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Governments must reconcile dissonant climate assessment approaches

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Security analysts and government economists increasingly present policymakers with different pictures of the same climate and nature risk. We argue that governments need a shared way to weigh these assessments, particularly given that under-preparing for a severe, irreversible outcome costs far more than over-preparing.

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Fig. 1: Successive assessments have revised climate risk upward, internationally and nationally.

Subjects

  • Biodiversity
  • Climate change
  • Climate-change impacts
  • Policy
  • Transnational Climate Change Adaptation Governance

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Paul Behrens

  2. Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Paul Behrens

  3. Wellbeing Research Centre, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Paul Behrens

  4. Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Jesse F. Abrams

  5. Centre for Human Health and Performance, Department of Medicine, University College London, London, UK

    Hugh Montgomery

  6. Climate Change and (In)Security Project, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Richard Nugee

  7. Nature-based Solutions Initiative, Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nathalie Seddon

  8. Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nathalie Seddon

  9. Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, London, UK

    Sandy Trust

Authors

  1. Paul Behrens
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  2. Jesse F. Abrams
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  3. Hugh Montgomery
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  4. Richard Nugee
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  5. Nathalie Seddon
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  6. Sandy Trust
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Paul Behrens.

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Competing interests

H.M. is founder and CEO of charity-funded non-profit Real Zero Ltd, which seeks to leverage the healthcare economy to drive decarbonization, and is unpaid chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. R.N. is a member of the UK Government’s Climate Security Taskforce. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Behrens, P., Abrams, J.F., Montgomery, H. et al. Governments must reconcile dissonant climate assessment approaches.
Nat. Clim. Chang. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02736-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02736-4

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