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The purpose of this study is to measure local climate change response capacity and identify the existing gaps between local climate change action plans and land use plans.

This study uses content analysis method to statistically analyze 40 pioneering local jurisdictions' climate change action plans and land use plans.

The results show significant gaps in the two types of plans. Local climate change action plans have a higher quality of plan components including factual basis, targets, coordination, and communication than local land use plans. However, local land use plans have an even higher quality of policy plan components than action plans.

This study has extended established climate change concepts and practices by incorporating climate change considerations into the existing framework of local decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how well local planners have recognized the issues surrounding climate change, the analysis that jurisdictions have conducted on climate change, and policies that have been implemented to address climate change.

This study conducted a mail questionnaire survey for 214 counties ' planning directors in the USA and received 53 effective responses. This survey examined how well local planning directors have been prepared for climate change, including awareness, analysis scope, and implementation strategy.

The descriptive results indicate that the directors who responded to this survey had a relatively high (79.87 percent) level of awareness for climate change; but they had limited (34.94 percent) analysis scopes to assess the sources, impacts, and risk of climate change in their jurisdictions. These directors had partially but not fully (51.51 percent) developed local land use planning implementation strategies to mitigate or adapt climate change. The regression model indicates that the political commitment and planning personnel resources have significant influence on local planning directors ' actions for climate change.

This paper provides policy implications to improve local land use planning ability for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

There is a growing interest in climate change action in the higher education sector. Higher education institutions (HEIs) play an important role as property owners, employers, education and research hubs as well as leaders of societal transformations. The purpose of this paper was therefore to benchmark how universities globally are addressing climate risks.

An international survey was conducted to benchmark the sector’s organisational planning for climate change and to better understand how the higher education sector contributes to local-level climate adaptation planning processes. The international survey focused especially on the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation plans.

Based on the responses of 45 HEIs located in six different countries on three continents, the study found that there are still very few tertiary institutions that plan for climate-related risks in a systematic way.

The paper sheds light on the barriers HEIs face in engaging in climate adaptation planning and action. Some of the actions to overcome such hindering factors include integrating climate adaptation in existing risk management and sustainability planning processes, using the internal academic expertise and curriculum to assist the mapping of climate change impacts and collaborating with external actors to guarantee the necessary resources. The higher education sector can act as a leader in building institutional resilience at the local scale.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the recent history of climate action planning at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), a public university with a long history of sustainability action and commitment. Items discussed include a partnership with Clean Air‐Cool Planet (CA‐CP) to produce a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory tool that adapted national and international inventory methodologies to the unique scale and character of a university community; involvement of administrators, faculty, staff and students in climate action planning, including to meet the requirements of the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC); and the role of climate action planning within a broader institutional goal of integrating sustainability across curricula, operations, research and engagement efforts.

Background and historical information is shared in terms of best practices and lessons learned.

Successful climate action planning includes campus‐wide stakeholder involvement, an institution‐wide commitment to sustainability, and careful planning and partnerships that tie into a higher education institution's educational mission and identity and that take into account the culture and sense of place of each institution.

The paper contains lessons learned and best practices from which other institutions of higher education might learn.

UNH, a recognized national leader in sustainability and climate protection, and CA‐CP developed one of the first emissions inventory tools for higher education in the USA. The tool has been adopted by more than 1,000 campuses and was adopted by the ACUPCC as the recommended tool for campuses not already participating in another GHG inventorying program. Instead of recreating the wheel, campuses may be able to learn from UNH and CA‐CP's climate planning experience and history.

Climate and disaster resilience mapping has been discussed in detail in Chapter 3. The Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) as a comprehensive and well-structured methodology for measuring the resilience of cities is presented, as well as the differences between CDRI and various assessment tools. The resilience of cities, or their agglomerations or subzones, is being measured because cities are seen to be at a suitable level to efficiently initiate action, especially in developing countries where unplanned or haphazard urbanization is a major risk factor. But for climate and disaster resilience mapping to be of value, it should be followed by action planning. Having a vision for the future and charting a course to achieve it is what action planning is about. Studies have consistently shown that vision, planning, and goal setting can positively influence cities’ organizational performance. Action planning can compel future thinking, highlight new opportunities and threats, and refocus a city's mission. Productive action planning focuses on the most critical problems, choices, and opportunities. Action planning requires time and a process. If used effectively, it is a powerful tool for self-management and goal-based achievement. Action planning typically includes deciding who is going to do what and by when and in what order for the city to reach its long-term goals. The design and implementation of the action planning depend on the nature and needs of the city.

In recent years, the manifestation of the effects of climate change in coastal zones has prompted governments to mobilize and propose adaptation measures to reduce the vulnerability of their populations. For the governments responsible for the implementation of climate policies, adaptation still represents a novel field of action. The purpose of this paper is to show, via the example of Quebec’s coastal zone, how the transformation of public action relating to adaptation remains difficult.

For this case study, a qualitative method which combines documentary analysis and semi-directed interviews was selected.

The study shows how adaptation becomes a new issue in public action for the different authorities dealing with the effects of climate change in Quebec’s coastal zone. However, the results show that, as with other public policies, path dependence and incrementalism can be observed and limit the scope of public action and of the transformational processes in the field of adaptation. The technical–scientific approach to risk management is dominant, and the adaptation is not approached in a transversal way, despite its importance. Finally, concrete adaptation initiatives appear to be mostly relegated to the local scale, in an informal decentralization process.

This study contributes to improve climate action by favouring a reflection on the consideration of the conceptual and theoretical framework in the climate change adaptation literature and offers decision-makers and practitioners keys to the understanding of mechanisms underlying public action in the field of adaptation.

Administrators in higher-education settings routinely create planning documents that help steer the organization in mission-centric ways. In the area of sustainability planning, strategic plans, sustainability plans and climate action plans are the most common methods used. The purpose of this study is to evaluate if specific forms of planning predict sustainability outcomes.

This question was evaluated via an empirical archival study of the AASHE STARS database in relation to planning, administration and governance credits and criteria to determine if specific forms of planning were predictive of sustainability implementation outcomes in the categories of Education and Research, Operations, Diversity and Affordability, Human Resources, Investment, Public Engagement and Innovation.

Findings support the notion that climate action plans were most predictive of achieving sustainability outcomes, and strategic plans were best able to predict educational outcomes.

These findings have important implications for the design and execution of sustainability planning processes in higher-education institutions.

The academic literature contains relatively few empirical studies that demonstrate the capacity of planning on the realization of sustainability outcomes.

The paper aims to respond to three questions: Are Canadian organizations committed to sustainability? Are there any links between sustainability and records management and archives programs? And, to what extent are records managers, archivists and technologists engaged in climate action? The paper also provides background on climate change in the Canadian and global contexts, defines relevant terminology, and presents a literature review that positions sustainability, adaptation and mitigation in relation to records management and archives.

The paper is based on qualitative participatory research involving expert interviews in 24 government agencies, universities and businesses located in 10 Canadian cities.

The organizations in the study are committed to sustainability and have developed significant programs and activities in support of this aim. Although the records managers, archivists and technologists interviewed are involved in related activities, there is a gap between what they are doing as a matter of course and the wider sustainability efforts of their parent organizations. As resources are tight, sustainability measurement entails more work and there are no real incentives to add sustainability components to programs, the participants are focused on delivering the programs they are hired to do. As a result, there is a sense of serendipity around outcomes that do occur – “sometimes, green is the outcome”.

This paper presents the results of research conducted at 24 organizations in 10 Canadian cities, a small but meaningful sample that provides a springboard for considering climate action in records and archives. Based on the discussion, there is a need for a records and archives agenda that directly responds the United Nation's climate action targets: strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters; integrating climate change measures into policies, strategies and planning; and improving education, awareness-raising and human institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning. In support of this aim, the paper charts possible material topics from the literature and compares these with research findings.

From a top-down perspective, organizations need to expand sustainability programs to address all business areas, including records and archives. From a bottom-up perspective, records managers and archivists should include adaptation in disaster planning and consider the program benefits of developing economic, environmental and social sustainability initiatives to mitigate climate change.

The paper defines resilience, sustainability, adaption and mitigation and positions these terms in records management and archives. The paper examines how records managers, archivists and technologists think about sustainability; where sustainability intersects with records and archives work; and how records managers and archivists can engage in climate action.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous larger‐scale climate policy studies to the local jurisdiction level to evaluate local land use planning capacity for climate change.

This paper evaluated 53 recently developed local comprehensive land use plans in California and analyzes how well these plans recognized the concepts of climate change and prepared for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The descriptive results show that local land use plans reflect very low awareness and little analysis for climate change; however, the actions for climate change varied widely in scope and content in their plans.

This paper provides policymakers important empirical evidence to improve local land use planning capacities for climate change.

This chapter examines SDG 13 which deals with efforts to combat climate change. The chapter begins by outlining the targets related to this goal, the trend towards increased heating of the planet and failures to curtail carbon emissions. This is framed using criminological concepts such as state-corporate crime and carbon criminality. The major concern of the rest of the chapter is to outline a climate action plan. As part of this, it discusses a range of initiatives currently underway intended to pressure governments to take more concerted action around climate change. These include activist interventions and climate litigation. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibilities and obligations of global community action to address the most important issue of our era.