Basic

Set sail northwards from the Shetland Isles and after 400 miles you’ll cross the Arctic Circle. Travel a further 800 miles, deep into the Arctic, and you will eventually reach the ice-covered archipelago of Svalbard, one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth. Svalbard is perhaps best known for its polar bears and ecotourism, but it’s also well known among climate scientists for its huge and relatively easily studied glaciers, which unfortunately find themselves in one of the fastest-warming parts of the world. Brice Noël and Michiel van den Broeke report on their latest research and explain why Svalbard is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Eventually the glaciers will recede, they say, and the landscape will start to resemble modern-day Iceland.

In other parts of the world, urban slums create complex challenges for governments which, argues Jessica Kritz, they cannot resolve alone. These complex problems can be solved through cross-sector collaboration, with communities and citizens articulating their needs and then partnering with governments and NGOs to address them. She uses Old Fadama, the informal settlement in Accra, Ghana, as a case study of what’s possible, and makes a case for participatory action research to engender cross-sector collaboration.