Climate Change and Social Inequality

Islam, Nazrul; Winkel, John

doi:10.18356/2c62335d-en

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Yet, individuals experience these flood risks differentially, depending on three contextspecific risk drivers: social vulnerabilities, low adaptive capacity, and exposure to flooding hazards. In fact, empirical evidence indicates that social vulnerabilities are associated with inequities in flood hazard exposures and access to adaptive capacity, triggering inequities in the spatial distribution of risks across the lines of race, income, and ethnicity, among others (Suarez, 2002;Islam and Winkel, 2017;Herreros-Cantis et al, 2020).…”

Section: Flood Risks and Climate Justice Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Justice and Urban Form Adaptation to Flooding Risks: Spatial Analysis to Identify Toronto's Priority Neighborhoods

Mohtat

Khirfan

2022

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Empirical evidence points out that urban form adaptation to climate-induced flooding events—through interventions in land uses and town plans (i. e., street networks, building footprints, and urban blocks)—might exacerbate vulnerabilities and exposures, engendering risk inequalities and climate injustice. We develop a multicriteria model that draws on distributive justice's interconnections with the risk drivers of social vulnerabilities, flood hazard exposures, and the adaptive capacity of urban form (through land uses and town plans). The model assesses “who” is unequally at-risk to flooding events, hence, should be prioritized in adaptation responses; “where” are the high-risk priority areas located; and “how” can urban form adaptive interventions advance climate justice in the priority areas. We test the model in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where there are indications of increased rainfall events and disparities in social vulnerabilities. Our methodology started with surveying Toronto-based flooding experts who assigned weights to the risk drivers based on their importance. Using ArcGIS, we then mapped and overlayed the risk drivers' values in all the neighborhoods across the city based on the experts' assigned weights. Accordingly, we identified four high-risk tower communities with old infrastructure and vulnerable populations as the priority neighborhoods for adaptation interventions within the urban form. These four neighborhoods are typical of inner-city tower blocks built in the 20th century across North America, Europe, and Asia based on modern architectural ideas. Considering the lifespan of these blocks, this study calls for future studies to investigate how these types of neighborhoods can be adapted to climate change to advance climate justice.

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Section: Flood Risks and Climate Justice Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Justice and Urban Form Adaptation to Flooding Risks: Spatial Analysis to Identify Toronto's Priority Neighborhoods

Mohtat

Khirfan

2022

Front. Sustain. Cities

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“…In this paper, we attempt to provide a synthetic overview of potential climate mitigation strategies and associated justice consequences across a range of contexts (Figure 1). We build on a large literature that assesses social changes and climate impacts and mitigations through a justice lens (see Table S1 for key definitions), and examines stakeholder tensions (13)(14)(15). Choices over pathways and interventions depend on clearer scientific and policy understandings of the relationships between mitigating climate change and ameliorating social injustice (4,(16)(17)(18).…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many nations that contribute negligibly to climate change (especially on a per capita basis) will be among those most adversely affected, including African, Southeast Asian, and Caribbean and Pacific Island nations (7,8,15,16,49,51,52,54,55,(59)(60)(61). Overall, estimates of likely impacts of future climate change on per capita GDP are not only higher in countries with lower current per capita GDP, but also in countries with higher internal income inequality, lower life expectancy and lower overall well-being (Fig 5).…”

Section: Current Challenges Of Climate Change Science and Social Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within all countries, groups less responsible for climate change will experience more of its adverse effects (Fig. 3) (4,5,7,10,15,16,27,28,58,62,63). Figure 5 depicts variations across countries using readily available metrics but does not present how economic inequality plays out within countries when gender, race, or rural/urban residence are also considered.…”

Section: Current Challenges Of Climate Change Science and Social Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

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Mitigating Climate Change and Climate Injustice Simultaneously

Activation¹,

Grace

Agrawal³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Mitigating climate change and social injustice are critical, interwoven challenges facing humankind. Climate change is the result of grossly unequal greenhouse gas emissions by different societies and groups. Its impacts are also unjust, disproportionately affecting poor and less powerful nations, and the poor and the less powerful within each nation. While climate mitigation is essential, it reshapes the interacting socio-cultural, economic, political, physical and ecological processes that cause climate change, often with adverse outcomes for the most vulnerable. Answering the challenge of how to achieve climate mitigation alongside social justice mitigation and enhanced wellbeing will require improved understanding of the tradeoffs of alternative climate mitigation options with demonstrably different social justice outcomes.Herein, we present a broad framework to illustrate the interface between climate change and social justice, examining how economic, health, governance, social and policy dimensions interrelate both as cause and consequence of climate change, related emissions, and associated injustices. We then assess how specific mitigation interventions can address or exacerbate climate injustice, or more complexly, simultaneously worsen climate injustice for some and improve justice outcomes for others. In sorting through these possibilities, we identify a set of interventions that can both reduce emissions and enhance justice more broadly. These solutions highlight a range of possible ways forward, and include demographic choices, technology, a suite of natural solutions, and policy and governance. We also discuss political-economic obstacles to adoption and possible mechanisms that may support broader deployment. Addressing such possibilities has the potential to generate new ways of thinking about and mitigating inequity and power imbalance in the context of mitigating climate change.

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“…SGD 10 addresses inequalities and the need to reduce them. According to the Islam and Winkel (2017), there are inequalities among countries regarding the responsibility for causing climate change and the consequent responsibility for mitigation and adaptation efforts. Developing countries, more precisely the tropical developing countries, are witnessing more of the adverse effects of climate change so far, and the lowincome countries also have less capability to deal with those changes and to recover from the damages caused by climate change effects.…”

Section: Climate Change and The Sdgsmentioning

confidence: 99%