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The interactive effects of climate change and invasive alien species (IAS) pose serious threats to biodiversity, ecosystems and human well-being worldwide. In particular, IAS are predicted to experience widespread changes in distribution in response to climate change, with many expanding their ranges into new areas. However, the two drivers of global change are seldom considered together in policy and management. We conducted a knowledge synthesis to assess the state of research on IAS range shifts under climate change in Canada. We found that the study of IAS distribution changes caused by climate change is a relatively new field of inquiry that integrates research in the areas of ecology, conservation biology, and environmental sciences. The multidisciplinary dimensions of the issue are largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, with most studies having a purely natural science perspective. Very little original research has occurred in the field to date; instead literature reviews are common. Research focuses on modeling range changes of current IAS threats, rather than predicting potential future IAS threats. The most commonly studied IAS already occur in Canada as native species that have spread beyond their range (e.g., lyme disease, mountain pine beetle, smallmouth bass) or as established invaders (e.g., gypsy moth). All of these IAS are expected to expand northward with climate change, resulting in widespread negative impacts on forest and freshwater biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and public health. Many barriers to predicting IAS range change under climate change are identified in the literature, including the complexity of the issue, lack of ecological data, and failure to integrate climate change – IAS interactions into research, policy, and management. Recommendations for increased research and monitoring, and the need for policy and management reform predominate in the literature.

Within the context of an accelerating climate emergency, the introduction frames the strategies and actions adopted by labour and unions to reduce carbon emissions that are presented in the articles contributing to this special issue. Industrial relations scholarship, which has been slow to address the climate emergency, has focussed on the jobs versus environment dilemma, the role of unions, technical innovation versus social unionism, and just transition approaches. While labour and union approaches in different sectors across Europe are largely confined to variants of ecological modernization, a more proactive transformative strategy opening up an alternative eco-socialist vision for the future is emerging. The issue highlights the contradictions in union strategies, the drivers of change and the way forward in pursuance of a green economy through a focus on the roles of government and the public sector, the organization of labour and the labour process, and education and training.

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