Climate Change and Human Reaction: Transformation, Governance, Ethics, Law

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability, i.e., the demand for long-term and globally practicable lifestyles and economies, is increasingly being understood as the central challenge of our time. This is especially true with regard to climate change. Undoubtedly, natural scientific and technical knowledge of problem relationships in dealing with nature, resources, and climate is important. However, technical change does not happen on its own. In addition, the ecological challenges are simply too great not to aim for a behavioral change, including structural change as well as technology, given the—legally binding—1.5 degrees limit in Article 2 of the Paris Agreement that may require global zero emissions in all sectors in two or three decades. This is the starting point of this Special Issue on climate change and human reaction. We want to investigate, for example, the conditions for individual and social change, the means or governance instruments for zero fossil fuels in all sectors and drastically reduced livestock emissions in 2040 or 2050, as well as normative (ethical and legal) issues. Transdisciplinary approaches should play a special role, i.e., approaches that do not operate from disciplinary boundaries but from questions of content without excessive subordination to established disciplinary dogmas. It is important to the guest editors that the Special Issue stands for pluralism and expressly gives room to uncomfortable, unexpected, and heterodox views and methods. We invite qualitative as well as quantitative studies that adhere to high quality standards and provide plausible justifications of their methodological choices and study design.

Prof. Dr. Felix Ekardt
Prof. Dr. Anita Engels
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.