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Mitigating climate change and social injustice are critical, interwoven challenges. Climate change is driven by grossly unequal contributions to elevated greenhouse gas emissions among individuals, socioeconomic groups, and nations. Yet, its deleterious impacts disproportionately affect poor and less powerful nations, and the poor and the less powerful within each nation. This climate injustice prompts a call for mitigation strategies that buffer the poorest and the most vulnerable against climate change impacts. Unfortunately, all emissions mitigation strategies also reshape social, economic, political, and ecological processes in ways that may create climate change mitigation injustices—i.e., a unique set of injustices not caused by climate change, but by the strategies designed to stem it. Failing to stop climate change is not an answer—this will swamp all adverse impacts of even unjust mitigation in terms of the scope and scale of disastrous consequences. However, mitigation without justice will create uniquely negative consequences for the more vulnerable. The ensuing analysis systematically assesses how climate change mitigation strategies can generate or ameliorate injustices. We first examine how climate science and social justice interact within and among countries. We then ask what there is to learn from the available evidence on how emissions reductions, well-being, and equity have unfolded in a set of countries. Finally, we discuss the intersection between emissions reduction and mitigation justice through actions in important domains including energy, technology, transport, and food systems; nature-based solutions; and policy and governance. 

Abstract We ask how environmental justice and urban ecology have influenced one another over the past 25 years in the context of the US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) project. BES began after environmental justice emerged through activism and scholarship in the 1980s but spans a period of increasing awareness among ecologists and environmental practitioners. The work in Baltimore provides a detailed example of how ecological research has been affected by a growing understanding of environmental justice. The shift shows how unjust environmental outcomes emerge and are reinforced over time by systemic discrimination and exclusion. We do not comprehensively review the literature on environmental justice in urban ecology but do present four brief cases from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, to illustrate the global relevance of the topic. The example cases demonstrate the necessity for continuous engagement with communities in addressing environmental problem solving. 

Abstract This perspective emerged from ongoing dialogue among ecologists initiated by a virtual workshop in 2021. A transdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners conclude that urban ecology as a science can better contribute to positive futures by focusing on relationships, rather than prioritizing urban structures. Insights from other relational disciplines, such as political ecology, governance, urban design, and conservation also contribute. Relationality is especially powerful given the need to rapidly adapt to the changing social and biophysical drivers of global urban systems. These unprecedented dynamics are better understood through a relational lens than traditional structural questions. We use three kinds of coproduction—of the social-ecological world, of science, and of actionable knowledge—to identify key processes of coproduction within urban places. Connectivity is crucial to relational urban ecology. Eight themes emerge from the joint explorations of the paper and point toward social action for improving life and environment in urban futures. 

Abstract Urban social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) are dynamic and respond to climate pressures. Change involves alterations to land and resource management, social organization, infrastructure, and design. Research often focuses on how climate change impacts urban SETS or on the characteristics of urban SETS that promote climate resilience. Yet passive approaches to urban climate change adaptation may disregard active SETS change by urban residents, planners, and policymakers that could be opportunities for adaptation. Here, we use evidence of urban social, ecological, and technological change to address how SETS change opens windows of opportunity to improve climate change adaptation. 

Non-technical summary We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding of Earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide, finds that permafrost thaw could release more carbon emissions than expected and that the uptake of carbon in tropical ecosystems is weakening. Adverse impacts on human society include increasing water shortages and impacts on mental health. Options for solutions emerge from rethinking economic models, rights-based litigation, strengthened governance systems and a new social contract. The disruption caused by COVID-19 could be seized as an opportunity for positive change, directing economic stimulus towards sustainable investments. Technical summary A synthesis is made of ten fields within climate science where there have been significant advances since mid-2019, through an expert elicitation process with broad disciplinary scope. Findings include: (1) a better understanding of equilibrium climate sensitivity; (2) abrupt thaw as an accelerator of carbon release from permafrost; (3) changes to global and regional land carbon sinks; (4) impacts of climate change on water crises, including equity perspectives; (5) adverse effects on mental health from climate change; (6) immediate effects on climate of the COVID-19 pandemic and requirements for recovery packages to deliver on the Paris Agreement; (7) suggested long-term changes to governance and a social contract to address climate change, learning from the current pandemic, (8) updated positive cost–benefit ratio and new perspectives on the potential for green growth in the short- and long-term perspective; (9) urban electrification as a strategy to move towards low-carbon energy systems and (10) rights-based litigation as an increasingly important method to address climate change, with recent clarifications on the legal standing and representation of future generations. Social media summary Stronger permafrost thaw, COVID-19 effects and growing mental health impacts among highlights of latest climate science.