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What the 2026 Midterm Election Mean for the Clean Economy: Five Key Takeaways
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- Ceres, a non-profit organization that is mobilizing companies and investors to take stronger action on climate change, water scarcity and global sustainability challenges, posted the following news release:
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What the 2026 Midterm Election Mean for the Clean Economy: Five Key Takeaways
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The 2026 U.S. midterm election delivered historic results that have changed the landscape of Ceres' policy work. A new generation of leaders who support clean energy is heading to Congress, governor's offices, and state legislatures on promises to
... Show Full Article
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- Ceres, a non-profit organization that is mobilizing companies and investors to take stronger action on climate change, water scarcity and global sustainability challenges, posted the following news release:
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What the 2026 Midterm Election Mean for the Clean Economy: Five Key Takeaways
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The 2026 U.S. midterm election delivered historic results that have changed the landscape of Ceres' policy work. A new generation of leaders who support clean energy is heading to Congress, governor's offices, and state legislatures on promises tobring down prices and make the economy more affordable.
The policies that take shape in the coming years will define the next chapter of American-made clean energy.
During our recent webinar, The Post-Election Playbook: Opportunities to Advance Clean Economy Policy, the Ceres policy team analyzed what the results mean for the private sector, as well as for bipartisan solutions that lower electricity costs by modernizing the grid and expanding homegrown clean energy and domestic manufacturing.
There are incredible opportunities in Congress and in the states to build a cleaner, more resilient, and affordable economy.
Here are five key takeaways:
1/ A moment of clean economy opportunity
With new leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses nationwide, there is an opening to advance a policy agenda centered on expanding clean energy and modernizing our aging power grid. Wind, solar, and energy storage are the fastest and most affordable ways to meet increased power demand and address rising electricity prices. We expect renewed momentum at the state and federal levels to open the door to more clean energy investment, good jobs, and lower bills.
2/ Policy progress will come from the affordability lens
Affordability was the top policy issue in the election. Our work over the next two years will be focused on helping policymakers deliver. In the near term, Congress can make it easier to build clean energy and transmission projects, while states can modernize their existing infrastructure and expand cost-saving efficiency programs. Looking towards the future, we see an opportunity to develop a more durable framework for long-term clean energy and clean transportation incentives to both keep costs down and reduce pollution.
3/ Stars aligning in the states
The states offer an opportunity for responsible businesses to make a big impact next year. Legislatures will have new pro-clean energy majorities across the country, from Arizona to Pennsylvania to North Carolina. New utility regulators are taking over,, including in Georgia, where voters sent new members to the Public Service Commission. Ceres has laid out commonsense, bipartisan policy options for states in Powering Affordability: A Business-Backed Playbook for a Modern Clean Energy System. With business and sustainability leaders helping to chart the path, states can deliver a new vision for energy policy.
4/ Building bipartisan support
Despite new majorities for Democrats in Congress and statehouses, the reality is that bipartisan solutions are durable solutions. Without consensus, it's all too easy for clean energy policy to change with the winds of each presidential administration. We are committed to rebuilding the coalition of bipartisan support in Congress needed to secure durable policy outcomes for a clean economy. Companies can tell a powerful story to policymakers about how clean energy investment can benefit their districts and states, including through new local jobs, reliable and affordable power, and lower costs.
5/ Urgency on permitting and transmission reform
The Bipartisan Affordability and Jobs Act would get critical clean energy projects built faster, strengthen reliability, and deliver lower-cost power to the people and industries that need it. While the bill is not perfect, we are confident that constructive amendments will improve its substance and its prospects in the short term. The window to pass it before the current Congress adjourns in December is closing, and the business voice is vital. Policymakers need to hear directly from business leaders to pass the bill so we can spend the next two years ensuring strong implementation and working on the next round of policies to lower prices and expand reliable, American-made clean energy.
The road ahead
So, what's next? Ceres spent the past two years laying the groundwork for this moment, and we are ready to act. We're heading to Capitol Hill on December 10 for an advocacy day focused on clean economy priorities for the next Congress, and we'll return in March for LEAD on a Clean Economy, our annual advocacy event.
In the states, we're bringing together companies and policymakers in Georgia in December to discuss electricity load growth and sustainability. We're also partnering with Siemens and Advanced Energy United in December for a similar event in Pennsylvania, with speakers from the governor's office and the state legislature.
This work is stronger with a big tent. We hope you'll join us and be part of it as we build an affordable, clean economy.
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Original text here: https://www.ceres.org/resources/news/what-the-2026-midterm-election-mean-for-the-clean-economy-five-key-takeaways
Perpetual Futures: A Primer
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The American Action Forum issued the following news release:
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Perpetual Futures: A Primer
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Since perpetual futures contracts were first approved for listing in the United States by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) earlier this year, the controversy over these financial instruments has only grown. In a new primer, Policy Fellow Oren Swagel examines how perpetual futures work and the controversies surrounding their regulation and sale in the United States.
* Perpetual futures contracts, or "perps," are financial derivatives with
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The American Action Forum issued the following news release:
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Perpetual Futures: A Primer
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Since perpetual futures contracts were first approved for listing in the United States by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) earlier this year, the controversy over these financial instruments has only grown. In a new primer, Policy Fellow Oren Swagel examines how perpetual futures work and the controversies surrounding their regulation and sale in the United States.
* Perpetual futures contracts, or "perps," are financial derivatives withno expiration date that allow traders to hedge financial risk or speculate on an underlying asset's future price; unlike traditional futures contracts, perps use periodic payments between buyers and sellers to keep contract prices aligned with the underlying asset's market price.
* The CFTC has recently approved the sale of perpetual futures contracts tied to certain cryptocurrencies and equities, classifying the former as futures contracts and the latter as security futures contracts; these classifications subject these contracts to the existing regulation governing futures and security futures.
* Critics argue that the CFTC has misclassified these perps as futures and security futures rather than swaps and security-based swaps, respectively, allowing the companies offering these perps to unfairly benefit from less burdensome regulation and exposing retail investors to financial products with unusual and serious risks.
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Original text here: https://www.americanactionforum.org/press-release/perpetual-futures-a-primer/
New California legal opinion will clear a path for parametric insurance to help close protection gaps from extreme weather
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- Ceres, a non-profit organization that is mobilizing companies and investors to take stronger action on climate change, water scarcity and global sustainability challenges, posted the following news release:
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New California legal opinion will clear a path for parametric insurance to help close protection gaps from extreme weather
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BOSTON, MA: Ceres today welcomed a new General Counsel opinion letter from the California Department of Insurance clarifying how parametric insurance can be offered in the state's admitted market. Issued
... Show Full Article
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- Ceres, a non-profit organization that is mobilizing companies and investors to take stronger action on climate change, water scarcity and global sustainability challenges, posted the following news release:
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New California legal opinion will clear a path for parametric insurance to help close protection gaps from extreme weather
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BOSTON, MA: Ceres today welcomed a new General Counsel opinion letter from the California Department of Insurance clarifying how parametric insurance can be offered in the state's admitted market. Issuedin response to a Ceres request in July, the opinion gives insurers, communities, and consumers a clear legal framework for a tool that can deliver disaster payouts within days or weeks of a wildfire, flood, or extreme heat event.
Parametric insurance pays a set amount when a measurable trigger is met, such as a temperature threshold, a wind speed, or a flood level, rather than after a lengthy damage assessment. Used alongside traditional coverage, it can help households, small businesses, and local governments pay for evacuation, lost wages, and other costs that standard policies often leave out.
In the Ceres' 10-Point Plan for the Insurance Industry, parametric insurance and other emerging financial instruments are identified as innovative approaches that can provide faster payouts and a wider range of coverage options.
"Weather-related disasters are hitting California families, businesses, and local budgets harder every year, and too many of those costs fall outside traditional insurance," said Jaclyn de Medicci Bruneau, Ceres' director of insurance. "This opinion gives insurers the clarity they need to bring parametric products to market and gives consumers the protections they deserve. California has done the groundwork and put strong guardrails in place. Now the opportunity is to put this tool to work for the communities that need it most."
The approach is already protecting people and ecosystems around the world. In India, a heat insurance program run by a trade group and nonprofit helps outdoor workers cover lost income when temperatures spike. In Mexico and Hawaii, reef insurance policies held by The Nature Conservancy pay out after hurricanes so local teams can quickly repair damaged coral -- most recently when Hurricane Lala triggered Hawai`i's policy this year.
California has been laying out the groundwork since 2019. Commissioner Ricardo Lara's Climate Insurance Working Group recommended parametric coverage in its 2021 report. The California Department of Insurance has since supported a community-based parametric flood insurance pilot in Isleton, a coastal resilience and insurance effort in Imperial Beach, extreme heat coverage for Los Angeles' street vendors, and research into insuring urban forests.
"Since 2019, we have pushed for creative solutions to protect Californians from the growing costs of climate change. Parametric insurance can get money into people's hands quickly after a disaster, when they need it most," said California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara. "This opinion makes clear that when these products are insurance, they will be held to California's consumer protection standards, so people know what they are buying and rates are fair."
The opinion letter builds on that work by answering a threshold question: when is a parametric product insurance? Under the opinion, a product qualifies when it meets three criteria -- the buyer has an insurable interest, the product genuinely transfers risk, and the buyer can show proof of loss. Products that qualify fall under CDI oversight, the California Insurance Code and, where applicable, Proposition 103, including prior approval of rates.
The letter also sets out best practices to protect consumers:
* Transparency: Triggers based on objective, verifiable third-party data, with payout terms a reasonable buyer can understand.
* Minimizing basis risk: High-quality data and modeling, periodic recalibration as climate risks change, and marketing parametric coverage as a complement to -- not a replacement for -- traditional insurance.
* Consumer protection: Clear upfront disclosure that a payout may not match actual losses, and marketing that does not mislead.
* Data integrity and dispute resolution: Documented trigger calculations and data sources, plus audit and appeal rights for policyholders.
* Regulatory oversight: The same prudential standards as traditional insurance and complete rate filings reviewed before products are sold.
With this framework in place, the next Insurance Commissioner, who takes office in January 2027, will be responsible for reviewing parametric insurance rate filings and overseeing these products as they come to market. California joins New York and Puerto Rico in formally recognizing parametric insurance.
"Recovery is fastest when resources arrive before a crisis turns into a long-term setback,' said Newsha Ajami, founding director, Program on Governance for Risk, Resilience, and Recovery (GR3), Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "Parametric insurance, built on reliable data and independent, clear triggers, can help communities bridge the financial gap between a disaster and the longer process of rebuilding. California's framework offers a model for how to pair financial innovation with accountability, integrating a new tool into the state's comprehensive disaster recovery strategy."
The full opinion letter is available here.
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Original text here: https://www.ceres.org/resources/news/new-california-legal-opinion-will-clear-a-path-for-parametric-insurance-to-help-close-protection-gaps-from-extreme-weather (TNSmlt) (TNSmrp)
Liberty In Action Weekly: The (Small) Data Center Strikes Back
PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Goldwater Institute posted the following news:
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Liberty In Action Weekly: The (Small) Data Center Strikes Back
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It's the dream of many budding entrepreneurs: to start and grow a small business that serves the local community. That's just what Joshua Rhines was doing in Missoula, Mont., with his small tech firm, CubCloud AI--until city leaders decided that businesses like his are the wrong kinds of businesses. Now, the Goldwater Institute is challenging a Missoula ordinance that effectively bans Rhines from growing his business anywhere
... Show Full Article
PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Goldwater Institute posted the following news:
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Liberty In Action Weekly: The (Small) Data Center Strikes Back
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It's the dream of many budding entrepreneurs: to start and grow a small business that serves the local community. That's just what Joshua Rhines was doing in Missoula, Mont., with his small tech firm, CubCloud AI--until city leaders decided that businesses like his are the wrong kinds of businesses. Now, the Goldwater Institute is challenging a Missoula ordinance that effectively bans Rhines from growing his business anywherein the city.
Rhines followed all the rules when it came to growing CubCloud, a small firm that provides AI and cloud computing infrastructure to local businesses. He invested nearly $2 million to establish its facilities with designs that complied with existing zoning. But in their zeal to ban data centers (CubCloud is a data center, albeit a very, very small one) Missoula leaders changed the rules, limiting data centers to a type of zoning that doesn't even exist in the city. The problem: that's a violation of Montana's Right to Compute Act, a new law that requires government restrictions on computational resources to be "demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored" to address an actual problem.
The Goldwater Institute's lawsuit against the city of Missoula is the first case of the new Big Sky Legal Project, a joint initiative with the Frontier Institute in Montana. Through this partnership and others, Goldwater will continue to defend free enterprise and property rights in Montana and around the nation.
Read more here.
It's pretty simple: legislatures pass laws and executive agencies enforce them. But the bird brains at the Arizona Department of Agriculture don't seem to get it--a few years back they imposed an expensive new rule, without legislative authorization, mandating that all eggs sold in the state come from cage-free hens. The Goldwater Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation sued, and in a win for the separation of powers, an Arizona judge struck down this gross example of administrative state overreach.
When they adopted the "cage-free" egg rule, Agriculture Department bureaucrats insisted they were authorized to impose it under a law that gives the agency power to "adopt rules for poultry husbandry and the production of eggs." That language is so broad, there would seemingly be no stopping the department from imposing almost any rule. But an Arizona law--which Goldwater helped write and pass--limits administrative power by making it clear that agencies can't make rules "not specifically authorized by statute." In a recent ruling, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge agreed that the department's cage-free egg rule is not "specifically authorized" and must go.
The Goldwater Institute has long argued that the administrative state may be the largest threat to constitutional democracy in the country. This ruling provides a perfect example of how we can begin to rein in administrative state power.
Read more here.
What's the difference between a sign and a mural? The city of Salina, Kan., claims that signs "direct attention" to businesses and can be regulated. That was their reasoning for opposing a painting on the side of a local burger joint while allowing many other murals all around town. A three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court has now struck down Salina's ordinance, agreeing with the Goldwater Institute that it violates free-speech rights.
The city of Salina is full of murals--it actually hosts an annual mural competition. But the city objected to a local restauranteur's amusing mural of UFO-like hamburgers engaged in a space battle because it "directs attention" to his business. But other murals--a baseball mural on a baseball training facility, a "Symphony of Sunflowers" mural at orchestra hall--also direct attention to things. The restauranteur sued, represented by the Kansas Justice Institute, and Goldwater filed a friend of the court brief backing him. The Tenth Circuit panel agreed that the city's ordinance was arbitrary and clearly unconstitutional.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says "commercial" speech is entitled to less protection than "non-commercial" speech. The Goldwater Institute will always defend the free speech of business owners--and every American.
Read more here.
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Original text here: https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/liberty-in-action-weekly-the-small-data-center-strikes-back/
Just who are the Democratic Socialists of America?
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary:
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Just who are the Democratic Socialists of America?
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Editor's note: as part of a series of essays rated "Best of 2026" by our staff, this is a repost of an article that appeared earlier this year.
This article originally appeared in Daily Wire
Recent high-profile electoral successes have thrust the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) back into the national spotlight, but public understanding of the group's far-left worldview lags considerably behind the understanding of its political
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary:
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Just who are the Democratic Socialists of America?
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Editor's note: as part of a series of essays rated "Best of 2026" by our staff, this is a repost of an article that appeared earlier this year.
This article originally appeared in Daily Wire
Recent high-profile electoral successes have thrust the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) back into the national spotlight, but public understanding of the group's far-left worldview lags considerably behind the understanding of its politicalinfluence. It is crucial for Americans to appreciate that the DSA has become a deeply radical organization, with a membership whose politics increasingly roll right off the leftmost edge of the ideological spectrum.
In its newly updated platform, the DSA calls for (among many other things) the wholesale abolition of capitalism -- to be replaced by a centrally planned "classless society" wherein government monopolizes socioeconomic life. It seeks to abolish police, prisons, and immigration enforcement, defund the U.S. military, eliminate the Senate, and remove federal checks-and-balances by making the executive and judicial branches explicitly subordinate to the legislative.
The DSA is organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit -- not a political party -- and it is overwhelmingly funded through membership dues. These accounted for over 87 percent of its total revenue of $6.38 million in 2024 -- a budget that is quite modest by national political activist groups' standards. It also maintains a much smaller 501(c)(3) charitable affiliate called the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, which raised just $399,886 that year. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, it is hard to point to a group that currently commands more attention in Democratic Party politics than the DSA.
This was not always the case. Most of the group's current influence can be traced to growth that began in earnest following the 2016 election cycle. This increase in membership has been accompanied by steady political radicalization, to the point where the DSA may now be considered an organ of the revolutionary far-left -- one which has found common cause with Marxist-Leninist one-party states such as China and Cuba, and attacked the United States as "the heart of a global capitalist empire that has wrought untold suffering on billions of people and the environment."
The DSA's hostility towards Israel is also notoriously virulent, something which infamously manifested itself through declarations of Palestinian solidarity and cries of "long live the resistance!" during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks, which the group blamed on the Israeli victims. A resolution approved at the DSA's 2025 national convention went so far as to make opposition to "the Palestinian cause" -- including by uttering the phrase "Israel has a right to defend itself" -- an expellable offense.
At that same convention, the DSA elected a new National Political Committee. The ideological affiliations of these committee members illustrate the influence that full-blown revolutionary communism holds over the group's internal politics. Several committee members (including one of its two co-chairs) are members of the DSA's Red Star caucus, an association of Marxist-Leninists that aims to foster a revolutionary vanguard "to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism."
Others were elected from the Marxist Unity Group, whose objective is to "fight to overthrow the Constitution" so that the revolutionary working class can "take power by any means necessary" and institute "a fully liberated classless society: communism."
Yet another caucus with multiple National Political Committee members is Reform & Revolution, which characterizes its "revolutionary Marxist" politics as being derived from "the Bolshevik Tradition." All told, the DSA's internal political "Left" -- which is more-or-less tantamount to revolutionary communism -- now wields major influence over the organization's leadership.
This is far from the vision of the DSA's founding ideological lodestar, Michael Harrington, who died in 1989. Though a dedicated left-wing socialist, Harrington was also fully committed to democracy and explicitly rejected communist totalitarianism. He was said to have been deeply troubled by the Port Huron Statement released by Students for a Democratic Society in 1962, because he felt the language used was insufficiently anti-communist. Harrington was also avowedly pro-Israel. Though the DSA still trades on the once-accurate descriptors of its Harrington-era name, "Democratic Socialists of America" might today be more akin to a Holy Roman Empire-style misnomer, in the sense that the group is neither particularly democratic, nor socialist, nor American.
The American radical left has traditionally demonstrated a propensity for factional infighting, self-marginalization, and organizational implosion. Perhaps this will ultimately be the fate of the DSA in its current iteration. Something of a boom-and-bust cycle has characterized the group's fortunes over the past decade -- it was scarcely two years ago that the DSA appeared on the verge of an existential fiscal crisis brought on by a combination of declining membership and profligate spending. Today, it claims over 120,000 members and appears to be riding higher than ever. For now, the undercurrent of political radicalism that has existed on the American Left since at least the 1960s appears to have found an institutional home within the DSA.
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Original text here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/just-who-are-the-democratic-socialists-of-america-best-of/
Debt and Deficit (Lack of) Progress Report: October 2026
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The American Action Forum issued the following news release:
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Debt and Deficit (Lack of) Progress Report: October 2026
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The U.S. Department of the Treasury has released the Monthly Treasury Statement for October 2026. In a new insight, Director of Fiscal Policy Jordan Haring highlights its most notable findings.
* This Monthly Treasury Statement shows the federal budget deficit totaled $404 billion during the first month (October) of fiscal year (FY) 2027 - $120 billion higher than the corresponding period in FY 2026; the FY 2027 deficit was
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The American Action Forum issued the following news release:
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Debt and Deficit (Lack of) Progress Report: October 2026
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The U.S. Department of the Treasury has released the Monthly Treasury Statement for October 2026. In a new insight, Director of Fiscal Policy Jordan Haring highlights its most notable findings.
* This Monthly Treasury Statement shows the federal budget deficit totaled $404 billion during the first month (October) of fiscal year (FY) 2027 - $120 billion higher than the corresponding period in FY 2026; the FY 2027 deficit wasthe net effect of $773 billion of spending and $369 billion of revenue collections.
* Revenue fell by $35 billion in the first month of FY 2027, driven by lower individual income and customs duties; spending is up by $84 billion over the same period, driven by higher entitlement spending and larger interest payments on the national debt.
* Federal debt held by the public totaled $32.7 trillion at the end of October 2026 - $2.2 trillion higher than the debt at the end of October 2025.
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Original text here: https://www.americanactionforum.org/press-release/debt-and-deficit-lack-of-progress-report-october-2026/
COP31: Better understanding of vulnerability needed to protect against dangers of extreme weather
BRIGHTON, England, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Institute of Development Studies, an organization that conducts research, learning and teaching that aims to transform the knowledge, action and leadership needed for equitable and sustainable development globally, posted the following news:
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COP31: Better understanding of vulnerability needed to protect against dangers of extreme weather
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With world leaders meeting at COP31 this week, IDS researchers warn that protecting the most vulnerable from extreme weather - made more frequent and intense by climate change - needs more than
... Show Full Article
BRIGHTON, England, Nov. 13 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Institute of Development Studies, an organization that conducts research, learning and teaching that aims to transform the knowledge, action and leadership needed for equitable and sustainable development globally, posted the following news:
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COP31: Better understanding of vulnerability needed to protect against dangers of extreme weather
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With world leaders meeting at COP31 this week, IDS researchers warn that protecting the most vulnerable from extreme weather - made more frequent and intense by climate change - needs more thantechnical solutions such as early warning systems.
Instead, greater emphasis needs to be placed on navigating social conditions and overcoming systemic challenges - for example, understanding the underlying factors that create vulnerability to extreme weather, making warnings relevant to people's circumstances, and building resilience in the institutions that enable action.
Extreme weather is no longer a future risk. Climate change fuelled record temperatures across the world this year, bringing drought and more frequent and severe storms and floods. Wildfires also raged across Europe and elsewhere, with fires currently burning across Indonesia.
As the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts that a strong El Nino will make 2027 the hottest year yet, discussions are turning to adaptation and heat protection strategies. IDS researcher Annie Wilkinson argues that whilst exposure to extreme heat is partly meteorological, that vulnerability to heat, is also driven by social, economic and political factors.
Build heat protection into everyday lives
Two IDS research projects (If Cities Could Speak and Urban Futures) examine dimensions of vulnerability in informal urban settlements and have repeatedly shown how risks accumulate in particular places and lives. Heat adds another layer to these existing pressures, it is not a separate hazard.
Annie Wilkinson, research fellow, IDS, says:
"A warning cannot overcome unsafe housing or the need to earn a living, and identifying those at risk does not itself secure the support they need.
"During COP31, growing recognition of extreme heat must therefore lead to more than a proliferation of plans, technologies and warning systems: it must change the conditions that leave some people unable to protect themselves."
Wilkinson recommends that along with improving heat data, forecasting and early warnings, and strengthening the evidence on which interventions work, institutions need clear responsibilities and capabilities to act on that knowledge. In addition, protection from extreme heat must be built into everyday working conditions, housing and public services rather than it being treated as an intermittent emergency response.
Read the full IDS Opinion by Annie Wilkinson on why 'Coping with extreme heat requires more than technical solutions.'
Climate preparedness for the most vulnerable
Shibaji Bose, an independent consultant and Shilpi Srivastava, IDS Research Fellow, who work on research sites in India also point out that hazards, such as extreme heat, "overlap with changing livelihoods, uneven infrastructure, social inequalities and fragmented administrative responsibilities". They argue that this mix of climate change and human caused factors is increasingly impacting the most vulnerable.
Building on the point that COP31 needs to provide action beyond technological solutions, Bose recommends that to support those most vulnerable to climate extremes, climate finance must fund the maintenance, staffing, coordination and institutional learning around infrastructure or technology. For example, an early-warning network will only work as well as the institutions and people responsible for maintaining it.
These are the early findings being drawn from the RELIABLE project, funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, and led by Shilpi Srivastava, which is reimagining preparedness under climate extremes - including heatwaves. Working in sites in India and the UK, the project is exploring and testing strategies for climate preparedness that are particularly attuned to the uncertainties causes by changing climate and environmental factors, and social and political factors, that people live with on an everyday basis.
Read the full IDS Opinion by Shibaji Bose and Shilpi Srivastava about 'Why climate action at COP31 and beyond must be built on reliability'.
Create more heat-resilient communities
Understanding which heat adaptations work best in different settings is a key priority, particularly in low and middle-income countries.
HeatNexus is a network of nine projects which IDS supports in areas such as cross-project learning and research synthesis - to ensure that the collective knowledge from across the network makes the biggest difference as possible for communities most vulnerable to rising global temperatures.
The projects In Africa, are testing interventions such as cool, reflective roofs, natural ventilation and urban greening to understand what happens when solutions meet local realities, housing types and populations.
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Original text here: https://www.ids.ac.uk/news/cop31-better-understanding-of-vulnerability-needed-to-protect-against-dangers-of-extreme-weather/
