Ph. Severe flooding hit the town of Czechowice-Dziedzice, Southern Poland, in September 2024. Ela73/Shutterstock Clotilde Cerdan Amiard, IE University As climate change makes extreme weather events more intense and frequent, “uninsurable areas” are becoming increasingly common. They are a clear demonstration that insurance – the mechanism through which modern societies deal with all
Many people expect a raging wildfire to leave a blackened, lifeless landscape in its wake. But after a blaze swept through Las Hurdes in Extremadura, Spain, in 2009, the scene was quite different. In the midst of the scorched earth were patches of green where healthy trees remained standing and unscathed. From a
Giovanni Strona, Joint Research Centre (JRC) More than 295 million people globally experienced hunger and starvation in 2025 because of conflict, displacement, climate change and economic disasters. The bad news is that things are going to get a lot worse. My latest research has found that by 2100, climate change could drive more
Daniel Scott, University of Waterloo; Madeleine Orr, University of Toronto, and Robert Steiger, University of Innsbruck The 25th Winter Olympic Games are upon us, with Italy set to host the Games for the fourth time. The schedule at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics is set to look similar to previous iterations of
The world’s oceans do far more than support vital marine ecosystems and provide food and recreation. They help regulate the Earth’s climate, absorbing vast amounts of heat and CO2, acting as one of the planet’s most important buffers against climate change. Yet despite this vital role, scientists still struggle to track exactly how
Forty metres beneath the sea off north-western Italy lies one of the country’s best-preserved World War II shipwrecks. The Equa, an Italian cannon-equipped submarine chaser, sank with no casualties after being accidentally rammed by a German ship in 1944. The vessel now hosts rich marine fauna that attracts divers and fishers. The site
Ph. FrankHH / shutterstock James Dyke, University of Exeter and Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Ten years ago the world’s leaders placed a historic bet. The 2015 Paris agreement aimed to put humanity on a path to avert dangerous climate change. A decade on, with the latest climate conference ending
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University and Imraan Valodia, University of the Witwatersrand Given the escalating scale of inequality in the world, shouldn’t countries be banding together to set up an international panel on the issue, along the same lines as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body set up
Laura Pereira, University of the Witwatersrand New research has found that the world has reached the first of many Earth system tipping points. These will cause catastrophic harm unless humanity takes urgent action. A tipping point is a moment in the Earth’s climate system where even small changes can lead to significant, often
Alex Lenferna, University of Fort Hare “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” For more than 50 years, those three Rs have been the world’s go-to environmental mantra. On the face of it, the three Rs sound like an empowering call for each of us to play our part for the planet. However, the individualist approach behind