This volume sets out to address current gaps in research thinking on how material and non-material factors work in tandem to inhibit effective sustainable development transitions across differing world settings. It will showcase a body of research that accounts for the experiences of cohorts residing in various world regions and provide the reader with a series of conceptual tools with which to understand major factors currently shaping responses to climate change. In that, it responds directly to calls by various international agencies for research communities to provide more detailed evidence of how climate change not only adds to existing societal burdens but also creates newer ones and critically reconsider strategies for realizing UN Sustainable Development Goals in ways that bring SDG 10 on inequalities and SDG 13 on climate action, in particular, together more strategically.
With a heavy emphasis on the need for communities to abandon many established socio-cultural practices and adjust comprehensively to a series of new climate imperatives (social, environmental, economic, etc.), little attention is paid to the potential risks these changes pose to the health and wellbeing of vulnerable cohorts. As these risks may constitute considerable barriers to long-term resilience-building and effective climate actions, the difficulties encountered by different communities need to be better understood and accounted for in climate change research. This volume sets out to examine these issues and consider more equitable approaches to climate change resilience-building.