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The purpose of this paper is to review the contributions of the special issue papers while presenting four broad research avenues.

The paper is based on a review of current literature on climate change and carbon accounting.

The authors propose four broad avenues for research: climate change as a systemic and social issue, the multi-layered transition apparatus for climate change, climate vulnerability and the future of carbon accounting.

The authors connect this study with the requested institutional changes for climate breakdown, making the paper relevant for practice and policy. The authors notably point to education and professions as institutions that will request bold and urgent makeovers.

The authors urge academics to reconsider climate change as a social issue, requiring to use new theoretical lenses such as emotions, eco-feminism, material politics and “dispositifs” to tackle this grand challenge.

This paper switches the authors’ viewpoint on carbon accounting to look at it from a more systemic and social lens.

A number of severe weather events have influenced a shift in UK policy concerning how climate-induced hazards are managed. Whist this shift has encouraged improvements in emergency management and preparedness, the risk of climate change is increasingly becoming securitised within policy discourses, and enmeshed with broader agendas traditionally associated with human-induced threats. Climate change is seen as a security risk because it can impede development of a nation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of the securitisation of climate change, and interrogates how such framings influence a range of conceptual and policy focused approaches towards both security and climate change.

Drawing upon the UK context, the paper uses a novel methodological approach combining critical discourse analysis and focus groups with security experts and policymakers.

The resulting policy landscape appears inexorably skewed towards short-term decision cycles that do little to mitigate longer-term threats to the nation’s assets. Whilst a prominent political action on a global level is required in order to mitigate the root causes (i.e. GHG emissions), national level efforts focus on adaptation (preparedness to the impacts of climate-induced hazards), and are forming part of the security agenda.

These issues are not restricted to the UK: understanding the role of security and its relationship to climate change becomes more pressing and urgent, as it informs the consequences of securitising climate change risks for development-disaster risk system.

Climate change adaptation strategies are critical for long-term road infrastructure development (RID) because it is expected to put more land and transportation infrastructure at risk from stronger winds, more intense storms, and rising sea levels. Deformation and subsidence could occur if concrete pavements crumbled and asphalt roads softened due to higher temperatures, and changes in the frequency and intensity of precipitation could have far-reaching consequences for the smooth operation of transportation networks. The developed world is primarily responsible for the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, while less developed countries are insignificant. The African Union sees climate change as a major threat to the continent’s economic development and is working with member states and key organizations to address it. It is critical for developing countries to establish frameworks for detecting climate change risks, developing adaptation strategies, and implementing plans. The sustainable development plan (SRIP) is critical for protecting transportation networks from the effects of climate change. Sustainable development principles are critical for clarifying the proposed project’s relationships with the local and larger society, economy, ecosystems, and various institutions. The ability of a system or structure to recover from disruption while continuing to function and adapt to new circumstances is referred to as resilient infrastructure. Low-carbon infrastructure coexists with resilient infrastructure, and the pursuit of resilient infrastructure necessitates a reduction in the likelihood of failure, a lessening of the negative consequences when failures do occur, and a reduction in the time required to recover due to an increase in the facilities’ capacity to endure, adapt, and change. As part of the implementation process, RID experts must consider how climate change will impact transportation infrastructure. Risk assessment is a systematic method of looking for things that could go wrong, determining how bad they could be, and determining how likely they are to happen. Adaptable designs must include multiple measures to prevent system breakdowns. Climate change’s effects on road infrastructure, as well as rising sea levels, continue to jeopardize low-lying transportation infrastructure. Implementing SRIP necessitates the development of a climate change response mechanism.

The US fossil fuel industry is vulnerable to opposition from other sectors of the ruling class. Non-fossil fuel capitalists might conclude that climate breakdown jeopardizes their interests. State actors such as judges, regulators, and politicians may come to the same conclusion. However, these other elite actors are unlikely to take concerted collective action against fossil fuels in the absence of growing disruption by grassroots activists. Drawing from the history of the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies, I analyze the forces determining government climate policies and private-sector investments. I focus on how the climate and Indigenous movements have begun to force changes in the behavior of certain ruling-class interests. Of particular importance is these movements' progress in two areas: eroding the financial sector's willingness to fund and insure fossil fuels, and influencing judges and regulators to take actions that further undermine investors' confidence in fossil fuels. Our future hinges largely on whether the movements can build on these victories while expanding their base within labor unions and other strategically positioned sectors.