Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a pandemic within a matter of months. Analysing the first year of the pandemic, data and surveillance gaps have subsequently surfaced. Yet, policy decisions and public trust in their country’s strategies in combating COVID-19 rely on case numbers, death numbers and other unfamiliar metrics. There are many limitations on COVID-19 case counts internationally, which make cross-country comparisons of raw data and policy responses difficult. Purpose and conclusions: This paper presents and describes steps in the testing and reporting process, with examples from a number of countries of barriers encountered in each step, all of which create an undercount of COVID-19 cases. This work raises factors to consider in COVID-19 data and provides recommendations to inform the current situation with COVID-19 as well as issues to be aware of in future pandemics.

Addressing the second priority of the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) for strengthening disaster risk governance, this paper considers coastal regions from a Socio-Ecological System (SES) perspective. It identifies the drivers of risk and critical linkages between various key components of coastal SESs that can potentially influence the resilience of coastal regions. The study considers that, in a coastal area, where the system is complex with numerous stakeholders, any decision taken in the form of developmental policy or as an adaptive practice is critical for system changes, thereby making risk anticipation and its management difficult. To further conduct a detailed investigation of this subject, seven settlements along the coastal Andhra Pradesh (India) region were methodically selected. Herein, focus group discussions were conducted to prepare fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM), which were further analyzed through the mental modeler online platform. By analyzing the structural metrics of the FCM, saltwater intrusion was identified as a significant system component. Furthermore, the study also analyzed the effects of change on the characteristics of selected SES components regarding the effectiveness of existing governance strategies and, conversely, the impact of implementing governance strategies on the identified critical components of SES. By critically examining the various scenarios thus generated, the research identifies various components, generating vulnerabilities in human systems. The derived results were cross-validated through community consultation, and the temporal variations in the state of system components were mapped. The study is expected to provide considerable input to policymakers for enhancing decision-making in coastal regions from an SES perspective.

Coastal rural communities, being intricately associated with their ecological settings, are often highly vulnerable to climate change. Amongst the many approaches of reducing the coastal vulnerabilities and achieving climate change adaptation, a potential solution is to improve risk governance through integrated coastal zone management. The coastal risk governance signifies not only the actions of the state but also of other stakeholders, especially the local communities. Community-based approaches have also for long been advocated for effective adaptation and mitigation against climate adversities. While human-nature interactions can significantly influence disaster risks, this research makes an attempt to understand various decisions and choices that a coastal rural community makes based on such interactions to mitigate and manage the climate-induced adversities. Through structured interviews, this research first identifies the significant domains that reflect on the prevailing human-nature interactions, after which the choice modelling technique is utilized to comprehend the community priorities for better climate risk governance, with a specific focus on coastal rural settlements of Katrenikona (Andhra Pradesh, India). The application of this methodology resulted in the formulation of a baseline for local coastal governance, which can be useful for informing various levels within local governments. The baseline consists of an assessment of the different community resilience domains derived based on the prevailing interactions of local communities with their surrounding ecological elements and measured by indicators of local coastal governance. The concept and method for measuring coastal risk governance based on community preferences are potentially replicable, and it can help to track the progress towards longer-term coastal management and local climate adaptation goals. At the same time, it can be turned into a self-evaluation tool to assist the local governments in reflecting on pertinent pathways involving community actions for effectively managing various climate risks and ecological impacts.

At the brink of climate change, the perpetual human–nature links observed in remotely placed rural settlements, particularly those nested within ecological regions, are alleged to be deprecating. While the indigenous communities across protected forest areas depend on the surrounding environment for their livelihoods, the emerging climate discrepancies are posing serious concerns to their sustenance. To better understand the impacts of climate change on rural settlements, this research deliberates on the case of the Melghat region in central India, with a specific focus on the Lawada and Kotha settlements. At first, a methodical understanding of Socio-Ecological Systems (SESs) in Melghat is established by meticulously uncovering its social and ecological characteristics. Thereafter, to unearth the interdependencies between the two systems, an indicator-based framework is established. The SESs in the selected settlements are then analyzed based on the evaluation of community responses for defined indicators, using the choice-based preference method. The study outcomes reveal that the local communities consider the “Livelihoods” aspect to be the most critical element of resilience, and the progressive depreciation of nature-based livelihood practices is primarily influencing the local SESs. Correspondingly, this research characterizes the overall results with the existing scenario in Melghat to determine the key areas of intervention. Emphasis has been laid on strengthening the traditional systems to build alternative livelihoods that are resilient to the impacts that are exacerbated by climate change.