ABSTRACT
Over the last few years, climate change has become an issue frequently addressed not only in the media but also in multiple areas of everyday life. From the point of view of the lay public, and with or without a basis in fact, many current events are now blamed on climate change, including food shortages and the consequent increase in food prices, mass migration from rural to urban regions and to developed countries, the growing vulnerability of coastal areas in the face of extreme weather events, and the spread of desertifi cation, to mention just a few of these. The emergence of public and political interest in climate change has renewed the importance of environmental concerns in national and international political agendas, where their relative weight had declined since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil.
