In Climate Policy Ambition: Exploring A Policy Density Perspective, we measure climate policy density from 2000-2019 by drawing on three publicly available databases: Climate Change Laws of the World, Climate Policy Database and the Policies and Measures Database. All three measurements show an upward trend in the adoption of climate policy. However, our empirical comparison also reveals differences between the measurements with regard to the degree of policy expansion and sectoral coverage, which are due to differences in the type of policies in the databases. Since the choice of the database and the resulting measurement of policy density ultimately depend on the questions posed by researchers, we conclude by discussing whether some questions are better answered by some measurements than others.

Andrew Jordan has written a blog post titled 'Politics for deeper and faster decarbonisation' for the Academy of Social Sciences' Campaign for Social Science website. In it, he looks at the politics of climate change, suggesting that it is essential to somehow simultaneously both politicise and depoliticise the agenda. The post forms part of a new climate and sustainability hub which showcases some of the best evidence-based social science research offering perspectives that help deepen our understanding of the effects of the crisis, while also contributing potential solutions and answers.

research.com has just published the 2022 Edition of their Ranking of the Top 1000 Scientists in the area of Law and Political science. We are delighted that Andy Jordan has been ranked #26 in the world ranking in this category as well as #2 in United Kingdom.

You can see the full world ranking here: research.com/scientists-rankings/law-and-political-science
You can find the entire ranking for United Kingdom here: research.com/scientists-rankings/law-and-political-science/gb

A number of papers by DeepDCarb team members have recently been published.

'The political challenges of deep decarbonisation: Towards a more integrated agenda'' appears in the inaugural issue of the newly launched Climate Action journal. As the societal commitment to deep decarbonisation will eventually emerge from the interaction between policies, publics and politicians, in this paper we review the existing literatures on these three to identify salient research gaps. Our findings show that existing work has largely focused on one aspect in isolation. Thus, we set out a more integrated research agenda that explores the three-way interaction these, arguing that greater integration is required to understand better the conditions under which different political systems address societal commitment dilemmas.

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the ESRC’s flagship Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), with the post based at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

The post holder will join an international team of scholars to conduct research on politicians’ role in accelerating climate mitigation in the upcoming decades, commensurate with limiting climate change to 1.5 or 2°C of warming.

Professor Jale Tosun has co-written a commentary for the UK In A Changing Europe titled, 'Climate politics and the EU at COP26: a ‘missing’ or a ‘pragmatic’ leader?' Challenging the assessment that the EU was a missing leader at the Glasgow Summit, the post argues that the EU has become more pragmatic, pursuing goals that are more realistic given the current power constellations. It assesses the recent contributions the EU has made in climate diplomacy, and concludes by discussing the main challenges it now faces.

A contribution co-authored by Dr Irene Lorenzoni is featured in the 30th anniversary issue of Global Environmental Change. Progress in understanding and overcoming barriers to public engagement with climate change is one of ten invited commentaries from authors among the highest cited papers from the journal over the period 2001-2019. It follows up on the 2007 publication Barriers perceived to engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications and the new commentary reflects on research published over the past decade and a half on engagement with climate change, from diverse disciplines and perspectives.

​The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, is seeking applications for PhD studentships in the Leverhulme Trust’s ‘Critical Decade for Climate Change’ doctoral training programme. These include 3 projects associated with DeepDCarb  academics:

In our update last month, we announced details of recent DeepDCarb publications, including Transformations for climate change mitigation: A systematic review of terminology, concepts, and characteristics. Brendan Moore has recently written a blog post outlining the key findings from this paper, and this can be accessed here.

This month, two new peer-reviewed papers were published from the DeepDCarb project.

The first of these 'The Challenging Paths to Net-Zero Emissions: Insights from the Monitoring of National Policy Mixes' features in a special issue of The International Spectator focusing on Europe’s transition to sustainability. Examining data from the last 10 years that member states have reported to the EU on the climate policies that they have or will put in place to achieve collectively agreed EU targets, the analysis reveals that the average expected per-policy-instrument emission reduction has declined, while national policy mixes have remained generally stable over time.