The Climate Just City

Abstract

Cities are increasingly impacted by climate change, driving the need for adaptation and sustainable development. Local and global economic and socio-cultural influence are also driving city redevelopment. This, fundamentally political, development highlights issues of who pays and who gains, who decides and how, and who/what is to be valued. Climate change adaptation has primarily been informed by science, but the adaptation discourse has widened to include the social sciences, subjecting adaptation practices to political analysis and critique. In this article, we critically discuss the just city concept in a climate adaptation context. We develop the just city concept by describing and discussing key theoretical themes in a politically and justice-oriented analysis of climate change adaptation in cities. We illustrate our arguments by looking at recent case studies of climate change adaptation in three very different city contexts: Port Vila, Baltimore City, and Karlstad. We conclude that the social context with its power asymmetries must be given a central position in understanding the distribution of climate risks and vulnerabilities when studying climate change adaptation in cities from a climate justice perspective.

Transforming Local Climate Adaptation Organization: Barriers and Progress in 13 Swedish Municipalities

“…Differences in emphasis may result in different climate adaptation priorities and measures. The problem framing is directly related to how climate adaptation is prioritized among both politicians and officials in relation to other policy items and social challenges [29,49]. These aspects are closely connected to the second step of the analysis focusing on how key administrative and political actors relate to and work with climate adaptation, as the dominant problem framing also often entails the allocation of responsibilities from politicians to officials, which in turn leads to solutions that are formulated in a more limited context [50].…”

The Politics of Maladaptation

“…Macintosh [40] describes maladaptation in coastal planning responses as occurring along two axes, that of increasing costs and vulnerability and of producing socially inequitable outcomes. Maladaptation must therefore be related to the social context and its existing power asymmetries and vulnerabilities, by rebounding, shifting or creating new vulnerabilities (cf., [2,41,42]). These research outcomes implicate political elements into the understanding of maladaptation implicitly and in widely differing ways, raising the challenge of making the identity and political character of maladaptation explicit.…”

“…Countering such benefits are arguments that participation is inherently conservative and that genuine social equity requires the co-production of knowledge for adaptation (see, [42,59]). Few et al [60] point to the common critiques of participation practices in public policy.…”

“…Vulnerability tends to be inversely related to socio-economic status, but the relationship is a complex one (see e.g., [86][87][88]). Certainly, the populations at greatest risk are concentrated in poorer nations and in the lower socio-economic groups within communities [29,30,42,69]. Explanatory socio-economic factors in vulnerability include age, class, ethnicity, gender, health, land and resource ownership, net wealth and social cohesiveness/social capital.…”

“…Principle interests have been the place of race and class in the distribution of environmental harms, hazards and risks; environmental justice focuses on environmental injustices [95][96][97]. Applied to climate change, environmental justice underpins the concept of 'climate justice' (see, e.g., [42,98,99]).…”