Urbanization has evolved from a symbol of human progress to a global force reshaping the Earth system. Cities, once founded in resource-rich environments, now expand into marginal areas, relying heavily on distant resources and energy-intensive infrastructure. This growth intensifies climate change, disrupts biogeochemical cycles, and creates profound challenges for water resources. Cities also hold potential as centers of adaptation and mitigation of global environmental change. As urban populations rise, understanding and managing the interactions between urban ecosystems and the Earth system are crucial for ensuring a resilient and healthy future for the majority of Earth's population.

This chapter selects two case studies to examine the presence of global experimentalist governance in ocean acidification governance: the Ocean Acidification Alliance and the International Maritime Organization. The selection distinguishes between ‘suitable’ institutions (addressing one OA activity) and those with ‘significant potential’ (addressing multiple activities within one concern or across concerns). Using a comprehensive table that maps actors and instruments, the chapter analyses how institutions address OA’s three concerns: causes (CO2, NOx/SOx), stressors (e.g., climate change, pollution, and fishing), and adaptation (blue carbon, marine protected areas, and fisheries management). Most institutions show significant potential by addressing concerns in depth and/or breadth. The OA Alliance was selected as the only institution explicitly focused on OA, addressing CO2 emissions and coastal activities. The IMO was chosen for its role in shipping emissions (both CO2 and NOx/SOx) and broader pollution control mandate. These cases differ in legalisation levels and institutional structure, providing diverse perspectives on experimentalist governance challenges. Both have significant potential and focus on CO2, the primary OA driver, making them ideal candidates for testing the implementation of global experimentalist governance.

Ocean acidification (OA) science has rapidly developed since 2005; however, international action remains limited. This chapter explains the complex scientific background of OA to non-scientists. OA is measured on a logarithmic pH scale, with oceans becoming 40 per cent more acidic since pre-industrial times. Three groups of compounds contribute to acidification: CO2 (the primary driver), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulphur oxides (SOx). These substances enter the oceans through various means, such as anthropogenic emissions, geoengineering, coastal activities, and scrubber effluents from ships. Additional ocean stressors, such as climate change, pollution, and overfishing, compound the effects of OA, making adaptation more challenging. OA threatens calcifying organisms such as corals and oysters, disrupts food webs, and impacts human ecosystem services valued at potentially $1 trillion annually by 2100. Adaptation options include blue carbon ecosystems, marine protected areas, and fisheries management. The issue encompasses ocean, atmosphere, and land systems across multiple timescales and spatial levels, necessitating diverse governance approaches that address both global CO2 emissions and local stressors.

Chapter 1 discusses three distinct types of systems: mechanical, living, and sociocultural. The systems are analyzed based on their primary proprietary features, but all are neg-entropic in seeking to maintain order and resist chaos. Four features of complex systems are emphasized: openness, purposefulness, emergent property, and multidimensionality, and examples are provided from the realm of religious ritual life. Systems are subject to internal conflicts or dissonance, with the most basic being the tension between too much control and too much chaos. The chapter concludes with a discussion of such dissonance in religious systems and the nature of mitigation as a human response to the signal generated by the dissonance.

As climate disasters escalate, the Global South faces a staggering $387 billion annual shortfall in adaptation finance. Despite urgent needs, adaptation remains severely underfunded, sidelined by investors who favour mitigation projects with clearer returns. This chapter explores how philanthropic capital can be the missing piece, unlocking adaptation finance through risk-tolerant investments, blended finance, and ecosystem-wide collaboration.

It examines India as a case study, showcasing how philanthropic organizations can de-risk adaptation projects, support climate resilience, and influence policy reforms. Drawing on global data and case studies, the chapter argues that philanthropy can catalyse systemic change by bridging financing gaps, scaling high-impact solutions, and fostering collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society, ultimately driving an adaptation revolution.

This chapter first reproduces a fictional speech that I published in 2008, an election year for the Presidency of the United States. The candidates were Barack Obama and John McCain, both Senators at the time. In this imaginary speech, I expressed my thoughts on what the winner of the election might say about the steps he would take to give high priority to meeting the challenge of climate change. Climate change is not something the world can safely continue to procrastinate about. We cannot wait until coastal cities become abandoned before we start mitigating sea level rise. Waiting too long means doing too little and acting too late. There is a timescale built into the climate change issue by physics and chemistry, and the broad public has not yet fully realized the urgency of it. Climate change is fundamentally a moral and ethical problem, in my view. What do we who are alive today owe to the next generation, and to subsequent generations? We are literally creating the planet our children will live in. We must act energetically and wisely. Everything depends on what people and their governments do.

This chapter investigates the strategic investments by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE toward non-hydrocarbon-based energy sources. This move marks a critical juncture in the region’s energy policy landscape. Driven by a multifaceted agenda – reducing reliance on hydrocarbons, mitigating carbon emissions, and fostering a more diversified and industrially productive economy – the Gulf states are actively pursuing renewable and nuclear energy solutions. Their path, however, is fraught with obstacles, and this chapter critically examines the institutional barriers with the potential to significantly impede their progress.

In the coming decades, cities and other local governments will need to transform their infrastructure as part of their climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. When they do, they have the opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable, and accommodating infrastructure for humans and non-humans alike. This chapter surveys a range of policy tools that cities and other local governments can use to pursue co-beneficial adaptations for humans, non-humans, and the environment. For example, they can add bird-friendly glass to new and upgraded buildings and vehicles; they can add overpasses, underpasses, and wildlife corridors on transportation systems; they can reduce light and noise pollution that impact humans and nonhumans alike; they can use a novel trash policy to manage rodent populations non-lethally; and more.

Chapter 8 examines occurrences of embarrassment and laughter in natural dyadic conversations during the completion of a complex task (assembling a Tetris-like puzzle). The authors consider embarrassment as an emotional response to a social or moral transgression, thus, situating this study within the sociopragmatic approach viewing face management, emotional stance, and alignment as an integral component of the multimodal communicative exchange. Analysis of the correlation between laughter and embarrassment conclusively shows that laughter and felt smiling occur frequently with embarrassment, and contests previous research suggesting embarrassment is largely accompanied by unfelt smiles or that laughter is strictly a marker of humour. Further, a significant number of embarrassment episodes show laughter as a source or co-component of mitigation. The authors then develop a sociopragmatic typology of embarrassment situations: self-embarrassment, vicarious embarrassment (a participant is embarrassed for another participant), and joint embarrassment (both participants are embarrassed). Additionally, The authors identify a strategy to resolve the embarrassment episode and return to a normal exchange through self-absolution. Finally, the authors offer some tentative considerations on the relatively underexplored area of embarrassment and personality type.

The concluding chapter provides a synthesis and reflection on insights from this book. It first summarizes the main findings regarding how disaster risk today is a legacy of urban history, drawing on salient examples from the six case study cities and cautioning that risk becomes very “path dependent” as future options are constrained by past decisions. After discussing limitations of the study and further research needs, the chapter suggests that the Urban Risk Dynamics framework and findings from the six cases are relevant to any city, demonstrating this for Vancouver (Canada). It then reflects on the practical significance of the book. It argues that the findings demonstrate why disaster risk and risk reduction should be viewed dynamically; why understanding risk should start with the city, not the hazard or disaster; and why interdisciplinary approaches are critical for reducing risk. Recognizing this can help analysts, planners, and policy-makers, for example, to not only identify current risk hotspots but anticipate future ones, to consider risk from a multihazard standpoint, and to develop strategies and solutions that are effective in the long term.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and the V20 group of finance ministers address climate change impacts on vulnerable countries. This chapter introduces the interconnectedness of climate justice, economic resilience, and sustainable development. It highlights personal stories, such as Victor Yalanda from Colombia and Jevanic Henry from Saint Lucia, who share their experiences of climate change’s impacts on their communities — covering both the economic loss and the emotional devastation caused to communities. We introduce the CVF’s Climate Vulnerability Monitor — a unique study of the impacts of climate change, including fresh modelling, covering biophysical, economics and health projections up to 2100. The global community via COP27 and COP28 have agreed on the urgency of both adaptation and mitigation strategies. Yet the speed of change is not sufficient. The fate of today’s most vulnerable will soon be the fate of the world.

Three potential climate futures — 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3.6 °C — are predicted by the UNFCCC’s ‘climate action pathways’, each with major and escalating implications for adaptation and mitigation. Marina Romanello, Co-Lead Health Editor for The Monitor, highlights the dangers of anything above a 1.5 °C scenario, emphasizing increased health risks and economic damages. The chapter outlines the CVF Monitor’s projections for each of the three scenarios and discusses the significant differences in outcomes depending on global warming levels. Stressing the importance of adhering to international agreements like the Paris Agreement, immediate and substantial emissions reductions are crucial to avoid catastrophic impacts. The chapter underscores the need for global cooperation in achieving these goals.

Chapter 5 marks the beginning of a more pointed analysis and justification of partial excuse across Part III, as the target site of the Real Person Approach. The chapter is concerned with exploring the nature and purpose of partial excuse through a historical overview, and with clarifying the version of the defence used to underpin the Universal Partial Defence (UPD), through touring divergent definitional and structural approaches of other common law jurisdictions. Key issues that bear on the definition of the UPD are also introduced. This analysis forms the backdrop of the argument for universalising partial excuse across all offence categories and expanding its grounds beyond mental disorder and provocation/loss of control. Core challenges to universalisation are explained and responded to, concerning the application of partial excuse to homicide only, its characterisation as a form of mitigation at the pre-verdict stage, and issues relating to both coordination and the notion of partial responsibility.