Much of the discussion on climate change associated with achieving the goal of net zero carbon dioxide emissions has tended to focus on the change in global average temperature after emissions are halted. An editorial in Communications Earth & Environment magazine suggests that even if rapid decarbonization is achieved, the long-term impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and ocean warming, are likely to continue, and need to be taken into consideration.

As global warming progresses, the impacts of extreme heat are expected to grow even more, making it urgent to build effective early warning systems. According to an editorial in The Lancet Planetary Health, in the first two decades of the 21st century, the excess deaths from heat stroke were about 500,000 per year, of which about 250,000 were in Asia.

June 2025 was the third warmest June on record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Western Europe as a whole experienced its hottest June on record, and the heatwave in mid- and late June 2025 led to "very high heat stress" conditions in a wide area, with temperatures exceeding 38°C, and "extreme heat stress" conditions in parts of Portugal, with temperatures reaching around 48°C.

Our world faces overlapping environmental, health, security, and social crises. A recent paper by the Earth4All initiative, which uses systems modeling to address the issue of overshooting human pressures on the environment, has proposed five transitional pathways: energy, food and land systems, inequality, poverty, and gender equality.

On September 6, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution  designating July 6 of each year as World Rural Development Day. The resolution seeks to shine a lasting light on the lives and struggles of the people who work the soil, nourish the seas, and nurture the land in the world's rural areas, as a prerequisite for addressing the deep challenges of rural poverty and the broader goal of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Global warming is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that disrupt the delicate balance between incoming sunlight and the radiation reflected and emitted by the Earth. According to a paper published in AGU Advances, the Earth's energy imbalance is increasing much faster than expected, nearly doubling in just 20 years.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), in its 2025 Global Outlook mid-year update on acute food insecurity and needs, warns that in 2025, the confluence of conflict, natural disasters, extreme weather, and economic instability continues to create an unrelenting crisis of acute food insecurity.

The Strait of Hormuz is located between Oman and Iran and is an important waterway that connects the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea. Geopolitical conflicts have once again brought the security of this waterway into the spotlight. A blockade of the waterway or a disruption to crude oil transport could cause a sharp increase in crude oil prices, which could affect global food security.

The International Food Policy Research Institute's 2025 Global Food Policy Report: Food Policy—Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World provides a comprehensive review of the evolution of food policy over the past 50 years, how food systems have changed dramatically, and examines food policy research priorities for 2050.