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This study aims to examine the research output on climate change, environmental risks and insurance from 1986 to 2020, thereby revealing the development of the literature through collaborative networks. The relationship between insurance, climate change and environmental threats has gained research attention. This study describes the interaction between insurance, climate change and environmental risk.

This study is a bibliometric analysis of the literature and assessed the current state of science. A total of 97 academic papers from top-level journals listed in the Scopus database are shortlisted.

The understanding of climate change, environmental risks and insurance is shaped and enhanced through the collaborative network maps of researchers. Their reach expands across different networks, core themes and streams, as these topics develop.

Data for this study were generated from English-written journal articles listed in the Scopus database only; subsequently, this study was representative of high-quality papers published in the areas of climate change, environmental risks and insurance.

The results of this study can be useful to academic researchers to aid their understanding of climate change, environmental risks and insurance research development, to identify the current context and to develop a future research agenda.

The findings of this study can improve the understanding of industry practitioners about climate change and global warming challenges, and how insurance can be used as a tool to address such challenges.

This study is a novel attempt. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to better understand climate change, environmental risks and insurance as a research topic by examining its evolution in an academic context through visualization, coupling and bibliometric analysis. This bibliometric study is unique in reviewing climate change literature and providing a future research agenda. Using bibliometric data, this study addressed the technical aspects and the value it adds to actual practice. Bibliometric indicators quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate emerging disciplinary progress in this topic.

In this chapter, the author has described the nexus between climate change and the evolution of refugee problems. The concept of climate refugee and the controversy between refugee and climate refugee were extensively elaborated. The estimates of climate refugees under various dimensions in different parts of the world were exemplified with statistical figures. The solutions of the refugee problems, funding, directions of estimates and social responsibilities towards refugees are described in the activities of international institutions like UNHCR, CCDO, UNFCCC, IPCC, the Red Cross and many others. The chapter also highlights some important policy issues such as charters, funds, response strategy to disaster and disaster recovery plans, support capacity building and climate change adaptation and so on and also cited policies taken by the G20 summit to care for refugees. Besides, the recommendations of COP23 were also included. In conclusion, ‘no climate change, no climate refugees’ slogan is incorporated with suggestions of taking care of sizable percentage shares of refugees by the rich nations.

This chapter focusses on food systems' vulnerability. In a rapidly and unpredictably changing world, vulnerability of farming and food systems becomes a key issue. The conceptual bases for food vulnerability analysis and food vulnerability assessment are discussed in a systemic perspective with an eye to the transition approach (Geels, 2004) as a perspective capable to analyze how novelties can develop and influence the system capability to fulfil societal functions, and food and nutrition security in particular. A framework for assessing people's food vulnerability is presented together with a simple vulnerability model based on the three dimensions of exposure (the degree to which a system is likely to experience environmental or sociopolitical stress), sensitivity (the degree to which a system is modified or affected by perturbations) and adaptive capacity (the ability to evolve in order to accommodate environmental hazards or change) (Adger, 2006). Then, other sections are dedicated to discuss the general questions that should be answered by a vulnerability assessment exercise, and the specific challenges emerging when the assessment concerns a food system. These elements are then used in the Annex to this chapter as a base for the development of a detailed method based on seven distinct steps for conducting participatory assessments of the vulnerability of food systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore economic conditions of contemporary society to provide insight into the ways in which the consequences of disaster, including environmental migration, are accentuated.

This research draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity and notions of development to analyse disaster. From the analysis, a new concept, liquid development, is proposed and critiqued as a contributing factor leading to severe contemporary disaster.

Liquid development provides a new way of making sense of the conditions and consequences of economic growth and a business as usual attitude. It further provides a framework to explore the potential disaster of environmental migration in the Pacific Islands arising from liquid development driven climate change-induced sea level rise.

Analysing these conditions provides greater understanding of the resulting impact of disaster, creating awareness and informing the need for accountability and social policy. This study aims to contribute to further practical and research enquiry that will challenge liquid developers to reconsider their impact and to accept responsibility for vulnerable members of society as part of their business as usual structure.

This paper adds to Bauman’s understanding of the consequences of globalisation through the construct of liquid development. It also continues his debate by giving awareness to the global issue of environmental migration.

The important role played by the UK in the negotiation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 can be explained by the support given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and especially to its working group on scientific assessment. Outlines the context in which this support became possible and the role and functioning of the Panel. Argues that a mature national research lobby assured that the international scientific advisory process was incorporated into both domestic environmental policy and environmental diplomacy. By ensuring that scientific assessment was indeed considered to be policy relevant by policy‐makers, attention and resources were attracted to a research area of global significance. Policy relevance was claimed on the basis of the argument that predictions of future climates and their impacts on eco‐systems, now including potential health risks to the population, are essential precautionary reasons. Suggests that this assertion needs debate. By supporting global research which is primarily concerned with predicting the behaviour of systems that include human beings as a biological species, more fundamental questions about the capacity of political systems and societies to respond to and cope with the asserted environmental threats are not addressed. If political inability to act leads mainly to support for more research, how should the research enterprise react?

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

Environmental studies have developed slowly within social sciences in Latin America. This paper seeks to assess and systematize the contribution of social sciences in the research on the human dimensions of global environmental change (HDGEC) in the region outlining its state of the art and process of development.

The approach taken is the organization of a manual compilation and systematic review of publications on topics related to the HDGEC in order to investigate major research topics covering the period between 2001 and 2008.

Although it is possible to identify an emergent body of the literature and scholarship in the region, the involvement of Latin American social science in the HDGEC research is still timid and tentative and not yet institutionalized. The evidence from this compilation has shown that this literature is fragmented bringing difficulties for the homogenization of criteria for analysis and assessment.

The paper is one of the very few attempts to assess and analyze the research on HDGEC in Latin America through an international perspective. It provides an overview of its development building upon the progress of environmental studies in the region and looks to its challenges ahead in order to call for more involvement of social sciences in these research activities.

Global warming has been a well recognized environmental issue in the United States for the past ten years, even though scientists had identified it as a potential problem years before in 1896. We find debate about the issue in the United States media coverage while controversy among the majority of scientists is rare. The role that media plays in constructing the norms and ideas in society is researched to understand how they socially construct global warming and other environmental issues. To identify if the U.S. Media presents a biased view of global warming, the following are discussed (1) the theoretical perspective of media and the environment; (2) scientific overview and history of global warming; (3) media coverage of global warming, and (4) research findings from the content analysis of three countries’ newspaper articles and two international scientific journals produced in 2000 with comparison of these countries economies, industries, and environments. In conclusion, our research demonstrates that the U.S. with differing industries, predominantly dominated by the fossil fuel industry, in comparison to New Zealand and Finland has a significant impact on the media coverage of global warming. The U.S’s media states that global warming is controversial and theoretical, yet the other two countries portray the story that is commonly found in the international scientific journals. Therefore, media, acting as one driving force, is providing citizens with piecemeal information that is necessary to assess the social, environmental and political conditions of the country and world.