policy.
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Document type: Briefing