This guide was originally designed to support the Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford (GOTO) MBA assignment on Climate Action (2019-2020 Hilary Term). However, students and researchers from any field may find it useful.
Use this guide to find online resources about climate action, including books, articles and databases.
The Sustainable Development Goals comprise the United Nations agenda for a better world until 2030, with targets reaching into 2050 and beyond.
SDG #13 is "Climate Action" - "Take urgent action to combat climate change and it's impacts". Throughout 2019 this SDG gained a significant and increasing share of the UN's focus. The message to member-states has changed from finding solutions to rapid implementation.
GOTO also made "Climate Action" its focus in 2020.
This section of the libguide provides introductory background and a timeline of the current political and economic situation around this SDG.
Specific topics are expanded on further down the page, while links to useful resources can be found in the right column. Current updates from the UNFCCC can also be found in the right column.
When searching databases who work in partnership with The University of Oxford, look out for and remember to use our dedicated links: 
Passport features a section on "Sustainability" that can be found from their homepage via "Economies" in the top bar.
Articles to Search for:
• "Engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals: A Business Opportunity"
• "How To Become a Sustainable Brand"
• "Environmental Sustainability Index"
• The above article introduces Euromonitor's Environmental Sustainability Index.
Both ABI/INFORM Global and Business Source Complete give access to business and management journals and trade publications. Business Source Complete also includes the full-text of Harvard Business Review.
For both databases it is possible to set the type of resources being searched and the dates covered in the search, as well as set the order of search results as newest/oldest/"most relevant".
Recommended basic search terms:
• "Climate Action" works well in basic searches, but has a relatively low yield as a term has only recently entered the discourse since 2015. The term yields more results with ABI/INFORM Global.
• "Sustainability" and "Climate Change" have a longer history, but also operate as very broad search terms.
• "Sustainability Development Goals" is not a useful search term in basic search. If "Search Field" in Business Source Complete is set to "SU Subject Terms", the yield does increase slightly.
• "Natural Capital" and "Responsible Business" have a much higher yield with ABI/INFORM Global, and primarily fucntion as academic terms.
Human Choice and Climate Change
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It has long been a rule of thumb that if something is worth saying about climate change, Steve Rayner said it 25 years ago. Rayner argued, correctly, that more and better climate science would not reduce the uncertainties and controversies associated with climate mitigation. He predicted that top down international efforts to establish legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions would fail and that international treaties to protect the ozone layer and reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles would not prove to be a useful guide for international efforts to address climate change. He understood that climate mitigation was centrally a technology and innovation challenge. He argued that natural disasters, climate related and not, were not natural and that the impacts of those disasters had more to do with the infrastructure and adaptative capacities of the societies that experienced them than the intensity of the natural phenomena.
Living with Climate Change
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Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability
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Five Times Faster
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Climate Change, Agriculture and Society
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Climate Change in the Anthropocene
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Strategies for Managing Uncertainty : boom and busts in the energy industry
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Examines two major uncertainties confronted in the 2012-18 period - price volatility and climate change. Covers how different companies in the integrated oil and natural gas sector and in the motor vehicle sector responded to these uncertainties by staking out paradoxical or contrasting positions, both focusing on obtaining as much gain as they could from the world's current dependence on fossil fuels and simultaniously making preparations for a future in which fossil fuels are not be the world's dominant energy source.
Sustainable Development Goals and Sustainable Supply Chains in the Post-Global Economy
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Other useful volumes in the "Greening Industry Networks Series" can be found near this item in the Sainsbury Library. This book presents a collection of studies on current best practices for delivering sustainable development policies within supply chains. It critiques the limitations of existing business theory and practice on sustainable supply chain management, and discusses opportunities for new conceptual models for businesses to engage with Sustainable Development Goals.
Routledge Handbook of Social and Sustainable Finance
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Brings together an international cast of leading authorities to map out and display the disparate voices, traditions and professional communities engaged in social finance activity. The handbook comprises three parts: "The Landscape of Social and Sustainable Finance and Investments", "Challenges, Suggestions, Critiques and Debates", and "Markets and Institutions".
The Case for Carbon Dividends
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Author makes the case for carbon fee and dividend or climate income, a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population (equally, on a per-person basis) as a monthly income or regular payment. Already adopted in canada and Switzerland, this policy ties into the debates around Article 6 at COP25.
Tom Vickers. Graduate Trainee at the Sainsbury Library, 2019 - 2020.
Updated by William Watson, Work Experience Student, July 2025.
