Rising living costs, energy insecurity, widening inequality, and escalating climate impacts are fueling discussions on fairness and justice in climate policy. Yet, assumptions in global emission scenarios that determine who benefits and who bears the costs are often only made implicitly. A new IIASA-led study addresses this gap by offering a practical way to assess and design emission scenarios that explicitly account for distributive justice.

Frontiers released unique-in-publishing AI guidance covering the entire publication lifecycle – from researchers to editors and peer reviewers – moving beyond simplistic “allowed / not allowed” rules toward practical, responsible routes for AI adoption, while calling for policy to evolve in step with real-world AI use by researchers and reviewers.

Adoption of flavored tobacco bans appears to reduce youth e-cigarette use use, highlighting potential benefits of broader policy implementation.

Restoring wetlands, forests and peatlands could help defend national borders while tackling climate change, according to new research introducing “defensive rewilding”. The study suggests shaping terrain through ecosystem restoration could slow or redirect military advances, offering a cost-effective way to strengthen security while supporting biodiversity and carbon storage.

Do our norms around sex presentation uphold a constrictive gender regime? In a new article in Ethics, Ophelia Vedder writes that the abolition of hegemonic gender roles must involve the elimination of “compulsory sex-marking,” or the coercive social practice of signaling sexual identity through conventional means like clothes, hairstyles, and personal pronouns. Ultimately, Vedder writes, sex-marking not only perpetuates heterosexist oppression, but also represents a threat to individual autonomy.