The world is on track to miss the 1.5°C climate target — at least temporarily — with global temperatures expected to overshoot before they can be brought back down. That reality forces a difficult question: how can societies respond to the rising risks of a hotter world, and avoid making things worse in the process?
A new study led by Camilla Hyslop, DPhil student at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford, tackles this challenge head on. Working with co-authors Michael Obersteiner, ECI Director, and fellow DPhil students Tristram Walsh and Estelle Paulus, the team has developed a climate risk management typology — a framework to help decision-makers consider the full range of climate responses, and how they interact.
Their manuscript, A Climate Risk Management Typology: Integrating Approaches to Reduce Risk, has been published in Dialogues on Climate Change.
Unlike many traditional research papers, this work appears alongside commentaries from other experts — some of whom take different or even opposing views. This format reflects the contested and complex nature of climate risk management, and the need for open debate about the best way forward.
The typology shifts attention from temperature targets to risk management. By combining six key factors — from emissions cuts and carbon removal to adaptation and emerging technologies — it allows different “portfolios” of interventions to be compared. This approach makes trade-offs and synergies more visible, helping policymakers and practitioners avoid unintended consequences.
Lead author Camilla Hyslop explains:
Climate action is often treated in separate boxes — mitigation here, adaptation there. But in reality, these measures interact, sometimes in unexpected ways. Our typology helps people see the bigger picture, so that strategies to reduce risk don’t end up creating new ones.
Climate change is not just about numbers on a thermometer – it’s about risk to people and ecosystems. By framing climate responses in terms of risk, we can have more joined-up conversations about which combinations of actions will really make us safer.”
The paper presents six illustrative scenarios, ranging from optimistic paths with rapid emissions cuts to stark futures where limited adaptation leaves societies overwhelmed. While focused on climate change, the same approach could also be applied to other global risks such as biodiversity loss or public health crises.
As overshoot becomes more likely, the researchers argue that integrated tools like this can help governments, communities, and businesses prepare for the uncertain decades ahead — not just by chasing temperature goals, but by managing the risks that matter most to people and ecosystems.
Camilla Hyslop is a third-year DPhil student at the ECI, whose research focuses on how climate policy can better incorporate biodiversity and human well-being concerns.
Read the full manuscript in Dialogues on Climate Change: A Climate Risk Management Typology: Integrating Approaches to Reduce Risk