Related Papers
Equity, Environmental Justice, and Urban Climate Change Coordinating Lead Authors Lead Authors Contributing Authors
Anika N Haque
Climate change, equity and the Sustainable Development Goals: an urban perspective
Marcela Tovar Restrepo, Darryn McEvoy, Diana Reckien, Shuaib Lwasa
AbStrACt Climate change is acknowledged as the largest threat to our societies in the coming decades, potentially affecting large and diverse groups of urban residents in this century of urbanization. As urban areas house highly diverse people with differing vulnerabilities, intensifying climate change is likely to shift the focus of discussions from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how. This brings the urban equity question to the forefront. Here we assess how climate change events may amplify urban inequity. We find that heatwaves, but also flooding, landslides, and even mitigation and adaptation measures, affect specific population groups more than others. As underlying sensitivity factors we consistently identify socioeconomic status and gender. We synthesize the findings with regard to equity types – meaning outcome-based, process-oriented and context-related equity – and suggest solutions for avoiding increased equity and justice concerns as a result of climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation.
Climate Action Planning: An Intersectional Approach to The Urban Equity Dilemma
2014 •
Chandra Russo
Introduction Findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international scientific institution on climate change research, unequivocally demonstrate that, without intervention, climate change will have devastating impacts on human communities. Those who face the intersections of racism, classism and sexism have long born the brunt of environmental hazards, both globally and in the United States (Bullard 2005; Chavis and Lee 1987). This is no different when it comes to climate change which, under existing social conditions, puts the global poor, people of color, and women at the greatest risk (Nagel 2012; Douglas et al. 2012; Shearer 2011) and has been projected to be “globally stratifying, because its worst impacts will fall disproportionately on those countries, livelihood systems and ‘at risk’ populations that are already poor”(Devereux and Edwards 2004: 28). Importantly, such global stratification should not be interpreted as only impacting region...
ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report Chapter 6: Community-Based Assessments of Adaptation and Equity
2019 •
Sheila Foster, Angela Tovar
Nature Climate Change
Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research
2016 •
Stacy VanDeveer
Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity
Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity
2021 •
Ana Terra Amorim-Maia
Local governments around the world are formulating different ways to address climate change. However, the compounding and overlapping vulnerabilities of historically marginalized residents are commonly tackled in a fragmented manner by conventional adaptation approaches, even when justice is presented as an overarching goal of these plans. In response, we propose an intersectional pivot in climate adaptation research and practice to analyze the interconnected forms of social-environmental injustices that drive vulnerabilities in cities, paving the way for more concrete and integrated strategies of just urban adaptation and transformation. This paper brings together narrative and analytical review methodologies to inform a new conceptual framework that highlights the need to (1) tackle underlying reinforcers of racial and gender in- equalities; (2) redress drivers of differential vulnerabilities; (3) take politics and ethics of care seriously; (4) adopt place-based and place-making approaches; and (5) promote cross-identity forms of activism and community resilience building. We illustrate the framework with exam- ples of ongoing projects in Barcelona, Spain, which is an early adopter of intersectional thinking and justice-driven principles in climate action. Although many initiatives are in a pilot phase and do not all exclusively focus on climate adaptation, experiences from Barcelona do provide illustrative directionality for innovative and integrated approaches that can address multiple and intersecting social-environmental inequities.
Urban Planning
The Equity Dimension of Climate Change: Perspectives From the Global North and South
2021 •
Mark Seasons
The articles in this thematic issue represent a variety of perspectives on the challenges for equity that are attributable to climate change. Contributions explore an emerging and important issue for communities in the Global North and Global South: the implications for urban social equity associated with the impacts caused by climate change. While much is known about the technical, policy, and financial tools and strategies that can be applied to mitigate or adapt to climate change in communities, we are only now thinking about who is affected by climate change, and how. Is it too little, too late? Or better now than never? The articles in this thematic issue demonstrate that the local impacts of climate change are experienced differently by socio-economic groups in communities. This is especially the case for the disadvantaged and marginalized—i.e., the poor, the very young, the aged, the disabled, and women. Ideally, climate action planning interventions should enhance quality of...
Regional Environmental Change
Translating and embedding equity-thinking into climate adaptation: an analysis of US cities
Clare Cannon
Cities increasingly recognize the importance of furthering social equity in their climate adaptation planning. Such efforts are often in response to grassroots mobilizations, yet it is not clear to what extent they translate into urban coalitions, policy designs, and implementation efforts within city governments. In this paper, we respond to this knowledge gap by assessing how equity-thinking is translated into cities’ adaptation decision-making and governance arrangements, especially in ways that can lead to more inclusive and just climate adaptation outcomes for historically marginalized communities. We analyze adaptation plans for the 25 largest US cities using deductive and inductive coding strategies to uncover the ideas, rhetoric, and processes that guide equitable plans. We then map these outcomes of equity-thinking across procedural, distributive, and recognitional categories. Our analysis lends support to the operation of two social constructivist mechanisms of equity-thin...
Equity Impacts of Urban Land Use Planning for Climate Adaptation: Critical Perspectives from the Global North and South
Daniel Gallagher, Isabelle Anguelovski
A growing number of cities are preparing for climate change impacts by developing adaptation plans. However, little is known about how these plans and their implementation affect the vulnerability of the urban poor. We critically assess initiatives in eight cities worldwide and find that land use planning for climate adaptation can exacerbate socio-spatial inequalities across diverse developmental and environmental conditions. We argue that urban adaptation injustices fall into two categories: acts of commission, when interventions negatively affect or displace poor communities, and acts of omission, when they protect and prioritize elite groups at the expense of the urban poor.
Climate Policy
Inclusive approaches to urban climate adaptation planning and implementation in the Global South
2015 •
Isabelle Anguelovski
