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Climate-related disasters are among the most societally disruptive impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Their potential impact on the risk of armed conflict is heavily debated in the context of the security implications of climate change. Yet, evidence for such climate-conflict-disaster links remains limited and contested. One reason for this is that existing studies do not triangulate insights from different methods and pay little attention to relevant context factors and especially causal pathways. By combining statistical approaches with systematic evidence from QCA and qualitative case studies in an innovative multi-method research design, we show that climate-related disasters increase the risk of armed conflict onset. This link is highly context-dependent and we find that countries with large populations, political exclusion of ethnic groups, and a low level of human development are particularly vulnerable. For such countries, almost one third of all conflict onsets over the 1980-2016 period have been preceded by a disaster within 7 days. The robustness of the effect is reduced for longer time spans. Case study evidence points to improved opportunity structures for armed groups rather than aggravated grievances as the main mechanism connecting disasters and conflict onset.

Weak governance is one of the key obstacles for sustainable development. Undoubtedly, improvement of governance comes with a broad range of co-benefits, including countries' abilities to respond to pressing global challenges such as climate change. However, beyond the qualitative acknowledgement of its importance, quantifications of future pathways of governance are still lacking. This study provides projections of future governance in line with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. We find that under a 'rocky road' scenario, 30% of the global population would still live in countries characterized by weak governance in 2050, while under a 'green road' scenario, weak governance would be almost entirely overcome over the same time frame. On the basis of pathways for governance, we estimate the adaptive capacity of countries to climate change. Limits to adaptive capacity exist even under optimistic pathways beyond mid-century. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for governance in assessments of climate change impacts.

Weak governance is one of the key obstacles for sustainable development. Undoubtedly, improvement of governance comes with a broad range of co-benefits, including countries' abilities to respond to pressing global challenges such as climate change. However, beyond the qualitative acknowledgement of its importance, quantifications of future pathways of governance are still lacking. This study provides projections of future governance in line with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. We find that under a 'rocky road' scenario, 30% of the global population would still live in countries characterized by weak governance in 2050, while under a 'green road' scenario, weak governance would be almost entirely overcome over the same time frame. On the basis of pathways for governance, we estimate the adaptive capacity of countries to climate change. Limits to adaptive capacity exist even under optimistic pathways beyond mid-century. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for governance in assessments of climate change impacts.

Current global mitigation ambition up to 2030 under the Paris Agreement, reflected in the National Determined Contributions (NDCs), is insufficient to achieve the agreement's 1.5 ∘C long-term temperature limit. As governments are preparing new and updated NDCs for 2020, the question as to how much collective improvement is achieved is a pivotal one for the credibility of the international climate regime. The recent Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ∘C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has assessed a wide range of scenarios that achieve the 1.5 ∘C limit. Those pathways are characterised by a substantial increase in near-term action and total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission levels about 50 % lower than what is implied by current NDCs. Here we assess the outcomes of different scenarios of NDC updating that fall short of achieving this 1.5 ∘C benchmark. We find that incremental improvements in reduction targets, even if achieved globally, are insufficient to align collective ambition with the goals of the Paris Agreement. We provide estimates for global mean temperature increase by 2100 for different incremental NDC update scenarios and illustrate climate impacts under those median scenarios for extreme temperature, long-term sea-level rise and economic damages for the most vulnerable countries. Under the assumption of maintaining ambition as reflected in current NDCs up to 2100 and beyond, we project a reduction in the gross domestic product (GDP) in tropical countries of around 60 % compared to a no-climate-change scenario and median long-term sea-level rise of close to 2 m in 2300. About half of these impacts can be avoided by limiting warming to 1.5 ∘C or below. Scenarios of more incremental NDC improvements do not lead to comparable reductions in climate impacts. An increase in aggregated NDC ambition of big emitters by 33 % in 2030 does not reduce presented climate impacts by more than about half compared to limiting warming to 1.5 ∘C. Our results underscore that a transformational increase in 2030 ambition is required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region emerges as one of the hot spots for worsening extreme heat, drought and aridity conditions under climate change. A synthesis of peer-reviewed literature from 2010 to date and own modeling work on biophysical impacts of climate change on selected sectors shows that the region is highly affected by present and future climate change. These biophysical impacts paired with other pressures and a lack of resilience in some countries cause high vulnerabilities within these sectors and for social dimensions in the MENA region. The agricultural sector, of which 70 percent is rain-fed, is highly exposed to changing climatic conditions. This is of critical importance as the agriculture sector is the largest employer in many Arab countries and contributes significantly to national economies. Impacts will be high in a 2 °C world, as, e.g., annual water discharge, already critically low, is projected to drop by another 15–45% (75% in a 4 °C world) and unusual heat extremes projected to affect about one-third of the land area with likely consequences for local food production. As a consequence, deteriorating rural livelihoods associated with declining agricultural productivity will continue to contribute to migration flows, often to urban areas as already observed. The region could be heavily challenged by both rising food and water demand given its projected increase in population that may double by 2070. As a result, the regions already substantial import dependency could increase and thus its vulnerability to agricultural impacts well beyond its country borders. A severe and sustained pressure on resources could contribute to further social unrest in the already unstable political environment that currently characterizes parts of the region. While the particular societal responses to such changes are hard to foresee, it is clear that extreme impacts would constitute unprecedented challenges to the social systems affected.