Global Environmental Change

Global Environmental Change is a peer-reviewed international journal publishing high-quality, theoretically grounded, and empirically rigorous research on the human and policy dimensions of global environmental change.

We examine environmental change as a biophysical, socially produced, and politically mediated process, shaped by institutions, governance arrangements, power relations, knowledge systems, and social inequalities. Environmental change refers to changes in earth systems and environments, including climate, atmospheres, land systems, biodiversity, water, coasts, oceans, and urban environments. They are driven by human activities and natural processes, are often experienced locally, but are linked to and have consequences at multiple spatial, temporal and socio-political scales. Therefore, our global focus refers not only to geographic extent, but to processes that connect local and place-based dynamics to broader regional, national, and international systems.

Scope

Submissions should have a significant social science contribution. This entails analysing environmental change through social science frameworks, including (but not limited to) governance studies, institutional analysis, political economy, political ecology, justice frameworks, and decision sciences, as well as modelling that interrogates assumptions, values, and societal implications. We publish scholarship in geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, STS, development studies, complex system science, climate and environmental sciences, resource management, economics, public health, socio-environmental psychology, environmental humanities, and other domains relevant to the human and policy dimensions of global environmental change.

We welcome qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and spatial research, driven by social or policy research questions. We prioritise work that advances social science theory and methodology, engages critically with policy, practice, and institutional processes, addresses justice and inequality, and links local dynamics to broader systemic, societal, and/or global transformations.

Areas of Interest

We publish research on the social drivers, consequences, and governance of environmental change across domains including:

• Climate mitigation and adaptation

• Biodiversity and ecosystem governance

• Land use and land cover change

• Food systems and agrarian transitions

• Water, coasts, and oceans

• Urban environmental change

• Indigenous, intersectional, and decolonial knowledges

• Energy transitions

• Environmental health and wellbeing