The Rest is Climate Podcast

This Rest is Climate podcast covers South Africa’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a formal document communicated in October 2025 under the Paris Agreement. This South Africa’s NDC outlines the country’s commitments regarding mitigation, adaptation, and support for the period 2031-2035, demonstrating progression from its first NDC.

Key components include a mitigation target range for 2035 (320-380 Mt CO2-eq) and a ...

This podcast highlights how both the impacts of climate change and our responses to climate change affect climate change risk of structural economic transformation.

examines Structural Economic Transformation (SET) in a world impacted by climate change, asserting its continued importance for poverty reduction and resilience. It highlights how climate change necessitates adaptations in development strategies, from diversifying produ...

This Rest is Climate podcast examines the critical role of Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) in climate change adaptation in Africa. They highlight how ILK, encompassing traditional wisdom, practices, and observations, is crucial for African communities, particularly smallholder farmers, in forecasting weather patterns, managing natural resources, and ensuring food security. The texts also acknowledge the challenges to ILK's con...

This podcast focuses on recent advances in complex climate change risk assessment for adaptation and discusses how to better assess and manage the intricate and interconnected risks posed by climate change. It highlights promising opportunities for action in areas like cities, coastal zones, and finance, advocating for the implementation of new methodologies.

These methods, such as participatory modelling and adaptation pathways pl...

This podcast discusses the financial landscape of climate change research concerning Africa. It analyses a substantial database of research grants from 1990 to 2020, revealing that a disproportionately small fraction of global climate research funding targets Africa, despite the continent's high vulnerability to climate change. Most of this funding originates from and is received by institutions in Europe and North America, with Af...

This podcast discusses climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation strategies across Africa, categorising findings by sub-regions and various sectors. It highlights how socio-economic, political, and environmental factors intersect to create multi-dimensional climate change exposure and vulnerability, particularly for those in informal settlements, women, children, and the elderly. It highlights challenges in climate fi...

This podcast gives a a comprehensive overview of research on human adaptation to climate change, primarily drawing from the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative (GAMI). We examine where, how, and to what extent adaptation responses are being implemented globally, covering various geographical regions, sectors, and the types of climate hazards addressed. A significant focus is placed on the involvement of diverse actors, from indivi...

This podcast examines the multifaceted concept of climate security through the lens of various nations and international bodies, particularly the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). It discusses how countries like South Africa, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Niger, Russia, the UK, and Vietnam perceive and address climate change as a risk and a security issue, often categorising it into nat...

This podcast discusses the idea of Climate Resilient Development (CRD), a concept that integrates adaptation and mitigation with sustainable development to achieve a liveable future. It emphasise that a narrowing window of opportunity necessitates urgent and fundamental shifts in current development approaches, moving beyond traditional economic growth models towards inclusive, just, and equitable outcomes. 

It draws on research fr...

This podcast outlines how we can better assess and respond to complex climate change risks. It highlights how multiple drivers of risk interact and how various risks can compound or cascade. Existing assessment frameworks often fail to fully account for these interactions. Three categories of increasing complexity are discussed: interactions among single drivers, interactions of multiple drivers within risk determinants (hazard, vu...

This podcast outlines the latest understanding on complex climate change risk, included how our responses to climate change can increase current and future risks. It covers the escalating climate change risks, the current state and limitations of adaptation efforts, the complex nature of transboundary impacts, and the implications for global sustainable development and climate response.

It is based on the following research from th...

This podcast discuss impact of climate change on cultural and natural heritage, and the evolving strategies for adaptation, with a particular focus on Africa.

Content is drawn form the following research from the Climate Risk Lab:

• African Heritage Sites threatened as sea-level rise accelerates. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01280-1
• Curating transformation can strengthen adaptation and minimise loss...

What does the latest research on public understanding of climate change in Africa tell us about how it relates to adaptation options on the continent like migration?

This podcast showcases new research that shows:

1. Climate change literacy in Africa, defined as awareness of climate change and understanding its anthropogenic cause, is highly variable across the continent and strongly influenced by socio-demographic factors, parti...