The Western Himalaya harbours distinctive and rich mountain mammal assemblages, yet the persistence of species may conceal underlying ecological decline. We propose the concept of deceptive diversity, describing the period during which extinction debt accumulates but remains largely undetected as species continue to persist. Synthesising evidence from long-term population monitoring, distributional assessments, genetic studies, and recent observations of climate- and development-driven ecological change, we show that many mammals in the Western Himalaya persist as small, fragmented and peripheral populations exhibiting restricted distributions and isolation. Emerging consequences include novel species interactions, declining connectivity, reduced dispersal opportunities, and increased extinction debt, despite the continued presence of many species. We argue that biodiversity assessments based solely on occupancy or species richness risk overlooking these hidden processes of ecological erosion. Recognising deceptive diversity shifts conservation attention from documenting extinctions to identifying the early demographic and ecological warning signals that precede them. This provides a framework for proactive conservation of populations before declines become irreversible; a proposition which is relevant to other important mountain biodiversity hotspots globally.

Primary freshwater crabs are keystone aquatic species, yet the potential impact of climate change on their distribution and conservation status remains unknown, particularly in biodiversity-rich areas such as South Africa. We employed maximum entropy and climatic niche modelling to evaluate the effects of climate change on the distribution of 17 Potamonautes species in South Africa and estimate protected area coverage for suitable habitats under both current and future climate projections of increased temperature, and the impact on the conservation of these species. Our results indicate that six of the 17 species are likely to experience a net loss of suitable habitat, and seven are projected to experience net habitat gains. Habitat changes for four of the 17 species are dependent on the climate scenario applied. Under predicted temperature increases, P. barbarai and P. isimangaliso are expected to experience significant habitat reduction, with P. isimangaliso being sensitive as a result of substantial predicted losses in both suitable and protected habitat. Conversely, P. depressus, P. flavusjo and P. warreni appear to be the least sensitive to climate change, gaining suitable habitat under both climate models. Unsurprisingly, we found precipitation to be a critical predictor of suitable habitat as these crabs are dependent on freshwater ecosystems. Our results underscore the importance of conservation strategies tailored to the unique predicted response of each species to climate change.

Scientists and policy makers are increasingly exploring solar geoengineering as a tool for combatting anthropogenic climate change. Yet these technologies have drawn intense ethical criticism. One of the most influential critiques – the ‘moral hazard’ objection – holds that pursuing solar geoengineering risks undercutting mitigation efforts; and that, as a result, governments should halt the development of solar geoengineering. This paper argues that the moral hazard objection faces a dilemma: either the proposed solution to the moral hazard effect (that is, stifling geoengineering) is unnecessary, or it expresses a morally troubling form of disrespect. Articulating this dilemma serves three purposes. It shows, first, that the moral hazard objection is substantially more difficult to vindicate than it initially appears. Second, it clarifies what would need to be shown, empirically, to overcome this ethical hurdle. Finally, and crucially, it sheds light, more broadly, on what it means to respect people’s agency when designing and implementing public policies.

During the El Niño phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, much of Southeast Asia experiences intense droughts and surging temperatures, exacerbating wildfires and creating a blanket of hazardous haze across much of the region. These patterns are predicted to worsen with climate change, further increasing the vulnerability of the region’s primate species, 94% of which are threatened with extinction. Here, we report findings from a systematic search of the literature and synthesize the current state of knowledge regarding the impacts of El Niño-driven heat, drought, fire and smoke on non-human primates in Southeast Asia. Our review shows that habitat loss and degradation driven by El Niño-induced drought and fire cause changes to diet, activity patterns, social interactions and physical condition, and lead to population crowding, reduced group sizes, increased infant mortality, displacement of individuals and local extirpation. Furthermore, prolonged exposure to smoke alters behaviour and worsens the health of primates. Two studies presented evidence for the recovery of primate populations in habitats damaged by fire if forest is allowed to regenerate. We highlight significant gaps in our understanding of the impacts of El Niño on non-human primates, particularly the need for research that considers the interconnected effects of rainfall, temperature, fire and smoke, as well as long-term effects on reproduction and mortality. Because of the unpredictable nature of El Niño, we acknowledge the difficulties of planning research in this area and emphasize the potential of long-term research sites to add to our understanding of this key conservation issue.

Drylands cover a large fraction of the terrestrial surface and are highly vulnerable to climate change; yet, long-term experimental platforms devoted to their study remain scarce. This case study synthesizes nearly two decades of research conducted at the Aranjuez Experimental Station (AES), a semiarid gypsum steppe in central Spain that has supported multiple observational studies, manipulative experiments and long-term monitoring aimed at understanding how plants, soils and biocrusts interact to regulate dryland structure and functioning and how organisms modulate ecosystem responses to climate change. Research at the AES has shown that plant–plant interactions vary with microclimate, ontogeny, water availability and herbivory; that biocrusts are key regulators of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon cycling, soil respiration, infiltration and soil water dynamics; and that lichen-dominated biocrusts are highly sensitive to warming. At the same time, a long-term climate change experiment conducted at the AES has revealed that well-developed biocrusts can buffer warming effects on nutrient pools, greenhouse gas fluxes and soil moisture. The results obtained from the AES illustrate the value of long-term, integrative field research for understanding dryland resilience and vulnerability and highlight the key role of biocrusts as modulators of ecosystem responses to climate change.

In an all-electric world, there would be little danger of an anthropogenic climate crisis. Humanity came close to that state 125 years ago, as all the ingredients had been discovered or developed, together with knowledge that greenhouse gases would cause global warming. We trace those developments and why they lost out to fossil fuel-based energy, drawing lessons about market failure for the present situation. We model and forecast the energy mix for UK domestic consumption, providing a historical counterfactual had the UK taken the electric path rather than the fossil fuel path more than a century ago.

Glaciers are critical freshwater reservoirs in the Central Andes. Although supraglacial debris covers over 40% of the glacierised area in the Atlantic basins, the long-term surface evolution of debris-covered glaciers remains poorly constrained. In this study, we quantify glacier surface evolution over four decades (1985–2024) for 229 debris-covered glaciers across five major Atlantic basins in the Central Andes. Using ANDESMAG, a Python-based decision-tree algorithm employing spectral thresholds, we analysed more than 60 000 Landsat and Sentinel-2 image tiles in Google Earth Engine. Overall, debris-covered area increased by $20\pm11$% and debris-emergence elevation rose by $122\pm99$ m, while snowline altitude at the end of summer increased by $181\pm91$ m and snow-cover ratio declined by $9\pm11$%. Most of these changes occurred after 2009, during the Central Andes Megadrought, and correlated more strongly with declining precipitation than with rising air temperature. Our open-access workflow, which achieves a classification accuracy of 94%, provides the first annual regional assessment of debris-covered glacier surface evolution in the Central Andes of Argentina. Our results highlight the vulnerability of debris-covered glaciers to ongoing climate change and offer a transferable tool applicable to glacierised mountain regions worldwide.

In this article, we use a dynamic general equilibrium model to examine the effect of the move to net zero in the United Kingdom on productivity. One argument is that the transition is likely to be productivity-reducing, as it will involve a move from more- to less-efficient means of producing. Alternatively, it could be argued that the transition will be productivity-enhancing, as the capital investment required to bring about this move leads to a rise in productivity, both within the specific ‘greening’ industries and more generally via productivity spillovers to the rest of the economy. Our model enables us to examine how this potential trade-off varies depending on whether we look at the short, medium or long run. We find that the introduction of a carbon tax, applied to encourage the move towards net zero, reduced GDP and total hours worked, but, since total hours fell by more than GDP, increased productivity. As electricity becomes more substitutable for petrol and gas, the effect on productivity becomes more positive as GDP recovers while total hours remain permanently lower than initially. Finally, our results suggest that unless investment in green technology leads to significant technological gains elsewhere, it is unlikely that the move to net zero will have a large effect on productivity growth above and beyond the direct effect resulting from the capital deepening that will be associated with it.

This article examines two tendencies in contemporary Latin American science fiction, drawing on Mark Fisher’s terms Terminator and Avatar. Derived from the eponymous movies, Terminator narratives depict capitalist destruction as inevitable, while Avatar narratives imagine that global collapse can be averted by returning to premodern forms of social organization. Following Fredric Jameson, I interpret both as symbolic acts addressing climate change and the planetary devastation produced by the capitalist management of modernity. Despite their apparent opposition, both assume that modernity and technological development serve only the interests of the current social formation, with its drive for infinite economic expansion and disregard for the planet’s finite resources. Informed by the works of Agustina Bazterrica, Michel Nieva, Erick J. Mota, and Jorge Baradit, I outline a third position, alternative modernity, as theorized by Bolívar Echeverría and akin to Fisher’s postcapitalism, which reimagines technology while preserving modernity’s emancipatory potential—meeting human needs without an antagonistic stance toward nature.

Occasional boom-bust cycles have long characterized national wine industries, but without them coinciding with the cycles of other countries. Today's wine crisis is different in that prices for all but high-quality wines are depressed in all major wine-producing countries, and the world is awash with a large surplus of (especially red) non-premium wine. This article first outlines the nature and extent of the crisis. It explores its various causes, arguing that they are structural rather than just cyclical. It then suggests what is required for profits to return to normal. To simplify the analysis, use is made throughout of a two-part industry framework that involves non-premium and fine wine producers. Both parts are struggling, but the pressures for structural adjustment are far more severe for non-premium vignerons. The study concludes that the longer it takes for the surplus to be disposed of and for a non-trivial share of the world's least-profitable vines to be removed, the longer will prices be depressed not only for non-premium wine but also for some higher-quality wines.

What kind of Arctic actor will China be in 2050? China has entered the Arctic, and its future ambitions in the region are closely tied to its future trajectory in global politics. We conduct a scenario analysis of China’s ability to realise its Arctic ambitions in three scenarios: A continuation of the status quo (Ascendant China), Chinese economic stagnation (Stagnant China), and Chinese global hegemony (Triumphant China). We find that climate change will affect China differently in these scenarios. In Triumphant China, climate change can act as an enabler of Chinese ambitions, particularly regarding fishing and maritime transport. Even as a non-Arctic state, a Triumphant China will likely wield sufficient global power to realise its Arctic ambitions. In Ascendant China and Stagnant China, we find that climate change primarily acts as an obstacle to China’s Arctic ambitions. China would rely on its Russian partnership to a greater extent, limiting their ability to realise their ambitions. Without a strong Arctic foothold, climate change could cause regional changes too rapid and comprehensive for China to be able to adapt civilian and military capabilities to those changes. Finally, climate change may make Stagnant China more likely, as sea-level rise threatens China’s economic might.

Among the various types of legal activism, a distinction can be made between proactive and reactive litigation. This distinction hinges on who initiates the legal action: proactive litigation is initiated by plaintiffs, while reactive litigation occurs when the state starts a criminal prosecution in response to activism or dissent. While proactive strategic cases have been documented, reactive criminal trials involving activists remain understudied, especially in legal scholarship. In this article, an analytical framework that mobilizes the concepts of reactive litigation and judicial opportunity is created to systematically analyze 13 criminal prosecution cases relating to climate activism. The analysis will be based on four key elements to highlight the trends that can be observed: (i) the type and targets of the protest action, (ii) the charges brought against the defendant, (iii) the defences mobilized in court, and (iv) the outcomes of the criminal proceedings. This article finds that cross-analysis of the variables across four jurisdictions not only shows the relevance of studying the prosecution of activists as a growing and pressing phenomenon around the world but also provides insight into the trends observed in reactive climate litigation.

Eco-anxiety, characterised by persistent or intense anxiety about environmental crises, is a growing global mental health concern. Yet, the design, effectiveness and implementation of interventions specifically targeting eco-anxiety lack a comprehensive synthesis. This systematic review examined peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2025 that reported on interventions designed to prevent, manage or reduce eco-anxiety or closely related climate-related psychological distress, defined as sustained emotional, cognitive or functional impairment linked to environmental change. Searches were conducted across CINAHL, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus, ProQuest Environmental Science Collection and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Twenty-two studies met the inclusion criteria from an initial 1,259 records. Most were published between 2017 and 2025, primarily in high-income Western countries, and encompassed a broad range of interventions including educational programmes, messaging strategies, cognitive-behavioural and mindfulness-based therapies, group resilience training, nature-based approaches and community participation initiatives. Cognitive-behavioural and mindfulness-based interventions showed the most consistent positive findings within the current evidence base, including repeated reports of reductions in eco-anxiety or climate-related distress and, in some studies, maintenance of improvements at short-term follow-up. Educational and community-focused interventions were more likely to be associated with emotional engagement, agency and peer support rather than solely increasing knowledge, with some approaches increasing concern or emotional engagement without reducing distress. However, substantial heterogeneity in outcome measures, short intervention durations and limited follow-up periods constrained comparison across studies and assessment of longer-term impact. Implementation challenges included issues of scalability, cultural relevance and the predominance of researcher-led, time-bound interventions. Within the limited literature to date, interventions integrating emotional resilience training with group or community engagement appeared to show promising findings. Further research using standardised outcome measures, longer follow-up periods and more culturally diverse and participatory designs is required to strengthen the evidence base and inform scalable, context-sensitive responses to eco-anxiety.