Social impacts and social resilience

Authoritarian regimes have a history of keeping information about escalating disasters secret, even when it could harm their own citizens.

Conclusions from the ILO Meeting of Experts on occupational safety and health in extreme weather events and changing weather patterns, providing guidance on prevention, preparedness, risk assessment, early warning, workplace measures and resilience.

This report synthesises social science evidence on climate adaptation and resilience for UK policymakers, highlighting adaptation as an ongoing social process shaped by people’s lived experiences, vulnerabilities, and social context.

This report shows that for women in beauty services, domestic work, food delivery, e-commerce, and ride-hailing, heat is not just a climate issue. It is a labour rights, gender, health, and urban infrastructure crisis.

Experiences of garment workers in this study show that extreme heat is not just uncomfortable but determines health, mental well-being, productivity, and livelihood. Yet workplace regulations and climate responses remain poorly equipped to address risks.

Based on five years of research with flood action groups in England, this paper shows how communities negotiate, contest and resist resilience agendas, developing a typology of emotional, symbolic, discursive, collective and procedural resistance.

WHO’s 2026 situation analysis warns the strong El Niño will bring extreme climate conditions, escalating health threats particularly for the vulnerable, urging early action to anticipate, mitigate, and respond.

This study examines policy and provision for working donkeys in Kenya and Ethiopia, countries severely affected by drought and heavily reliant on donkeys for community resilience.

The interaction of land subsidence with urbanization, reclamation and climate variability in contributing to massive flooding must also be examined, along with possible governance failures in light of increasing flood risk in Philippines.

Governments across Europe are increasingly telling citizens to prepare at home for a major crisis like war, extreme weather and cybersecurity threats, with Ireland becoming the latest country to push emergency preparedness guidance.

As record-breaking global temperatures and extreme weather events spark intense debate over global warming speed-up, a new study led by UC Santa Cruz reveals how warming is accelerating differently across distinct regions.

This article analyzes the exposure of Brazil’s Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS), the main entry points for the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), to flood and landslide risks

This paper estimates that epidemics were associated with an average annual loss of 17,549 health workers globally from 1990 to 2019, with the greatest burden in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and lower-income countries.

1 in 3 Navajo need to haul-in water from another place due to the lack of proper infrastructure in the midst of a drought. Hope is on the horizon, as the local government and nonprofit organizations have invested in proper water supply projects.

This article extends debates at the intersection of infrastructure, adaptation, and vulnerability by exploring everyday practices of climate adaptation through people’s attempts to weatherize their houses during climate-related emergencies.

The interplay of water, infrastructure, and danger drives home the central lesson of disaster risk reduction: there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. A natural hazard becomes a disaster only when people are placed in its path.

This report examines opportunities to strengthen community resilience through locally led climate action, with a focus on empowering local governments and communities to address climate risks while improving alignment with national climate priorities.

This study examines the relationship between flood exposure, coping behavior, and vulnerability to poverty in rural Bihar, one of India’s most flood-prone regions.

Following a series of major disasters and inquiries that questioned New Zealand’s capacity to deal with them, the new Emergency Management Act 2026 is the most significant improvement in more than two decades.

Paper assesses 16 community resilience outcomes among flood-vulnerable people in Bangladesh. Vulnerability mapping, community participation and precautionary measures scored highest; NGO support, DRM awareness and post-disaster health safety scored lower.

This report documents how the Urban Climate Resilience Program strengthened extreme heat resilience in Greater Western Sydney through community action, applied research, policy influence and cross-sector partnerships from 2023 to 2026.

Using social media and meteorological data, this study quantifies the mismatch between physical heat exposure and public emotional responses from 2010 to 2024 in China.

Combining Global Fire Atlas records with Afrobarometer surveys of more than 100,000 people in 34 African countries, this study shows that people living close to wildfires are more likely to vote, contact local councillors and attend community meetings.

Residents in predominantly Hispanic communities in Florida, USA are paying on average $5,014 more annually for their policies, a report says.

Smoke from fires in Indonesia's Borneo and Sumatra regions has affected millions, disrupted education and worsened air quality across Southeast Asia. Dry El Niño conditions and land-clearing fires have intensified emissions, haze and health impacts.

This study examines how flooding and fire are experienced and managed in Khan Road informal settlement, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa.

Study from Kerala shows how climate hazards can deepen inequalities for people with disabilities through inaccessible warnings, evacuation routes, shelters and services. Similar challenges in Sierra Leone highlight the need for inclusive climate action.

Ethical preparedness requires communities to recognise vulnerability beforehand. Ethical leadership must move beyond the actions of individual leaders and become embedded within the culture and practices of organisations and communities.

In some regions of the world, the poorest people may spend about 50 percent of their income on food, while the richest spend about 5 percent.

This study compares community experiences of slow- and rapid-onset flooding during Australia’s 2022–2023 floods. While both caused long recoveries, slow-onset floods created prolonged uncertainty, unique preparedness challenges, and delayed recovery needs

New social science research is helping strengthen tsunami safety messaging by showing how people understand evacuation maps, natural warnings and official alerts.

The ocean is rising faster now than at any point in recorded history. Rising sea levels have a significant impact on human rights, economic development, health, culture, the future of many countries and basic human dignity.

Climate-driven displacement is widely expected to push millions across international borders. Drawing on monthly bilateral flows for 127 developing-country origins, this column finds the reverse

This study underscores the significant barriers immigrant women face, including language limitations, limited access to resources, and strong reliance on faith-based coping strategies.

This paper analyses 150 years of census and hazard data to assess how extreme weather affected population trends in Northern Australia. It finds floods and cyclones can disrupt population growth highlighting need for resilience and adaptation planning.

This scoping review maps peer-reviewed evidence on drought adaptation in the SADC region, which exhibits an observed downward trend in precipitation, making it a valuable case to study diverse approaches to managing changing risk.

Study reveals correlation between heat and demographic structure, with air and land surface temperature showing different patterns in Germany.

Along the Nepal-Tibet border, the long road to recovery has only just begun. Amidst profound grief and loss, local communities are already providing support to their most vulnerable. Governments and international organisations should follow their lead.

Despite decades of warnings, neighborhoods in Reno and Spokane have sprawled ever closer to a hotter, drier wilderness. And in the summer, months of low humidity and hot weather prime the landscape to burn.

Major floods in Nepal and Sri Lanka show how disasters that strike before recovery is complete can deepen losses, weaken resilience and increase vulnerability. Experts argue that recovery progress should be measured alongside disaster risk.

Zambia’s 2024 drought exposed chronic infrastructure, water and sanitation failures in Mazyopa, fuelling a cholera outbreak and disproportionate impacts on women. Community advocacy is now driving demands for long-term resilience investments.

This paper examines how remittances influence household expenditure during drought and excess rainfall in the Kyrgyz Republic.

This article reports public reactions to a UK emergency phone alert on wildfire risk, highlighting concerns over alert fatigue, unclear guidance and the need for effective crisis communication.

The survey of over 2000 respondents in Nepal and Bangladesh confirms extreme heat is a pervasive and escalating risk, significantly degrading public health, livelihoods and well-being and provides evidence for increasing investment in heat interventions

Heat-related deaths look less dramatic than other climate disasters, yet they are far more frequent. This article looks into why Europe’s deadliest climate hazard remains its least visible one.

This paper describes eighteen misconceptions grouped in six themes (seismology, volcanoes and climate, systems and structures, volcanic hazards, timescales, photographs and footage) commonly encountered by volcanologists