Climate change is making the lives of many more difficult. Tens of millions of people are already displaced by weather events each year, and studies show that climate breakdown drives mental and physical health crises, increased conflict, drought, and food insecurity, among many other challenges.

So why do leading climate models primarily measure impacts on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rather than human wellbeing?

Inge Schrijver joins Alasdair on the podcast to discuss her new research into this question, and to explain how climate models work, how they are used, and what they are missing.

Inge Schrijver is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University. Her study, “Inclusion of wellbeing impacts of climate change: a review of literature and integrated environment–society–economy models,” was co-authored with René Kleijn and is available to read here.

Further reading:

• Climate action saves lives. So why do climate models ignore wellbeing? Inge Schrijver, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, 2025, The Conversation
• Beyond GDP: a review and conceptual framework for measuring sustainable and inclusive wellbeing, Annegeke Jansen, Ranran Wang, Paul Behrens, Rutger Hoekstra, The Lancet
• Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII, 2022, Timothée Parrique
• Sufficiency means degrowth, 2022, Timothée Parrique
• The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change, Globalizations, 2020, Taylor & Francis
• WISE Horizons
• The Land and Climate podcast with Wim Carton: is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?, 2022

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Long before the recent economic crash and brutal killings of protestors in Iran, the country faced enduring environmental crises. Depleted dams and dried rivers have left stretches of land exposed, sending dust clouds across the country and severely degrading air quality. Last October, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the capital, Tehran, may have to be evacuated due to the country's water bankruptcy.

Have these problems contributed to the civil unrest this winter? Bertie puts this question to Dr. Sanam Mahoozi, who reports on Iran for the US news press, and recently completed a PhD researching media framings of environmental protests in the country. Sanam traces the developments of climate politics and environmental media coverage in Iran, against the backdrop of a highly uncertain political future.

Further reading:

• Sanam’s recent news reporting for The New York Times
• Sanam’s writing about Iranian reporting and environmental issues for The Conversation
• Media Framing of Iran’s 2021 Water Protests, Sanam Mahoozi, 2025, City, University of London

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In September 2025, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the climate crisis presents “risks” for Russia that are “very dangerous”. Though not unprecedented, such statements differ from other Russian government messaging that has argued climate threats are overstated as part of a Western agenda, or that climate change could benefit the country. Is the state’s narrative changing?

This week on The Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair MacEwen is joined by Marianna Poberezhskaya to discuss the history of complex and often contradictory climate politics in Russia. They also discuss Russia’s burgeoning climate conspiracism, the history of climatology through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s increasingly isolationist stance on climate cooperation.

Marianna Poberezhskaya is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University, where she researches climate discourse from non-democratic governments and their nations’ media, with particular focus on Russia.

Further reading:

• 'Explainer: How Russia seeks to 'instrumentalise' climate issues at COP30', Clare Denning, 2025, BBC
• 'Conspiracies as one of the dangers of online climate change communication: origins, spread, and impact', Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2025, Routledge handbook on climate crisis communication pp. 229-239
• 'Climate obstruction in Russia: surviving a resource-dependent economy, an authoritarian regime, and a disappearing civil society', Marianna Poberezhskaya and Ellie Martus, 2024, Climate obstruction across Europe pp. 214-242
• 'Russian climate scepticism: an understudied case', Teresa Ashe and Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2022, Climatic Change 172 (3-4)

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Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.