This theme invites contributions that examine the policies, regulatory frameworks, and multilevel governance structures shaping effective climate action in mitigation and adaptation. Key topics include:

• Policy frameworks: Examining policies, regulatory frameworks, and multilevel governance frameworks that enable or hinder effective climate action in terms of effective mitigation and adaptation while also addressing social inequalities.
• Research-Policy Synergies: Identifying ways to strengthen collaborations between researchers and policymakers to enhance the impact of climate initiatives at local, national, and global levels.
• Just Transition Principles: Exploring how to ensure that transitions are inclusive, equitable, and beneficial for all communities, considering aspects of power dynamics.
• Actors and Responsibilities: Investigating the roles of state and local governments, political systems, economic actors, financial sector, societal organizations, social movements, NGOs, and citizens in collaboratively governing climate action (co-governance).

This section focuses on transformative approaches to overcoming unsustainable systems and fostering socio-ecological change. Key topics include:

• Structures of unsustainability: Analyze the structural conditions and socio-material arrangements that perpetuate unsustainable practices.
• (Un)sustainable culture: Examine the role of cultural meanings and social norms in shaping sustainable and/or unsustainable practices.
• Social innovations: Examine how social innovations reconfigure social practices to foster socio-ecological transformations.
• Co-production of knowledge: Investigating how scientific practices co-produce climate knowledge, societal norms, technological solutions and policy frameworks.
• Practice Theories: Evaluate the contribution of practice theories in understanding and enabling social change.

This theme delves into how climate change exacerbates social inequalities and examines justice, also through an intersectional lens. Key topics include:

• Disproportionate Impacts: Analyse how climate change disproportionately affects marginalized groups—such as elderly, gender minorities, lower socioeconomic classes—while exacerbating existing social inequalities and increasing their exposure to health risks and environmental hazards.
• Justice Movements: Explore the intersections between climate justice and other justice movements, such as gender justice and racial justice, while examining how these movements ally with one another and where their actions intersect.
• Local and Global Framings: Investigate how local context and perspectives on climate issues inspire broader justice movements and foster solidarity among diverse identities and communities.
• Intersectionality and climate justice: Address intersectionality and climate justice by looking at how the intersection of race, class, gender, and other social factors shall be considered into climate justice discourses, actions and initiatives.

This theme addresses the design and implementation of effective strategies for climate adaptation and risk mitigation. Key topics include:

• Human Behaviour and Risk Perception: Examine risk perception and adaptive behaviours in climate change adaptation and risk mitigation.
• Barriers to Implementation: Analyse the triggers, drivers, and lock-ins hindering the adoption of adaptation and risk mitigation measures.
• Adaptation Pathways: investigate how to design and implement effective adaptation pathways tailored to specific local contexts, ensuring relevance and effectiveness.
• Community resilience: present community-based strategies that while building climate resilience, address inequalities, advocate for the rights of marginalized groups and empower vulnerable populations to adapt to climate impacts.
• Climate Finance: Investigate the role of climate finance in supporting adaptation and risk mitigation efforts, focusing on how investments are directed toward valuing natural ecosystems and enhancing community resilience.