The World Social Science Report captures a world undergoing deep change, rocked by multiple crises, including in the environment. It builds on the previous World Social Science Report, published in 2010, which addressed the challenge of knowledge divides in the social sciences.

On this foundation, the present Report tackles the key theme of “Changing Global Environments”. Like its predecessor, the new Report highlights knowledge divides – not just within the sciences, but also between the sciences and the social transformations required to achieve sustainable development. The gap between what we know about the interconnectedness and fragility of our planetary system and what we are actually doing about it is alarming. And it is deepening.

As one of the most pressing of today’s global environmental problems, climate change presents a complex and controversial challenge to industrialised and emerging economies. Climate change is a recent concern, but has become one of the most critical issues for the current generation. Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, it has evoked a strong response at both the community and governmental levels. Evidence of climate change is abundant, yet a degree of denial persists at the community and government levels, and in many countries, about its causes and consequences. Sceptics question whether climate change results primarily from human activity, believing instead that it results only from natural events independent of a human-caused carbon footprint.

One of the major challenges to addressing global climate change is that its primary cause, for better or for worse, remains linked to current approaches to and patterns of economic development. Fossil fuels, specifically coal, natural gas and oil, are used for cooking, for cooling and heating households and workplaces, for transportation, and for industrial development (EPA, 2013). This means that essential activities necessary in the development of any nation remain highly dependent on the increased burning of fossil fuels. These activities comprise an unsustainable model of economic development that originates in the North and has set a trend for the wider world.