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Climate change adaptation laws and policies: a review of trends, gaps and opportunities in 35 countries
Get PDFClimate change impacts are intensifying, yet adaptation efforts are not keeping pace with the scale and urgency of emerging risks. Closing this gap requires strong domestic legal and policy frameworks to translate international adaptation commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement into action and to provide an enabling environment for implementation. This includes mobilising and allocating finance, institutionalising adaptation into public and private decision-making, and integrating adaptation into countries’ broader development priorities. But a lack of global analysis tracking the evolution of these laws and policies over time has hampered the ability to assess progress, identify gaps and best practices, and understand how legal and policy frameworks can support scalable adaptation implementation. This report expands the knowledge base on adaptation-relevant laws and policies by identifying and analysing 902 of these laws and policies over time across 35 countries representing diverse regions, socioeconomic contexts and levels of exposure to climate risks. The analysis complements assessments by supranational institutions, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UNFCCC. The pace of policymaking on adaptation has accelerated in recent years: 75% of adaptation-relevant laws and policies have been adopted since the Paris Agreement in 2015, and 46% since 2020. In 60% of identified documents, adaptation and related concepts (including resilience and disaster risk management) are predominant. However, the rapid growth in volume of laws and policies does not, on its own, signify whether and how adaptation actions are being prioritised. This is a timely study as countries recently agreed on a list of indicators to measure adaptation progress under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). This long-awaited agreement was made at the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. Countries were also called upon to triple adaptation funding by 2035. Agreeing on the indicators is an important milestone in the process initiated under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which established the GGA, as it facilitates assessment of global progress and accountability towards the 11 global adaptation targets under the Goal
Acting reactively: private investment, controversies and regulatory and policy responses in residential long-term care in Ontario (Canada), Lombardy (Italy), the Netherlands and England (United Kingdom)
Get PDFPrivate investment in residential long-term care has surged around the world. Growing evidence shows that this is changing the institutional logic and the inner workings of the sector, prioritising the financial interests of asset holders above those of other stakeholders (eg. clients, care professionals and regulators). We know little about how policy makers and regulators are responding to private investment and profit-making in the long-term care sector. This paper addresses that gap by analysing policies prompting the growth of private investment and profit-making in residential long-term care, the emerging power struggles in some cases between asset holders and other stakeholders in long-term care, the controversies that have arisen and the concomitant responses of regulators and policy makers in Ontario (Canada), Lombardy (Italy), the Netherlands and England (United Kingdom). We show that the institutional context (eg. legal frameworks, policies and regulations) shapes controversies concerning quality, accessibility and affordability of care, and argue that regulators and policymakers in the constituencies we studied are responding reactively to such controversies rather than proactively anticipating and preventing unwanted effects. Our analysis provides policymakers with valuable insights regarding the regulation and governance of private investment and profit-making in the residential long-term care sector
Britain and the Libyan Revolution, 1969-72
No full textOn 1 September 1969 the Libyan monarchy was overthrown in an audacious coup d’etat engineered by a group of young army officers. The British government was largely taken by surprise by the coup but reacted by trying to chart a course most likely to protect the significant British interests in the country. This resulted in a cautious response, which aimed to establish contacts with the new regime to divine its nature and intentions. The prospect of intervention to restore the monarchy was quickly dismissed because the Wilson government viewed it as politically bankrupt. In terms of the British interests to be protected, continuing access to Libyan oil resources together with the protection of British investments in that industry were paramount. Thereafter, broader trade relations, an attempt to keep Libya out of the orbit of the Soviet Union and the protection of British nationals in Libya were also given some weight. Bilateral relations were subsequently undermined by the legacy issues of the so called “Libyan claims”, encompassing the disputed termination of a British government subsidy under the monarchy, and contested air defence system and Chieftain tank contracts. The nationalisation of BP’s assets in Libya in December 1971, which was primarily the consequence of the claims dispute, alongside Britain’s response to Iranian actions in the Gulf, undermined relations further. Neither formal nor unconventional diplomacy proved effective in resolving these Anglo-Libyan disputes, which only came to appear more intractable as bilateral relations deteriorated further from 1973 onwards
New generation of fathers in Poland: a path to gender equality?
No full textThis paper explores fatherhood in Poland among dual-earner couples, having already at least one young child. The birth of a child usually results in more traditional division of labour among partners, including strongly gendered division of newly created childcare labour. However, there is visible intergenerational change, with new fathers expressing a desire to be more involved with their children (in comparison to their own fathers). Mothers support them, and they prioritise fathers building relationship with children over them doing more housework. The paper focuses on the results of 74 semi-structured individual interviews with 37 couples, conducted in 2019 in Poland. I explore how the concept of involved fatherhood is understood, and practiced, where there are a lot of contradictions. For example, despite generous, and seemingly gender-neutral social policies, like long parental leave available for both mothers and fathers, there is a strongly gendered uptake, with women using the vast majority of all leaves. For many of the fathers in my sample, fatherhood was a lifechanging experience. However, it is important to mention that even when a father is an active caregiver, it does not always transfer to more gender-equal division of labour. Through the experiences of my respondents, I argue that despite increasing cultural support for involved fatherhood, there are still challenges with practicing it
The missing link: how new institutions could improve what we read online
No full textWhile the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) represent a major shift in internet regulation, they suffer from a critical structural gap. These frameworks focus primarily on ‘defensive empowerment’— enabling users to block or report unwanted content — while neglecting constructive empowerment — the ability of users to decide what information they wish to see. The paper argues that without collective institutions to signal content quality, users cannot assess quality beforehand, creating a market failure that pushes out expensive, high-quality content in favour of cheap, sensationalist, algorithm-driven content. To bridge this gap, the paper proposes the creation of Trusted Content Creators (TCCs): voluntary, self-governing groups of like-minded content creators that certify content quality through cross-platform labels. By mandating that platforms allow users to filter their feeds through these external quality signals, the law can decentre the role of algorithmic curation and create new markets
The need to rename tech
No full textThis book is about words that fool us into thinking that the digital technologies we use every day are beautiful, benign, and consequence-free. The collection shows how metaphors used by Big Tech to promote digital technologies are reductive or misleading. With a commitment to social justice, the contributors rename digital technologies in order to subvert Big Tech’s branding. Each chapter discusses a specific technology, rechristening it in a way that points explicitly to the social and political harms it is associated with. The alternative vocabularies that are proposed draw attention to what these technologies bring about, providing a means of resisting Silicon Valley’s claims about what people and organisations should buy and experience
Valuing news: digital platforms and journalism futures
No full textThis edited volume examines news as both a commodity and a public good within the ongoing crisis of news media business models, and the ways forward for supporting journalism in an age of digital platform dominance. It explores how Australia has distinctly approached this contemporary environment but extends this view to take in perspectives and approaches from around the world. Contributors address questions around the future of journalism, existing and emerging factors impacting the commercial sustainability of the news media economy, and the changing role of governments worldwide in financing news production. Valuing News: Digital Platforms and Journalism Futures draws insights from interviews with key stakeholders in the news media economy, in-depth analysis of government policies and interventions in diverse countries, as well as the impact of AI on the future of journalism. This volume is a valuable resource for journalism, media economy, media sociology, and policy scholars and students seeking to engage with policymakers on the future of sustainable news production
Actions and actors driving transformative change for global sustainability
Get PDFThe urgent need for transformative change to address the intertwined crises of climate change and biodiversity loss is widely recognized. Here, drawing on work originally conducted within the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment and using a bibliometric analysis of more than 4 million scholarly documents, we examine the actions and actors driving transformative change for global sustainability. The literature disproportionately focuses on a limited set of available actions and actors, neglecting others and overlooking their potential interactions. Notably, the actions ‘changing social norms’ and ‘technological change’ and the communication and knowledge and private sectors are frequently discussed, while actions referring to transforming the economic and governance systems and the civil society and the public sector are understudied. Moreover, actions and actors do not tend to appear together in consistent or systematic ways; instead, most action–actor combinations appear at rates similar to random chance, with only a few notable exceptions. The uneven distribution of scholarly attention may hinder the coordination and cross-sectoral coalitions required for effective transformative change. Our findings call for a more inclusive approach to research on actors and actions needed for transformative change towards a just and sustainable world, and for a greater focus on synergies between actions and actors potentially driving transformative change