Aims and Scope

The Journal of Sustainable Development and Climate Change Solutions (JSDCCS) is an international, interdisciplinary journal for research on climate change solutions and their consequences for sustainable development. JSDCCS publishes work that treats climate solutions as embedded in interacting systems rather than in isolation, with particular emphasis on the couplings among climate, energy, water, land and food, urban and socioeconomic systems. Studies centred on a single technology or sector are within scope when the analysis situates the solution in the wider system on which it depends or that it affects.

Priority is given to studies that assess effectiveness, feasibility, scalability and cost, and that examine synergies, trade-offs, distributional impacts, uncertainties and unintended consequences across sectors, physical scales (buildings, cities, regions, countries, global), institutions and time horizons. Both prospective assessments of proposed solutions and evaluations of solutions already in place are within scope. The journal also encourages research grounded in the political and institutional processes through which climate action is decided and implemented, as well as research that examines what followed once it was implemented.

The journal welcomes submissions that focus on the following main areas:

Climate Solution Assessment, Modelling and Scenario Analysis

This section covers methods for developing, assessing and comparing climate change solutions and their consequences for sustainable development. It welcomes prospective and retrospective analyses that represent interactions across climate, energy, water, land and food, urban and socioeconomic systems, and that make explicit the system boundaries, assumptions, uncertainties and decision contexts underlying their conclusions.

Topics of interest include integrated assessment modelling, energy and environmental systems modelling, scenario and pathway analysis, optimisation, simulation, life-cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis, spatial and data-driven methods, climate-economy modelling, risk and uncertainty analysis, comparative assessment of alternative solution portfolios, model intercomparison, decision-support tools, and descriptions of models and datasets that enable transparent, transferable and reproducible analysis.

Mitigation of Climate Change

This section covers technological and system-level solutions for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions across different sectors and enabling low-carbon or net-zero development. Studies of individual technologies are welcome when they evaluate deployment conditions, system integration, infrastructure requirements, resource dependencies, costs, scalability, environmental implications or interactions with other sectors and development objectives.

• Adaptation, Resilience and Climate Risk Management

This section covers solutions that reduce vulnerability, manage climate-related risks and strengthen the resilience of communities, ecosystems, economies and infrastructure. Contributions should connect climate hazards and impacts to concrete decisions, interventions or adaptation pathways, and should consider effectiveness, limits, costs, distributional effects, institutional feasibility and interactions with mitigation and wider development priorities.

Topics of interest include climate-risk and vulnerability assessment, adaptation planning and pathways, resilient water, energy, food, health, transport and urban systems, disaster-risk reduction, early-warning and climate-service systems, responses to heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, sea-level rise and compound events, ecosystem-based adaptation, nature-based solutions, resilient infrastructure, managed retreat, loss and damage, adaptation finance, limits to adaptation and evaluation of implemented resilience measures.

Climate Governance, Economics, Finance and Just Transitions

This section covers the political, institutional, economic and social processes through which climate solutions are selected, financed, implemented and contested. It welcomes research that examines how governance arrangements, policy instruments, markets, organisations, behaviour and power relations shape the feasibility, effectiveness and distributional consequences of climate action across different regional and institutional settings.

Topics of interest include climate governance and institutions, policy design and policy mixes, regulation, carbon pricing and emissions trading, economic instruments, climate finance and investment, transition and physical risk, international cooperation, public and private decision-making, behavioural and societal change, social acceptance, political economy, climate and energy justice, equity, poverty, employment, health, gender, participation, burden sharing, just transitions, institutional capacity, implementation barriers and enabling conditions.

Implementation, Evaluation and Sustainable Development Consequences

This section covers the implementation, measurement-reporting-and-verification (MRV) of climate solutions and their observed or expected consequences for sustainable development. It prioritises work that assesses what solutions deliver in practice, for whom, under what conditions and with what effects across sectors, places and time horizons.

Topics of interest include ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of climate policies, programmes, projects and technologies; monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV); effectiveness and cost-effectiveness; scaling, replication and transferability; institutional learning and adaptive governance; implementation gaps; interactions among mitigation, adaptation and development objectives; economic, social, environmental and health co-benefits; trade-offs, rebound effects, carbon leakage, maladaptation, stranded assets and other unintended consequences; and comparative evidence from local to global scales.

Target Readership

The journal is intended for researchers, academics, engineers, practitioners, professionals, decision-makers and policymakers working on climate change mitigation and adaptation, sustainable development, climate policy and governance, and the analysis, design, operation and transformation of energy, water, land, food, environmental, urban, transport and socioeconomic systems and their interactions.

Article Types

The journal considers the following article types:

• Original Research Article 
• Review Article 

The journal may also publish Editorials prepared or invited by the Editor-in-Chief, Guest Editors or other authorised contributors. Editorials are not normally open to unsolicited submission. They are assessed editorially and are not normally sent for external peer review. Where an Editorial undergoes external peer review or another review process, the published article will identify the process used.

Detailed submission, authorship and manuscript-preparation requirements for Original Research Articles and Review Articles are provided in the Guide for Authors and Authorship and Contributorship. These article types are subject to initial editorial assessment and external peer review in accordance with Peer Review Policy.

Journal information

Detailed information about peer review is provided in Peer Review Policy, the Guide for Authors and the Guide for Reviewers.

Information about immediate open access, copyright and licensing is provided on Open Access, Copyright and Licensing.

Current indexing, archiving and interoperability arrangements are listed on Indexing, Archiving and Discoverability.

The journal follows the SDEWES Journals Policies, which apply across all SDEWES journals.

Editorial and other enquiries should be submitted through the appropriate route identified on the Contact page.

Publisher