In March 2023 the EU-funded CHERISH project published its free user-guide and methodology for investigating heritage and climate change in the coastal and maritime environment (Barker and Corns 2023). This paper provides an overview of the publication, specifically the CHERISH toolkit – the 15 approaches employed by the multi-disciplinary project to investigate at-risk heritage sites in Wales and Ireland. Using the eroding coastal hillfort of Dinas Dinlle in Wales as a case study, the toolkit which combines air, land and sea-based investigation techniques is highlighted. This article will assist users going forward in identifying relevant approaches to the study of their own at-risk sites. It is relevant to a wide-ranging audience anywhere in the world, taking into consideration a variety of requirements such as the environment, budget, and outputs.

Carbon leakage – the increase of greenhouse gas emissions in foreign jurisdictions following the introduction of domestic or regional climate mitigation measures – raises key questions in the climate change debate. This includes whether carbon leakage constitutes a threat to the environmental integrity of climate policies and, if so, how this could be mitigated. Through the use of four hypothetical models of international climate change regime, this article argues that international climate change law is a key factor in answering this two-part question. Firstly, the article demonstrates that the architecture of international climate change law affects whether carbon leakage can be considered as undermining the mitigation objective of climate policies. Secondly, it draws attention to the interaction – and potential tension – between carbon leakage prevention measures and international climate change law.

This article presents a systematic literature review of publications from 2014 to 2021 using “archaeological site” and “climate change” as keywords, in addition to several terms representing forms of stakeholder engagement. Articles were thematically coded to explore trends at the intersection of climate change, archaeology, and local and Traditional stakeholders. Results show that nearly half of the selected publications did not include local and Traditional stakeholder engagement in studies related to climate adaptation planning for archaeological sites. Synthesis of the results with insights gained from other literature on decolonizing archaeology showed that potential reasons for this gap include (1) the academic publishing culture, (2) archaeology as a predominantly Western discipline, and (3) increasingly available tools for climate change adaptation planning for archaeological sites. This article calls on the academic community to consider holistic stewardship using a landscape approach and to use climate change adaptation planning to elevate local and Traditional stakeholder input and values.

This essay describes the author's quest for effective, large-scale political actions to stop the burning of fossil fuels. What are the nuts and bolts of collective organizing at scales large enough to effect substantial change? Frustrated both by widespread public pessimism and by the politics most often articulated in literary studies, Levine finds a working political model in the divestment movement; a methodological model in formalist analysis; and a theory of collective aesthetics and politics in post-Victorian Jane Addams.

The growing plastic production, the lack of their waste management, and fragmented regulatory responses have increased their abundance in the environment. Plastic pollution has created significant environmental concerns leading to planetary boundary threats. As a result, an increasing number of governments and non-state actors have begun negotiations on a legally binding treaty to cover the full-life-cycle of plastics by 2024. While the negotiations were mandated at the United Nations Environment Assembly 5.2 in March of 2022, how the new agreement would link to existing governance bodies addressing plastic pollution at the global, regional, national and local levels requires careful consideration. This analysis examines the main multi-level governance structures in place to govern plastics while highlighting their principal roles as well as shortcomings and gaps. It then explores ways a new global agreement could complement existing governance structures without imposing and duplicating the work of previous agreements.

Data were obtained from the literature to identify past changes in and the present status of the coastal carbon cycle. They indicate that marine coastal ecosystems driving the coastal carbon cycle cover, on average, 5.8% of the Earth’s surface and contributed 55.2% to carbon transport from the climate-active carbon cycle to the geological carbon cycle. The data suggest that humans not only increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere but also mitigate (and before 1860 even balanced) their CO2 emissions by increasing CO2 storage within marine coastal ecosystems. Soil degradation in response to the expansion and intensification of agriculture is assumed to be a key process driving the enhanced CO2 storage in marine coastal ecosystems because it increases the supply of lithogenic matter that is known to favour the burial of organic matter in sediments. After 1860, rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere indicate that enhanced CO2 emissions caused by land-use changes and the burning of fossil fuel disturbed what was a quasi-steady state before. Ecosystem restoration and the potential expansion of forest cover could mitigate the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but this carbon sink to the atmosphere is much too weak to represent an alternative to the reduction of CO2 emission in order to keep global warming below 1.5–2.°C. Although the contribution of benthic marine coastal ecosystems to the global CO2 uptake potential of ecosystem restoration is only around 6%, this could be significant given national carbon budgets. However, the impact on climate is still difficult to quantify because the associated effects on CH4 and N2O emissions have not been established. Addressing these uncertainties is one of the challenges faced by future research, as are related issues concerning estimates of carbon fluxes between the climate-active and the geological carbon cycle and the development of suitable methods to quantify changes in the CO2 uptake of pelagic ecosystems in the ocean.

Around the world, countries have introduced laws and policies designed to prevent species extinction. While there have been some success stories, overall, these laws and policies are routinely failing. Extinction rates continue to climb. However, the law is necessary to regulate the human-environment interactions that form the basis of the drivers of extinction and biodiversity loss, including land-clearing, the discharge of greenhouse gases and the introduction of invasive species. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the literature specifically on biodiversity conservation law, to review and describe the commonalities in laws and legal systems that can be considered successful, or unsuccessful. Laws for the conservation of biodiversity form a critical component for minimising the drivers of extinction, with species extinction being an extreme outcome of biodiversity loss. We reviewed 128 publications from around the world to ascertain and synthesise best practices in law and policy that aim to protect and conserve biodiversity (herein termed ‘biodiversity conservation law’). The literature demonstrated that when it comes to biodiversity conservation law, the concept of ‘best practice’ is elusive, and does not necessarily equate to a reversal in species decline. Further, most western countries utilise the same legal mechanisms (also known as policy tools) for biodiversity conservation, although some countries implement these laws more effectively than others. In this paper, we explore and explain several common legal mechanisms discussed across the range of literature, including species listing and recovery plans, protected area regulation, stewardship, restoration, and offset and no net loss schemes. We also explore the necessity of biodiversity and climate mainstreaming across all laws and highlight the need to engage in genuine partnerships and collaborations with First Nations communities. This paper, and the principles explored herein, should assist law and policymakers to regulate more effectively and explain to those in the conservation sciences where research should be directed to improve the science-policy interface.