In 2023, the United Nations climate conference (COP28) officially recognized the importance of agriculture in influencing and mitigating climate change. In a Policy Forum, Johan Swinnen and colleagues offer an approach to overcome challenges related to improving climate-sensitive farming practices across the globe. They discuss the importance of working with Agricultural Value Chains (AVC) by incentivizing small businesses who play an important role in the support of small- and medium-sized farms. This would involve both upstream enterprises related to seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, and insurance, for example, and downstream enterprises like those related to distribution, storage, and transportation. Most agricultural production occurs within small- to medium-sized farms – a fragmented farm sector – leading to pessimism about the possibility to enact change. But the authors counter this pessimism, citing decades of evidence of AVC companies having employed their tools – such as resource provision, training, and loans – to encourage farmers to be more “climate smart.” Targeting these institutional relationships with farmers can be a positive force for needed policy transformation, say the authors.

New study introduces a novel legal framework for addressing climate change through the lens of unjust enrichment. The study proposes a shift away from traditional tort-based climate litigation towards an approach that focuses on the unjust profits gained from environmentally harmful activities. This unique perspective offers several advantages: it circumvents the challenges of quantifying abstract climate harms, allows for accountability without strict proof of wrongdoing, and provides a means to address environmental violations even when specific damages are difficult to establish. The framework's importance lies in its potential to overcome longstanding hurdles in climate litigation, offering a more flexible and potentially more effective legal tool for combating the climate crisis. By reframing the issue around unjust gains rather than provable harms, this research opens up new avenues for legal action and policy development in the urgent fight against climate change, making it a significant contribution to both legal scholarship and environmental advocacy.

The ESMO Asia Congress 2024 will be held in Singapore from 6-8 December

New research from the University of Zurich, based on data from more than 28,000 caregivers in three countries, shows that the longer individuals spend caring for loved ones, the more their well-being suffers, regardless of the caregiving context. These findings underscore the need for policy discussions to alleviate the burden of informal care.

A groundbreaking international study shows how chemical fingerprints left by “underappreciated” aquatic organisms could help scientists monitor global environmental change.

Sammie Powers, Assistant Professor, School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management (SRTM), College of Education and Human Development (CEHD); Hung-Ling (Stella) Liu, Associate Professor, SRTM, CEHD; Ted Chen, Assistant Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, College of Science; and Ellen B. Drogin Rodgers, Associate Professor, SRTM, CEHD, received funding for: “Social Network Analysis of the Environmental Justice and Climate Justice Community Active in Climate Adaptation and Conservation.”