Research Papers and Reports
MCF Discussion Papers
The MCF Discussion Paper series provides thought leadership prepared by prominent scholars, based on rigorous research, to assist policy, community and industry decision-making.
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Why Australia’s environmental law does not protect the climate
Australia’s principal environmental law does not directly address climate protection. Why is this the case and what needs to change?
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ITLOS’ Climate Opinion: What’s its significance?
What did ITLOS find and what is the significance for climate science, international climate law and the global climate implications?
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Implementing a Health in All Policies Approach in Australia
MCF and Climate CATCH Lab experts provide background to the Health in All Policies approach and recommendations for how we can remove barriers to its application.
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Protecting our Health: Implementing an anti-idling campaign in Australia
Exposure to traffic-related emissions has been shown to significantly increase childhood asthma incidence and prevalence in Australia. MCF experts recommend a federal public awareness campaign aimed at changing vehicle idling behaviours.
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Decarbonising Shipping is a Potential Game-Changer for Climate Action: Here’s how
The International Maritime Organization adopted a strategy to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Delivering on the strategy would be a momentous win for climate action and multilateralism. This article explains what this would take to succeed.
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Trending Up
A new MCF discussion paper explores how legal and policy framework differences are impacting the way that Traditional Owners are negotiating or developing clean energy projects on their Country.
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The Unpriced Burden: Heavy vehicle emissions and the $6.2 billion health cost
A new MCF discussion paper explores how legal and policy framework differences are impacting the way that Traditional Owners are negotiating or developing clean energy projects on their Country.
Research papers and reports
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The Integrity Gap: Restoring Trust in the Climate and Energy Debate
The Senate Committee released this report on climate misinformation, with contributions from a large number of University of Melbourne researchers who were consulted by the Committee and referenced extensively in its report on information integrity on climate change and energy. The Select Committee was appointed by resolution of the Senate on 30 July 2025 to inquire into and report on the prevalence of, motivations behind and impacts of misinformation and disinformation related to climate change and energy.
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First Nations at the forefront: The changing landscape of clean energy agreements in Australia
The clean energy transition has the potential to be very beneficial for the Australian First Nations people on whose Country much of it will occur. This paper documents results of interviews with legal and financial experts who have very particular insight into the contents of benefits agreements currently being negotiated with First Nations groups for large scale clean energy developments – agreements which are conventionally confidential.
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What are the implications of the ICJ Climate Advisory Opinion for EIA in Australia?
On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice handed down its much-anticipated Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change. What does this international ruling mean for Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia?
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Perspectives on Indigenous well‐being and climate change adaptation
This article shows that despite being a hot topic in the climate change adaptation literature, well-being is still poorly defined and understood. Well-being needs to be conceptualised in terms that are meaningful to Indigenous peoples and local communities, so as to customize adaptation projects that enhance the well-being of those who are most at risk from climate change.
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First Nations Litigants Challenge the Hubris of Australian Gas Companies
Australian First Nations people are playing an increasingly important role in climate litigation relating to the approval of greenhouse gas emission (GHG) projects, with several important cases handed down in the last few years. Here we discuss three recent court wins for First Nations litigants against the Australian gas industry.
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Geographies of regulatory disparity underlying Australia’s energy transition
People in remote and regional Australia – particularly First Nations Australians – will be contributing significantly to the energy transition: through use of their land for large wind and solar farms, as well as the mining of critical minerals. Many also live in areas that are already really hot and getting a lot hotter. These are people that clearly need air-conditioning to stay cool, need their fridges to stay on, etc. Yet – and this is a big yet – they don’t enjoy the same legal protections from electricity disconnection that we in urban Australia do. In this paper, just published in Nature Energy, authors from ANU, Tangentyere Council and Melbourne Climate Futures discuss this serious issue.
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Corporate Climate Litigation in Australasia: (re)Shaping the Private Law-Climate Interface
This paper examines the interface between climate change and private law in Australasia through the lens of corporate climate litigation, given its prevalence in the region. Corporate climate litigation concerns lawsuits raising climate issues (whether mitigation, adaptation or loss and damage), which utilize private law causes of action such as those under corporate, financial, consumer protection or tort law.
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Gaps in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and other federal laws for protection of the climate
Professor Jacqueline Peel was engaged by the Climate Council to provide a legal opinion on the extent of gaps in the existing EPBC Act and other Australian federal laws as regards protection of the environment against climate change.
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Five social science intervention areas for ocean sustainability initiatives
Ocean sustainability initiatives – in research, policy, management and development – will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge.
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Examining the potential for residential solar charging to meet electric vehicles’ needs
Maximising the environmental benefits of electric vehicles (EVs) depends on charging them with renewable energy sources like solar power. This study explores the feasibility of two solar charging strategies: direct solar charging for those living in detached/semi-detached dwellings and grid-based solar charging with customised charging windows for all dwelling types.
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New COP26 pledges bring projected warming to below 2°C for the first time in history
Malte Meinshausen, Jared Lewis, Zebedee Nicholls and Rebecca Burdon find that if all NDC and long-term pledges are fulfilled and adequately supported, the best-estimate peak warming this century is 1.9C. This is still far from halting warming around 1.5K, but substantially improved over recent projections.
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Can updated climate pledges limit warming well below 2°C?
Researchers including Jared Lewis, Malte Meinshausen and Zebedee Nicholls find that updated pledges provide a stronger near-term foundation to deliver on the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement, reducing the probability of the worst temperature change and increasing the likelihood of well below 2°C.
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We Must Stop Subsidising Fossil Fuels and Tax them Instead: A shipping levy is the best way to get serious this year
In 2025, the International Maritime Organization has the opportunity to adopt a universal “levy” on greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping. This would make the largely untaxed industry finally pay for its pollution and commence fossil fuel subsidy reform in earnest.
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Building Prosperous, Just and Resilient Zero-Carbon Regions
This report was prepared by John Wiseman and Linda Wollersheim with funding support from Melbourne Climate Futures and with feedback and advice from MCF Deputy Director, Prof Kathryn Bowen.
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Addressing climate inaction is our greatest threat to sustainable development
More than 1 degree of global warming has been reached and once-projected impacts are now being realised. Despite these impacts and the short timeframe available to avoid further warming, climate inaction remains a major threat to sustainable development. In this article, MCF Advisory Board chair, Rosemary Addis AM, and her colleagues bring a renewed focus to the issue of climate inaction. They unpack the systemic market failure that underpins current climate action efforts globally and how by shifting focus to address inaction this could be overcome. They explore how climate policies are inadvertently allowing climate inaction to persist, why this is happening and how to address it.
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Potential for forest thinning to reduce risk and increase resilience to wildfire in Australian temperate Eucalyptus forests
Prof Rod Keenan, A/Prof Christopher Weston and Dr Luba Volkova found evidence from international studies that thinning combined with fuel reduction can reduce wildfire risks and impacts in dry forests compared with no treatment or thinning alone. But in Australia, studies so far demonstrate mixed outcomes.
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Over-reliance on land for carbon dioxide removal in net-zero climate pledges
Countries’ climate pledges require approximately 1 (0.9–1.1) billion ha of land for carbon removals. This report demonstrates a gap between governments’ expected reliance on land and the role that land can realistically play in climate mitigation. This adds another layer to the observed shortcomings of national climate pledges and indicates a need for more transparency around the role of land in national climate mitigation plans.
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Convergent evolution: Framework climate legislation in Australia
A/Prof Peter Christoff and Prof Robyn Eckersley examine why four subnational governments in Australia succeeded in enacting durable framework climate legislation based on a model that came to be widely regarded as ‘best-practice’. They call this ‘convergent evolution’ over the period 2007–2015.
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Why Australia was not wet during spring 2020 despite La Niña
La Niña is the most predictable climate driver of Australian springtime rainfall. Consistent with this, the Bureau of Meteorology’s ACCESS-S1 made highly confident predictions of wetter-than-normal conditions for spring 2020. But this did not happen. Researchers including Dr Andrew King examine why.
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The political economy of the social constraints to adaptation.
In this article we discuss the socioeconomic and cultural factors that underpin what climate change adaptation can and cannot achieve from a political economy lens, showing that the interests of often distant powerful actors and institutions are as important as behaviours and attitudes in constraining adaptation.
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Cities in the Anthropocene - New Ecology and Urban Politics
Based on Dr Ihnji Jon’s visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and Cape Town (South Africa), this book tells the story of how cities can lead a transformative pro-environment politics. Cities can activate politics appreciating the role of nature in urban life.
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Tack to the future
Dr Christiaan De Beukelaer explores the political economy of the re-uptake of wind propulsion for maritime cargo transport to shift this sector onto a decarbonization pathway. It focuses on how wind propulsion technologies aim to close the emissions gap between projected emissions and the target to reduce them.
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State of Wildfires 2023-2024 report
This inaugural State of Wildfires report catalogues extreme fires of the 2023–2024 fire season. Climate change significantly increased the likelihood of extreme fires, and mitigation is required to lessen future risk.
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Estimating the cooling potential of irrigating green spaces in 100 global cities with arid, temperate or continental climates
Researchers Pui Kwan Cheung, A/Prof Stephen Livesley, and Dr Kerry Nice determined the relationship between climate and irrigation cooling linear regression. Estimating the cooling potentials of irrigating urban green space in 100 cities, they found that most cities will receive a cooling benefit.
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Climate change and sustainability in science and social science secondary school curricula
There is an urgent need to transform the way climate change and sustainability are taught in classrooms and at schools. Learners must grasp the environmental impacts of climate change, how climate change relates to their own context and what actions can be undertaken and contribute to making societies more sustainable, equitable, just and climate-resilient.
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Australia’s proposed “Nature Positive” laws: 10 essential elements for conserving and recovering our unique environments and biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety of all life on Earth; the plants, animals, fungi, microbes, and even we humans. Globally, we are experiencing rapid and often irreversible biodiversity decline. This will have far-reaching consequences for our food systems, water quality, culture, economy, and health in addition to nature itself, yet our national response has been grossly inadequate to halt or even slow losses.
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No new fossil fuel projects: The norm we need
Proponents of ambitious climate action should direct policy and advocacy efforts toward building a global “No New Fossil” norm, encompassing exploration for and development of new fossil fuel extraction sites, and permitting and construction of new, large-scale fossil fuel–consuming infrastructure.
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Compound climate extremes driving recent sub-continental tree mortality in northern Australia have no precedent in recent centuries
Knowledge of the occurrence and ecological impacts of compound climate extremes beyond the past 50 years is limited. Researchers including Prof Patrick Baker place the 2015-16 mangrove dieback and 2020 inland native forest dieback events into a longer historical context using palaeo-climate records.
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Why Melbourne’s Worst Storms Come in Lines
Linear precipitation systems contribute to rainfall over Melbourne and the surrounds, potentially leading to significant rainfall and flash flooding. Researchers, including Dr Stacey Hitchcock and Prof Todd Lane analysed these systems to understand rainfall extremes and how they may change in the future.
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Changing climates, compounding challenges: a participatory study on how disasters affect the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in Fiji
Pacific youth are at the forefront of the climate crisis, which has important implications for their health and rights. Youth in Fiji currently bear a disproportionate burden of poor experiences and outcomes related to their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). This study underscores the urgency for addressing existing social and health inequities in climate and disaster governance. It highlights four key implications for reducing youth SRHR risks through whole-of-society approaches at multiple (sociocultural, institutional, governance) levels.
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Global Perspectives on Corporate Climate Legal Tactics: Australia National Report
MCF researchers Jacqueline Peel, Rebekkah Markey-Towler and Thea Shields have produced an overview of corporate climate change litigation in Australia for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, focusing on: relevant causes of action for bringing these cases; associated procedural and evidentiary issues; and potential remedies.
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Coal transitions—part 2: phase-out dynamics in global long-term mitigation scenarios
A rapid phase-out of unabated coal use is essential to limit global warming to below 2 °C. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of coal transitions in mitigation scenarios consistent with the Paris Agreement, using data from more than 1500 publicly available scenarios generated by more than 30 integrated assessment models.
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Determining the likelihood of asset destruction during wildfires
The destruction of houses is a common impact of wildfires. Fire simulations are often used to understand patterns of landscape fire risk. Dr Thomas Duff and Prof Trent Penman use simulations of historic fires to develop a house destruction algorithm.
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The lasting impact of Technical Support Units in climate fund design
Given the current controversy around the World Bank’s involvement in the LDF, and the similar controversy around the Bank’s involvement in the GCF’s design, efforts to incorporate a diverse perspectives will be needed if the new LDF is to not repeat this pattern in its later operation.
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A global assessment of actors and their roles in climate change adaptation
A new comprehensive survey of more than 1,400 scientific studies has shed light on the challenges of climate change adaptation. The study reveals a critical issue: systematic networking of various actor groups has generally been insufficient.
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Principles of International law Relevant for Consideration in the Design and Implementation of Trade-Related Climate Measures and Policies.
This report, co-authored by Professor Jacqueline Peel provides independent guidance on a set of recognised principles of international law relevant for consideration in the design and implementation of trade-related climate measures and policies.
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Climate Roundtable Briefing Notes: Finance
This briefing note provides background to frame the discussion on climate finance convened by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in collaboration with Melbourne Climate Futures and the Climate Reality Project.
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Climate change and democracy: Insights from Asia and the Pacific
This Report focuses on democracy and the climate crisis in the Asia and the Pacific region. A regional approach based on case studies has been chosen to contextualize the challenges to democracy arising from this crisis.
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Greenwashing legal cases in Australia
This Policy Brief provides analysis of the 30 greenwashing cases documented in the Australian and Pacific Climate Litigation Database. The rise of and growth of greenwashing cases in particular in Australia portends a number of lessons for claimants, regulators and defendants.
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Staying the course on net zero
This research paper explores how funds can enjoy the benefits and avoid the risks of net zero investing. We discuss the rapid increase in net zero commitments and investments, the increasing demands on investors to deliver on these commitments, headwinds they face in doing so, and the imperative for funds to stay the course and further lean into the opportunities provided by the net zero transition.
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Just Transitions’ Meanings: A Systematic Review
This systematic review of the Just Transitions literature examines the centrality of justice theory as well as the implications of the relative ambiguity with which governance models and theory have been conceptualized. Situating justice and governance theory in the Just Transitions concept, they are used to describe the “why” and the “how” of Just Transitions, and how these relate to the “what”.
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Health impacts associated with traffic emissions in Australia
An expert position statement scaling the potential health impacts in Australia from traffic pollution, prepared by Melbourne Climate Futures Academy, indicates that vehicle emissions may be causing more than 11,000 premature deaths per year.
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The Land Gap Report
In Response to Climate Change, Governments are Relying on Land for Carbon Dioxide Removal. We calculated how much land is included in pledges: 1.2 billion hectares. That’s the size of the world’s food-producing base.
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The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels
The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown is published as the world confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks. Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global energy and cost-of-living crises. As these crises unfold, climate change escalates unabated. Its worsening impacts are increasingly affecting the foundations of human health and wellbeing, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world's populations to concurrent health threats.
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From Corporate Governance to Ecological Regulation
This brief paper is concerned with the challenge of ‘ecological’ regulation – that is the challenge of ‘taming capitalism’ to ensure businesses operate within, and contribute to, flourishing eco social systems, rather than extracting from and exploiting them.
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Review of literature on impacts of climate litigation
This report for the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) reviews the findings of academic and grey literature published over the period 2000-2021 on the impacts of climate change litigation.
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Carbon removals from nature restoration are no substitute for steep emission reductions
Published in One Earth, this research found that nature restoration, the process of restoring degraded natural ecosystems, is crucial but any climate benefits are dwarfed by the scale of ongoing fossil fuel emissions. Lead author Dr Kate Dooley said nature restoration can marginally lower peak warming but should not be seen as a substitute for reducing fossil fuel emissions.
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AGL & Mike Cannon-Brookes: A Case Study of investor leadership on climate change?
The recent AGL saga has highlighted the role of investors as a force for pushing the decarbonisation of companies. But questions remain as to whether this is approach is consistent with understandings of corporate purpose and existing legal frameworks, and the implications of this as a case study of ‘investor leadership’ in the climate space. This working paper explores these issues.
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A taxonomy of models for investigating hydrogen energy systems
A taxonomy to classify hydrogen models is proposed based on a review of 29 studies. Nine hydrogen archetypes covering the entire range of studies are defined. Each archetype is characterized using the hydrogen taxonomy. Challenges for each archetype are discussed together with potential solutions.
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The Future of Nationality in the Pacific
If the impacts of climate change drive people from their homes, what happens to their relationship with their home country? This groundbreaking report provides the first in-depth look at the legal risks of statelessness and nationality loss in the Pacific as climate change hits.
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Election 2022: Climate and energy
As we approach the 2022 Australian federal election, many voters are wondering how to decipher our candidates’ climate policies. This briefing paper by Associate Professor Peter Christoff directly compares Australia’s major parties’, as well as key independent candidates’, climate positions and plans.
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Building and Appliance Energy Efficiency Research: Opportunities for EU-Australian Collaboration
European Union (EU) and Australian institutional structures, past policy measures and present policy approaches related to building and appliance energy and climate response have much in common, and important differences. Both the similarities and differences provide fertile ground for increased future research collaboration. This paper reviews relevant past and represent policies in the EU and Australia within broad categories that were established after initial research.
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Energy Affordability: Sharing Lessons from the EU and Australia’s Low Carbon Transitions
Energy affordability is a key concern for households in the European Union (EU) and Australia, as the transformation of the electricity sector unfolds. High prices can lead to energy poverty: when a household cannot afford the essential electricity services needed for a decent standard of living, such as heating. This report compares approaches in the EU and Australia. We analyse the cost drivers, regulatory frameworks and interventions to mitigate hardship and address energy poverty.
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Cities for People and Nature E-Book
The Clean Air and Urban Landscapes (CAUL) Hub has been funded by Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program. The remit of the CAUL Hub has been to undertake ‘Research to support environmental quality in our urban areas’.
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Realization of Paris Agreement pledges may limit warming just below 2 °C
If all new and updated national climate change mitigation pledges stemming from the Paris Agreement are implemented in full and on time, then 21st-century warming could be limited to just below 2 degrees Celsius.
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Climate Change and Australia’s Healthcare Systems Report
Medical Colleges from across Australia and New Zealand are calling on the Federal Government to commit to stronger 2030 targets and to urgently come up with a plan to protect Australians and the healthcare system from the impacts of climate change. The call comes as the Royal Australasian College of Physicians releases a report it commissioned, prepared by the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. The report, endorsed by 10 Medical Colleges, and co-authored by MCF Deputy Director, Prof Kathryn Bowen, paints a dire picture of the future of the Australian healthcare system under the unmitigated impacts of climate change.
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Climate resilience through sociocultural mobility
Here Dr Alexei Trundle draws on evidence of informal community resilience in six rural-to-urban migrant communities in Port Vila and Honiara. Findings demonstrate extensive and increasingly codified community structures, hybridising and adapting those found in rural, ‘home-island’, settings.
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A framework for understanding the key drivers of cities’ climate actions in city networks
Climate actions in city networks are growing strategies for urban climate governance. Sombol Mokles and Dr Kathryn Davidson adopt an interdisciplinary approach to identify the key drivers of climate actions in city networks.
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Identifying oceanographic conditions conducive to coastal impacts on temperate open coastal beaches
As sea levels continue to rise, erosion and flooding at hotspots will likely worsen and informed decisions will need to be made about coastal management. Researchers, including Prof David Kennedy and Ms Chloe Leach, propose a model for isolating oceanic conditions conducive to coastal impact along open coasts.
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Healthy waterways and ecologically sustainable cities in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration
Cities across the northern dry region of China are exposed to multiple sustainability challenges. Researchers including Dr Giri Kattel, Prof Andrew Western and Prof Peter Scales examine the concept of ‘Healthy Waterways and Ecologically Sustainable Cities’ as an important pathway to tackle these problems.
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Decreases in relative humidity across Australia
Dr Murray Peel, Dr Conrad Wasko and Eleanor Denson investigate how absolute and relative humidity across Australia have changed over 1955–2020. How relative humidity is changing is important for our understanding of future changes in precipitation and evaporation.
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The urgent need for integrated social, economic and environmental action in the livestock sector
In this paper, researchers, including Dr Brendan Cullen and Prof Richard Eckard, examine the global distribution of livestock GHG emissions; explore social, economic and environmental co-benefits and trade-offs associated with mitigation interventions; and critique approaches for quantifying GHG emissions.
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Diagnosing delivery capabilities on a large international nature-based solutions project
A new paper from researchers, including Dr Georgia Garrard, looks at what is holding back greening in our cities. The greatest barriers were understaffing, a lack of intra-organisational processes, and risk-averse organisational cultures. These barriers can be overcome.
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Climate Change Litigation: Global Perspectives
In Chapter 3 ‘Climate Change Litigation in Australia: Law and Practice in the Sunburnt Country’, Dr Laura Schuijers and Prof Margaret Young look at the role of litigation in the Australian response to climate change, examining the potential and limitations of climate-related litigation in Australia.
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Being a Parent after a Disaster
Dr Lauren Kosta, Prof Louise Harms, Prof Lisa Gibbs and A/Prof David Rose explore parental experiences over the nearly seven years that followed catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2009. It highlights the parental role on trauma experiences, the range of losses and the extended experience of disaster recovery.
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Stressors and Supports in Post-disaster Recovery: Experiences After the Black Saturday Bushfires
Researchers report survey responses from the Beyond Bushfires study finding that the four most useful supports were family, friends, rebuilding resources, and their community.
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Overdiagnosis is increasing the carbon footprint of healthcare
Researchers including A/Prof Forbes McGain argue that tackling overdiagnosis is taking on a new urgency in the context of a climate emergency. While novel efforts to curb overdiagnosis are underway, they have had limited uptake so far. Carbon emissions for zero gain in health outcomes must be addressed.
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Taking globally consistent health impact projections to the next level
This Viewpoint from researchers, including MCF Deputy Director Kathryn Bowen, discusses and exemplifies a bottom-up initiative which aims to generate new research evidence on the future impacts of climate change on human health in a more coordinated and consistent way.
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Researchers construct oldest daily climate dataset for Perth
CLEX researchers have constructed the oldest daily historical climate dataset for Perth in south-western Australia to provide an extended record for analysing pre‐industrial climate variability and extremes for the region.
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The severity and extent of the Australia 2019-20 Eucalyptus forest fires are not the legacy of forest management
A team of researchers find that the scale and severity of the 2019-20 bushfires is explainable by extrinsic factors (severe drought, strong winds, uninterrupted fire weather), not forest management.
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Equilibrium Modelling for Environmental Science
Mr Matthew Cantele, Dr Payal Bal, Prof Tom Kompas and Prof Brendan Wintle systematically extract data from 10 years of published equilibrium models (Ems) with a focus on how these models have been extended beyond their economic origins to encompass environmentally relevant sectors of interest.
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Final report: ‘Climate Change in a Land of Extremes’
See the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub’s final report. Per Prof David Karoly, the Hub “delivered critical knowledge in the field of climate change projections, improved understanding of coastal hazards and extreme events, and refined Australia’s climate modelling capability”.
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Molehills into mountains - Transitional pressures from household PV-battery adoption under flat retail and feed-in tarrifs
Researchers simulate household PV battery investments over a 20-year period. They identify transitional tipping points that may challenge future electricity system management, market participation and energy policies.
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Pathways and pitfalls in extreme event attribution
There has been increasing interest in the science of estimating the influence of human activities or other factors on extreme weather/climate events. This paper explores pathways and pitfalls in attribution methodology.
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Differing regeneration patterns after catastrophic fire and clearfelling
Researchers including Dr Raphael Trouve and Prof Patrick Baker took advantage of a catastrophic fire event to compare patterns of regeneration for a dominant tree species after a high-intensity natural disturbance and after clearfelling, focused on the mountain ash forests of burned in the 2009 Black Saturday fire.
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Strategic Planning for Melbourne's Green Wedges
This paper highlights some critical trade-offs between competing land uses in the Green Wedges, particularly where areas with high biodiversity values are involved.
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Clean Air and Urban Landscapes (CAUL) Hub
The CAUL Hub has published four impact stories: Cities are Indigenous places, Urban biodiversity, Urban greening and Air quality, and a toolkit guiding researchers in supporting Indigenous-led research and co-design.
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Reflections on a decade of change in international environmental law
In this article, Prof Lavanya Rajamani and MCF Director Jackie Peel examine the profound ways in which international environmental law has evolved over the last decade, looking at emerging trends, asking whether it is still “fit for purpose” to respond to current and future challenges.
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Australian Guidelines for the Implementation of Nature-based methods for reducing risk from coastal hazards
The National Centre for Coasts and Climate, supported through the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, have issued Australian guidelines for nature-based methods to reduce risk from coastal hazards.
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Physical and climate change-related risk identification in valuation practice: an Australian perspective
Georgia Warren-Myers and Lucy Cradduck investigate Australian property valuers’ identification and consideration of physical risks to properties. While valuers easily identified physical risks, there is a lack of understanding of and engagement with climate change risks.
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International roundtable on achieving positive social and economic outcomes in the energy transition
Co-hosted by The Next Economy and Melbourne Climate Futures, the International Roundtable on Achieving Positive Social and Economic Outcomes in the Energy Transition brought together over 40 Australian, German and Polish leading thinkers who are deeply engaged in the question of how we manage change in the energy sector.
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Climate risk assessments must engage with the law
Climate-related financial risk is the dominant frame through which many companies, investors, and regulators engage with climate change. We argue that developments in legal action mean that the basis for these assessments is no longer accurate. We propose a framework that accounts for how legal action shifts or amplifies physical and transition risk exposures and creates additional climate risk exposures.
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Education and climate change: Learning to act for people and planet
Climate change education needs to adapt to fulfil its potential. The education paradigm cannot rely solely on knowledge transfer but needs to focus on social and emotional, and action-oriented learning.