Climate Futures Across Disciplines
A Next Generation Approach
1st Edition
Published on 19. May 2026
266 pages
978-1-040-66130-7 (ISBN)
Description
Climate Futures Across Disciplines explores the multifaceted nature of climate futures, showcasing how early-career researchers are helping to pioneer what innovation in academia might look like.
The volume shows how emerging scholars can sustain disciplinary rigour while engaging wider ecological, political, societal, and perceptual concerns. Instead of treating climate change purely as scientific or policy analysis, the book approaches future-oriented thinking as a domain of imagination, design, and governance. Initial chapters translate climate change into lived or felt experience through creative performance, visual practice, and palaeoclimate analogues, then move to infrastructure design, fair transport decarbonisation, renewable energy markets, and inclusive water governance. The final section considers governance, law, and institutional responsibility, illustrating how climate futures unfold in sanitation systems, mining towns, carbon markets, and environmental rights frameworks. Throughout, contributors emphasise that climate futures are lived, negotiated, and unevenly experienced. Their analyses foreground justice, lived experience, and practical insight, while recognising the need for future research that connects grounded practices to accelerating risks and inequalities.
Breaking academic barriers to inspire new and innovative research approaches, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social justice, environmental justice, climate justice, and human rights, as well as to policymakers, activists, NGOs, and public interest lawyers.
The volume shows how emerging scholars can sustain disciplinary rigour while engaging wider ecological, political, societal, and perceptual concerns. Instead of treating climate change purely as scientific or policy analysis, the book approaches future-oriented thinking as a domain of imagination, design, and governance. Initial chapters translate climate change into lived or felt experience through creative performance, visual practice, and palaeoclimate analogues, then move to infrastructure design, fair transport decarbonisation, renewable energy markets, and inclusive water governance. The final section considers governance, law, and institutional responsibility, illustrating how climate futures unfold in sanitation systems, mining towns, carbon markets, and environmental rights frameworks. Throughout, contributors emphasise that climate futures are lived, negotiated, and unevenly experienced. Their analyses foreground justice, lived experience, and practical insight, while recognising the need for future research that connects grounded practices to accelerating risks and inequalities.
Breaking academic barriers to inspire new and innovative research approaches, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social justice, environmental justice, climate justice, and human rights, as well as to policymakers, activists, NGOs, and public interest lawyers.
Reviews / Votes
"Climate Futures Across Disciplines is a timely and thoughtful contribution to the climate conversation-rigorous in its scholarship, refreshingly global in scope, and enriched by the intergenerational collaboration between emerging researchers and seasoned mentors. This volume doesn't just imagine climate futures; it models the kind of intellectual pluralism and cross-disciplinary dialogue we urgently need to shape these futures."- Dr Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, India; Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
"Climate Futures Across Disciplines demonstrates the kind of creative, collaborative approach society needs in our quest to make real progress in addressing the existential threats posed by the climate and environmental crises. Weaving together art, science, politics and law, the book features a highly engaging and thought-provoking set of essays authored by a diversity of researchers, young and old, from the South and the North. Looking for hope? You'll find it here!"
- Dr David Boyd, Professor at University of British Columbia and Former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Reflowable
Illustrations
4 Tables, black and white; 21 Halftones, black and white; 21 Illustrations, black and white
File size
15,08 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-66130-7 (9781040661307)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Susan Ann Samuel | Richard Beardsworth | Viktoria Spaiser
Climate Futures Across Disciplines
A Next Generation Approach
Book
05/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€201.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Persons
Susan Ann Samuel is a lawyer in India and completed her PhD in International Relations from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on environmental law, climate politics, human rights, and sustainable development.
Richard Beardsworth is Professor of International Relations, Head of the School of Politics and International Studies, and Principal Fellow at the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, University of Leeds. His present research focuses on international climate leadership, geopolitics and climate insurance, and reframing net zero in a populist age, with a view to carbon budget overshoot.
Viktoria Spaiser is Professor of Climate Politics and Computational Social Science at the University of Leeds-School of Politics and International Studies, United Kingdom. She is also affiliated with the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
Richard Beardsworth is Professor of International Relations, Head of the School of Politics and International Studies, and Principal Fellow at the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, University of Leeds. His present research focuses on international climate leadership, geopolitics and climate insurance, and reframing net zero in a populist age, with a view to carbon budget overshoot.
Viktoria Spaiser is Professor of Climate Politics and Computational Social Science at the University of Leeds-School of Politics and International Studies, United Kingdom. She is also affiliated with the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
Content
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Foreword: Piers Forster
Guest Note: From Member of Parliament for Leeds Central and Headingley
Preface and Acknowledgements: Susan Ann Samuel
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Towards Plural Climate Futures - The Work of a New Generation
Richard Beardsworth
Part I: Imagining Climate Futures
2. What's the story? Exploring the Communicative Capacities of Large Puppets in Creative Climate Change Communications
Bev Adams and Adam Strickson
3. Back to the Future - Can the climate 3 million years ago help us to understand our future(s)?
Lauren Burton, Alan Haywood, Julia Tindall, Daniel Hill, and Aisling Dolan
4. Embodied Futures: Arts Practices and Entangled Perceptual Possibilities
Benjamin Skinner
Part II: Designing Systems for Climate Futures
5. Leveraging System Change for Fair Transport Decarbonisation
Vanessa Ternes
6. Policy and Wholesale Electricity Market Futures for a GB Decarbonised Power System
Samuel Birch
7. Water Governance and Institutional Adaptation for Climate Futures: The Case of West Java Province, Indonesia
Dewa Wishanti
Part III: Governing Climate Futures
8. Lost In Transition? Equity in Planning and Funding of Climate-Adaptive Urban Sanitation
Leonie Hyde-Smith, Anna Mdee, Katy Roelich, and Barbara Evans
9. Infrastructures Of Legitimacy: Navigating Strategic Responsibilities from Below in Ghana's Mining Frontiers
Alesia Ofori and Vivian Nsiah
10. The Future of Carbon Market Institutions in the Paris-era
Jihyung Joo, Jouni Paavola, and James Van Alstine
11. Unpacking The Right to A Healthy Environment in a Political-Legal Discourse: A 'Bold Action' for Climate Futures?
Susan Ann Samuel
12. Conclusion: In Pursuit of Hope - Lessons, Limits, and Future Directions
Susan Ann Samuel and Viktoria Spaiser
Index
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Foreword: Piers Forster
Guest Note: From Member of Parliament for Leeds Central and Headingley
Preface and Acknowledgements: Susan Ann Samuel
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Towards Plural Climate Futures - The Work of a New Generation
Richard Beardsworth
Part I: Imagining Climate Futures
2. What's the story? Exploring the Communicative Capacities of Large Puppets in Creative Climate Change Communications
Bev Adams and Adam Strickson
3. Back to the Future - Can the climate 3 million years ago help us to understand our future(s)?
Lauren Burton, Alan Haywood, Julia Tindall, Daniel Hill, and Aisling Dolan
4. Embodied Futures: Arts Practices and Entangled Perceptual Possibilities
Benjamin Skinner
Part II: Designing Systems for Climate Futures
5. Leveraging System Change for Fair Transport Decarbonisation
Vanessa Ternes
6. Policy and Wholesale Electricity Market Futures for a GB Decarbonised Power System
Samuel Birch
7. Water Governance and Institutional Adaptation for Climate Futures: The Case of West Java Province, Indonesia
Dewa Wishanti
Part III: Governing Climate Futures
8. Lost In Transition? Equity in Planning and Funding of Climate-Adaptive Urban Sanitation
Leonie Hyde-Smith, Anna Mdee, Katy Roelich, and Barbara Evans
9. Infrastructures Of Legitimacy: Navigating Strategic Responsibilities from Below in Ghana's Mining Frontiers
Alesia Ofori and Vivian Nsiah
10. The Future of Carbon Market Institutions in the Paris-era
Jihyung Joo, Jouni Paavola, and James Van Alstine
11. Unpacking The Right to A Healthy Environment in a Political-Legal Discourse: A 'Bold Action' for Climate Futures?
Susan Ann Samuel
12. Conclusion: In Pursuit of Hope - Lessons, Limits, and Future Directions
Susan Ann Samuel and Viktoria Spaiser
Index
