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Local authorities play a key role in tackling climate change by implementing targeted adaptation and mitigation measures. The specific implementation of a mix of adaptation and mitigation strategies is the outcome of the interaction of policymakers through a political debate and their attitudes towards climate change. By concentrating on the political discourses occurring in the Assembly of an Italian region (Emilia-Romagna), we use a multi-method approach of Discourse Network Analysis and Concept Mapping to investigate local policymakers' positioning. Our investigation shows that actors are grouped not only according to their political affiliation, but also to the debated topics, and this relates to the preference for supporting adaptation or mitigation measures, which characterizes the local policy debate. • Local policymaking is relevant to address climate change. • Adaptation and mitigation measures characterise the local political debate. • Network of actors' coalitions and topics emerge from political discourses. • Political affiliation does not fully explain policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, UN human rights institutions have increasingly highlighted the impact of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights and attempted to influence (inter)national policy-making, including policy-making on adaptation. Feminist and post-/decolonial approaches have long criticised the fact that human rights discourses employ problematic narrative strategies that lead to gendered and racist distortions, biases, and in- and exclusions. Against this background, the article will explore whether such problematic narratives are perpetuated in human rights discourses analysing and proposing policies to address climate change. Using a frame-analytical approach, the article will in particular focus on the concept of vulnerability which is a central, yet disputed concept in the human rights context. The article, firstly, highlights some of the most important critical insights of feminist and post-/decolonial approaches concerning human rights by carving out three problematic narrative strategies that are discernible in this context. In a next step, it is elaborated how human rights documents on climate change rely on the concept of vulnerability and what are the implications of the frame, id est the narrative and the metaphor, of vulnerability in the human rights context. It is further analysed how the vulnerability frame supports problematic narrative strategies which were carved out in the beginning of the article. The article ends with a summary and a discussion of the most important insights. • Problematic human rights narratives and concepts are perpetuated in UN human rights documents focusing on climate change. • The frame of vulnerability is an important element of human rights narratives in UN climate change policies. • UN human rights policies on climate change are involved in stereotypic categorisation of identity groups. • Narrative practices of othering and naturalising of differences are widely used in human rights climate change policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies which topics of negotiation are providing momentum for climate negotiations after the Paris Agreement and to what extent. To do so, it examines the main requests that developing countries have expressed through different negotiation groups between 2017 and 2023. To measure the progression of climate negotiations, the paper identifies whether those requests have been translated into COP decisions. This is done through discourse analysis contained in numerous daily reports of COPs, summaries, and official decisions. In this research, COP decisions are defined as the expression of collective negotiations in the UNFCCC system, and as decisions with political consequences. The paper identifies advancements on twenty-nine issues in areas like gender, loss and damage, facilitative dialogue, adaptation, and the acceleration of finance flows to small-island developing states. Eighteen issues have been identified as acknowledged in COP decisions, but not fully addressed. These correspond mainly to finance-related items and the commitment to contributing US$100 billion to climate mitigation. Sixteen issues have been identified as ignored in the COP decisions examined. The conclusions suggest that there is agreement on creating new frameworks to allow further discussions on important topics brought to the table by developing states, but there is no real agreement on increasing funding in a significant way. Also, conclusions underline that despite the lack of sufficient funding, commitment to fighting climate change has not declined over time, and states continue to prefer multilateral negotiations to working outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change mandate. • States prefer multilateralism to other forms of cooperation to face climate change. • Climate negotiations remain a key forum for countries' coordination despite the slowness in decision-making. • There has been progress in climate negotiations in the areas of loss and damage, gender or adaptation. • Funding remains a key issue in climate negotiations, being critical to increase trust among parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate risk continues to be framed ostensibly in terms of physical, socio-economic and/or ecological risks, as evidenced in the 2012 and 2017 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) evidence reports. This article argues that framing climate risk in this way remains problematic for the science-policy process, particularly in ensuring adequate climate risk assessment information translates into more effective adaptation decision-making. We argue how climate risk assessments need to further consider the social and political aspects of place-based climate risk to ensure more effective adaptation policy outcomes. Using a discourse analysis of the CCRA3 Technical Report methods chapter published in June 2021, we discuss three critical themes around how climate risk is currently framed within the Technical Report methods chapter. These are (i) the over-reliance on reductive methodological framing of assessing climate risk through 'urgency scores'; (ii) the idea of what constitutes 'opportunity'; and (iii) the framing of transformational adaptation discourses through the lens of climate risk. To conclude, we suggest that to move beyond assessing risk solely in terms of biophysical and socio-economic risk, a greater emphasis on the social and political contexts of 'place-based' risk needs to be central to climate change risk assessments. • Climate risk is predominantly framed in terms of physical, socio-economic and/or ecological risk. • Such framings are problematic for effective adaptation policy decision-making. • We conducted a discourse analysis on a methods chapter in the Third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. • Three key themes emerged around reductive methods, what constitutes 'opportunity' and transformational adaptation framing. • Social and political contexts of 'place-based' risk needs to be more central when assessing climate risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Coal phase-out is vital to address climate change. • Two discourse coalitions sought to influence coal phase-out policy in Germany. • The anti-coal coalition was very stable, congruent and had a strong actor base. • Both coalitions, and their storylines, left their mark on the phase-out law. • Discourse network analysis allows us to systematically study discourse coalitions. Discourse analysis is gaining attention in transition studies. This paper uses discourse network analysis (DNA) to study how discourse coalitions, and the storylines they mobilize, change over time. Drawing from archival data of two daily newspapers, we analyze the struggle over coal phase-out in Germany (2000–2020). We identify an anti-coal discourse coalition, which was stable and ideationally congruent over time. It used climate change as the dominant storyline to delegitimize coal. The phase-out policy decision in 2020 can be interpreted as the success of this coalition. The pro-coal coalition, in contrast, was more dispersed and less consistent in their arguments. Nonetheless, it was able to institutionalize some of its key storylines in the final policies. We argue that DNA is a powerful tool we can mobilize in sustainability transitions research for the study of politics and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind power production is expanding globally and with this comes social resistance. In this article, we study controversies concerning the expansion of wind power in Sweden between 2009 and 2022. To this end, we study national press coverage and local press coverage from Sweden's 290 municipalities. Despite previous studies showing that Swedish people are generally in favour of expanding wind power, our results show that this policy is controversial and often is met with significant local resistance. We identify a clash between two environmental concerns: developing national policies to mitigate the effects of climate change and local opinions calling for the preservation of natural landscapes, which are often coupled with concerns about whether expansion of wind power leads to positive climate effects. We analyse national and local discourses through a multi-level governance perspective, a view that argues Sweden's market-oriented and decentralized wind power planning regime feeds the controversy. In conclusion, the dispersal of power throughout the planning system facilitates scaling up of local resistance to an energy policy issue of national concern, creating significant uncertainty about the expansion of wind power in Sweden. • Material on the debate on wind power resistance in the case of Sweden is analysed focusing on national and local actors. • A national opinion in support for wind power development is challenged by local resistance towards the same energy source. • The controversy threatens climate objectives as well as the electrification of Swedish industry and transportation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Compare two climate-sensitive Indigenous fisheries to generate broader insights. • Notice distinct changes but similar adaptive responses across case studies. • Diversification and adaptive co-management are common adaptive strategies. • Offer eight community resilience-building tactics (i.e., sources of resilience). • Named five definitive traits of a successful adaptation process. Climate change is having a significant influence on global fish production as well as on small-scale fishers' livelihoods, nutrition, and food security. We compared two climate-sensitive small-scale fisheries (SSFs) – an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic and the Coastal-Vedda in Sri Lanka – to broaden our understanding of how fisheries-dependent Indigenous communities respond and adapt to climate change impacts. We used three steps to achieve this comparative study. To do this, we developed a resilience-based conceptual framework to empirically assess adaptations in two SSF communities, based on a literature review. Using the proposed framework and collecting qualitative field data over three years (2016–2019) to investigate how different remote SSFs experience and respond to climate change, we assessed Inuit and Coastal-Vedda case studies. The framework provided the structure for data analysis and conceptual guidance for two empirical assessments and the comparative analysis. Finally, we carried out the comparative analysis across the case studies using content analysis, identifying adaptive strategies, sources of resilience, and characteristics of successful adaptation. Additionally, we used discourse analysis to develop sources of resilience and characteristics of successful adaptation. Two key adaptive strategies emerged in common across the two communities – diversification and adaptive co-management. Eight sources of resilience that underpin adaptive capacity: i) use of diverse kinds of knowledge; ii) practice of different ways of learning; iii) use of community-based institutions; iv) efforts to improve human agency; v) unique worldviews; vi) specific cultural attributes that keep up with adaptation; vii) effective social networks; and viii) a high level of flexibility. Definitive characteristics that need to promote successful community adaptation: continuous learning through knowledge co-production; capacity-building to improve human agency; a place-specific nature (rootedness); collective action and partnerships through community-based institutions; and flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The narrative of the PoMs are key tools to communicate water-land use nexus. • A discourse analysis of PoMs shows systematic changes among institutional contexts. • The PoMs are permeable to politically embedded institutional contexts. • In Portugal the integrative approaches of the PoMs are reduced after the WFD. • The results call for the development of future benchmarking studies across Europe. Land use or associated practices have impacts on water quality and quantity. Some of these impacts may be aggravated by water-related climate change risks such as floods and droughts. At the river basin level, measures to foster water-wise land uses such as the prevention of soil pollution, soil imperviousness or floods, among others, may strengthen the articulation between land use impacts and water protection. The Water Framework Directive (WFD), framed by the concept of integrated water resources management, challenges the articulation between water processes and uses, and, consequently, between water resources planning and land use planning. To foster this goal, it required the Member States to establish in the River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) the Programmes of Measures (PoMs). These are critical to disseminate the water-land use nexus message to stakeholders. This article develops a discourse analysis assessing the use of terms associated with land use and water-related climate change risks by the PoMs established in Portugal. The results bring to the fore evidence-based data revealing that integrative approaches, noticeable in the very narrative of measures and on the allocation of responsibilities for their implementation, have not been reinforced after the WFD entered into force. They also show that the PoMs, usually understood as mainly technical planning tools, are strongly permeable to politically embedded institutional contexts. Two major fields of for future research emerge out of this research. One is to further assess if this is localized phenomenon or if it is occurring in other EU countries, and another to understand if the narrative of measures is influencing the very implementation of the PoMs over the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission is pursuing a circular bioeconomy to tackle pressing sustainability challenges, such as climate change and fossil dependency. Previous bioeconomy policy studies demonstrated the existence of competing bioeconomy discourses in the European Union. However, it remains nebulous how such discursive conflicts emerge and change, particularly in online settings. In this paper, we provide a more in-depth analysis of how argumentative changes of actors alter the network of online dynamic discourse coalitions. We base our findings on interviews and a qualitative discourse network analysis of 9983 tweets about European Union bioeconomy policies from the period 2008 – 2021. Our results indicate that initially, expert debates centred around storylines on bioeconomy advantages. After the 2012 Bioeconomy Strategy, the debate diversified with the entry of new actors and storylines. Two discourse coalitions, 'Green future' and 'Planetary boundaries', emerged around conflicting storyline clusters. In the aftermath of the 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy update, the debate simplified into core argumentations of few, highly conflicting storylines, leading to a polarization of the two discourse coalitions. Storyline hijacking further added to polarization and conflict. Understanding the evolution of online dynamic discourse coalitions provides new opportunities for practitioners to open up discourses towards storylines from other parts of the discourse network. This can help to prevent locking-in the limited range of solutions in congruence with the dominant 'Green future' discourse. [Display omitted] • The future of the bioeconomy in the EU is discussed controversially on X/Twitter. • Storyline diversification and simplification dynamics led to polarization. • The EU Commission is almost exclusively part of one side of the discourse network. • EU bioeconomy debates head towards a problematic discursive lock-in. • To open up the debate, include ideas of other parts of the discourse network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Discourse structuration and institutionalization can identify dominant discourses. • Discourses in long-term projections from climate science frame climate action. • High degree of discourse hybridity in climate science, negotiations and commitments. • States strategically adopt hybrid discourses from climate science. Abstract This paper analyses climate science as a discourse to reveal how it enables and constrains climate change negotiations and action. Focusing on long-term outcomes projected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report and the World Bank's "Turn Down the Heat" reports, this paper examines processes of discourse structuration and institutionalization to identify the dominant discourses which frame climate action. We trace the dominant discourses identified in the scientific reports – Survivalism, Ecological Modernisation and Economic Rationalism – through the Paris Agreement and selected Leader Statements and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions from COP21. From the 24 states included in this analysis, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is developed as a case study to investigate the hybridity and institutionalization of discourses. Even though PNG's rhetoric and commitments at COP21 express Survivalism, the state's policy frameworks rarely move beyond solutions found in Economic Rationalism and Ecological Modernisation. This suggests that states strategically adopt hybrid discourses drawn from climate science in line with their positionality, political economy and interests. Understanding how discourses drawn from climate science manifest in national policies has significant implications not only for how science is communicated at the international level but also for understanding different state positions in the global climate governance regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars, commentators and activists have been involved in often fierce debates about the normative desirability of economic globalisation. This issue remains highly contested to this day. Judgements as well as evidence on the positive and negative impacts of globalisation on the economy, society and ecology can be seen as statements on the sustainability of globalisation: is globalisation leading to a world in which people now and in the future can have a good quality of life? This paper explores the sustainability of globalisation by analysing its ‘social robustness’. It argues that in order to be considered sustainable, a policy, trend or process should be acceptable to a broad range of people in society. A text and discourse analysis, based on Cultural Theory, demonstrates the overall dominance of the ‘individualist’ perspective across various organisations of global policy significance delineating sustainable futures within three core themes of global governance: climate change, the economy and health. This analysis contributes towards a more inclusive discussion on global issues that matter in the context of a sustainable future for all. A more socially robust form of globalisation is possible, but only if marginalized perspectives are included in the policy debates and thereby allowed to contribute to solving humanity's most pressing issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates topics, emphases, frames and absences in the Summary for Policymakers parts of the three Working Group reports in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report and the Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report. It explores similarities and differences by using various tools of lexical and discourse analysis, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The main results are these: First, each Working Group’s Summary reflects not only the Working Group’s distinctive mandate but also a distinctive intellectual framing. Second, although there are some significant differences in the emphases given to different themes from the Working Groups, the Synthesis Summary covers the main topics of the three other Summaries, and constitutes a relatively integrated summary of the complete Assessment Report. Third, we find though that the Synthesis Summary centrally follows up the risk framing and language which are prominent in Working Group II but semi-absent in the other Working Groups, as part of constructing a policy-relevant statement from the three distinctive reports. In addition, the Synthesis Summary makes use of linguistic devices which contribute to ‘amplify’ the strength of statements, as part of transferring messages effectively from the scientific context to a policy-maker audience. Fourth, we find that the style and tone of the IPCC Summaries conduce also to important absences and imbalances in emphasis: main victims of climate change (particular groups of vulnerable people) remain virtually invisible in the Summaries, unlike the impacts in nature and ecological systems or the aggregate economic impacts, and correspondingly the challenges, options and opportunities for action remain relatively underdeveloped in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2004 special issue of Geoforum , McCarthy and Prudham argued that the connections between neoliberalism and the environment had been underexplored in critical scholarship. In an attempt to address this gap, the special issue reflected on a number of different case studies and set the stage for a decade of analysis and critique. This paper aims to contribute to the increasing body of literature by presenting a detailed theoretical analysis of neoliberal environmentalism and its role in modern society. Specifically, the paper focuses on one particular environmental issue – climate change – and uses it to categorise six discourses that either conform to the principles of neoliberalism (reformist) or reject neoliberal ideas (revolutionary). Drawing on interviews with designated ‘climate champions’ (individuals who are given responsibility for promoting climate protecting behaviour) in large corporations, the paper then demonstrates how this kind of typological framework might be applied to the analysis of neoliberal environmentalism in the ‘real world’. The paper finds that neoliberalism played a very influential role in the promotion of climate protecting behaviour in the workplace. However, there was also some limited evidence of resistance in the form of revolutionary discourses and ideas. Going forwards, the typological framework may provide a valuable analytical tool to assess the dominance and resistance of neoliberal environmentalism in the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of moving species beyond their historic range, known as assisted migration, challenges some of the conservation ideas and norms guiding sustainable forest management in North America: relying on historical benchmarks, mimicking natural disturbances, and reproducing current ecological species assemblages. In this context, our paper focuses on how an assisted migration policy for western larch has been developed in British Columbia, Canada, specifically examining institutional change at three different levels of policy ideas and in discourses oriented internally or externally in the policy process. Based on 46 interviews with policy actors across Canada, our results suggest that the deployment of the first assisted migration policy in Canada successfully avoided the controversy surrounding the idea in the scientific community by changing the scientific discourse associated with best forest management practices. The shift from an ecological discourse to a genetics discourse over forest policy in British Columbia signals what we might expect in future forest adaptation policy development in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines how the claim of a two degrees dangerous limit to climate change is represented in the public sphere. The cultural circuits model is used to frame a discourse analysis and content analysis of UK news media, popular science books and advocacy literature. This analysis is supported with perspectives gleaned from semi-structured interviews with a range of expert actors. The results show that news reports largely ignore the two degree limit and where it is mentioned it is validated through invocation of anonymous expert knowledge. Discourses which do recognise uncertainties surrounding definitions of dangerous change still support the two degree limit. Primary sources show a rejection of the two degree limit as a division between safe and dangerous climate change. Arguments made by advocates that the concept at least allows the public to debate complex climate science is not supported by the manner in which the limit is constructed in public discourses. The results demonstrate that public representations of the two degree limit idea have not evolved, despite developments in climate science casting doubt on the veracity of the two degree limit. The paper concludes that framing climate policy within the two degree metric is not delivering the hoped for emission reductions and it may therefore be appropriate for public discourses to recognise the role of non-scientific factors in defining how much climate change is dangerous. Such a change might prove an important step in the development of a more participatory debate about climate policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Global climate change has been increasingly defined as a security threat by a range of political actors and analysts. Yet as the range of voices articulating the need to conceive and approach climate change as a security issue has expanded, so too has the range of ways in which this link has been conceptualized. This article systematically maps different approaches to the relationship between climate change and security as climate security discourses, divided here between national, human, international and ecological security discourses. In exploring the contours of each, the articles asks how the referent object of security is conceptualised (whose security is at stake?); who are conceived as key agents of security (who is responsible for/able to respond to the threat?); how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested for dealing with that threat? Systematically mapping these alternative discourses potentially provides a useful taxonomy of the climate change–security relationship in practice. But more importantly, it serves to illustrate how particular responses to climate change (and the actors articulating them) are enabled or constrained by the ways in which the relationship between security and climate change is understood. The article concludes by suggesting that the most powerful discourses of climate security are unlikely to inform a progressive or effective response to global climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper discusses the discourses on climate change adaptation and mitigation that are currently at the forefront in the Congo Basin. On mitigation, the forests have enormous opportunities to contribute to the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) mechanism. But the forest itself and its multiple dependent societies and sectors need to adapt to potential climate risks. Hence, actors are debating the design of climate change policy in the forest sector. Theoretically, we combine the agency-focus of frame analysis and discourse theory to analyze how different agents hold frames on climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in the region. This paper draws upon interviews with 103 different actors from government, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, research institutions and private sector in three countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Three discourses were found on policy response to climate change in the forest sector: mitigation policy only, separated policy on adaptation and mitigation, and an integrated policy on adaptation and mitigation. The various frames articulated around each discourse by the coalitions include elements of: costs and benefits, scale of operation, effectiveness, financial resources and implementation mechanisms. Overall, the mitigation discourse, through its mix of actors, resources and interests seems to be stronger than the adaptation discourse. The paper finally outlines a number of implications of the discourses for policy design. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The article studies discursive (re)construction of market-based solutions to climate change through the use of so-called ‘carbon compounds’-lexical combinations of at least two roots such as carbon footprint – in the UK national newspapers between 1990 and 2009. Applying techniques of corpus-assisted discourse analysis, compounds are identified and grouped according to their frequency and chronological appearance. The analysis then focuses on (1) finance compounds used between 1990 and 2005 and (2) compounds modified by low-, zero- carbon and carbon neutral which became popular after 2005. It is argued that the representation of market-based initiatives with the help of carbon compounds has restricted the debate on climate change mitigation scenarios by relying on calculation and monetization of emissions as the starting point. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article deals with climate change from a linguistic perspective. Climate change is an extremely complex issue that has exercised the minds of experts and policy makers with renewed urgency in recent years. It has prompted an explosion of writing in the media, on the Internet and in the domain of popular science and literature, as well as a proliferation of new compounds around the word ‘carbon’ as a hub, such as ‘carbon indulgence’, a new compound that will be studied in this article. Through a linguistic analysis of lexical and discourse formations around such ‘carbon compounds’ we aim to contribute to a broader understanding of the meaning of climate change. Lexical carbon compounds are used here as indicators for observing how human symbolic cultures change and adapt in response to environmental threats and how symbolic innovation and transmission occurs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The science of climate change is full of uncertainty, but the greater vulnerability of poor countries to the impacts of climate change is one aspect that is widely acknowledged. This paper adapts Dryzek''s ‘components’ approach to discourse analysis to explore the media construction of climate change and development in UK ‘quality’ newspapers between 1997 and 2007. Eight discourses are identified from more than 150 articles, based on the entities recognised, assumptions about natural relationships, agents and their motives, rhetorical devices and normative judgements. They show a wide range of opinions regarding the impacts of climate change on development and the appropriate action to be taken. Discourses concerned with likely severe impacts have dominated coverage in the Guardian and the Independent since 1997, and in all four papers since 2006. Previously discourses proposing that climate change was a low development priority had formed the coverage in the Times and the Telegraph. The classification of different discourses allows an inductive, nuanced analysis of the factors influencing representation of climate change and development issues; an analysis which highlights the role of key events, individual actors, newspaper ideology and wider social and political factors. Overall the findings demonstrate media perceptions of a rising sense of an impending catastrophe for the developing world that is defenceless without the help of the West, perpetuating to an extent views of the poor as victims. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global governing apparatus of climate planning, has privileged the sovereignty of territorial states. Contemporary political geographical scholarship has since called into question the coherency of the state as a unitary entity and as the sole legitimate arbiter of international politics. This article extends these contributions to planetary climate change adaptation. Through discourse analysis and the multi-scalar institutional and political history of climate planning, this article examines how normative discursive parameters enact prevailing political dynamics that script material futures. Drawing on recent climate planning reports of Palestine and Israel, this article investigates how state discourses operate within an asymmetric geopolitical context where issues of territoriality, sovereignty, and statecraft remain fractured and contested. Climate planning in Israel/Palestine exposes two key institutional constraints of climate governance. First, technical-managerial principles prescribe ahistorical adaptation measures that inadequately address inherently political constraints. Second, the elision of political-economic and historical-cultural contingencies in favor of a universalizing geophysical representation of climate change elides the systemic production of differentiated vulnerability. Consequential of an anachronistic politics of recognition within the UNFCCC, the conditions of climate governance may ultimately embolden the asymmetric status quo. I conclude by highlighting the spatial manifestations (both material and symbolic) of Israeli sovereign violence and the chronic indeterminacy of Palestinian territoriality produced by discursive climate futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural disasters, such as what are known in English as 'floods' and 'wildfires', are increasingly a topic of concern due to the climate emergency, and their vocabulary and public discourses hold much to be explored through linguistics. This article inaugurates the examination of public discourse about extreme weather events through semantically-enhanced discourse studies, an approach which is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and developed herein. Taking the example of floods in the particular geographic, cultural and historical environment of the Australian state of Queensland in 2011, this transtextual study draws on a public inquiry into the event and English as spoken in Australia, more broadly, along with media reports, and literature from humanities and social sciences. Five case studies of vocabulary and discourse patterns are presented to cast cultural and semantic spotlights on the public discourses. It is demonstrated that this approach can provide high resolution analysis of discourse and bring out cultural and historical factors at play in extreme weather language thereby contributing to disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies. • The meanings of words for natural disasters and extreme weather events, like flood , are culturally constructed. • Discourse of 2011 Queensland floods reveal geographic, cultural and historical aspects of English spoken in Australia. • Semantically-enhanced discourse studies is a novel method of public discourse studies based on NSM approach. • Semantically-enhanced discourse studies can provide high resolution analysis of vocabulary and discourse patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]