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This paper explores the recognitional dimensions of urban climate change justice in a development context. Through the lens of migrants in the Indian cities of Bengaluru and Surat, we highlight how experiences of environmental marginality can be attributed to a lack of recognition of citizenship rights and informal livelihood strategies. Specifically, the drivers of non-recognition in this situation relate to broken social networks and a lack of political voice, as well as heightened exposure to emerging climate risks and economic precariousness. We find that migrants experience extreme forms of climate injustice as they are often invisible to the official state apparatus, or worse, are actively erased from cities through force or discriminatory development policies. Current theories must therefore engage more seriously with issues of recognition to enable more radical climate justice in cities.

Cities around the world are facilitating ambitious and inclusive action on climate change by adopting participatory and collaborative planning approaches. However, given the major political, spatial, and scalar interdependencies involved, the extent to which these planning tools equip cities to realise 1.5 °C climate change scenarios is unclear. This article draws upon emerging knowledge in the fields of urban planning and urban climate governance to explore complementary insights into how cities can pursue ambitious and inclusive climate action to realise 1.5 °C climate change scenarios. We observe that urban planning scholarship is often under-appreciated in urban climate governance research, while conversely, promising urban planning tools and approaches can be limited by the contested realities of urban climate governance. By thematically reviewing diverse examples of urban climate action across the globe, we identify three key categories of planning dilemmas: institutional heterogeneity, scalar mismatch, and equity and justice concerns. We argue that lessons from urban planning and urban climate governance scholarship should be integrated to better understand how cities can realise 1.5 °C climate change scenarios in practice.

Evidence shows that current adaptation planning approaches are not always successful in generating actionable knowledge to guide implementation on the ground. There remains a persistent disconnect between the production of (physical) climate science and the implementation of practical, local, and context-specific adaptation actions. We argue for a need to incorporate “subaltern” knowledge (i.e., that which is typically labeled local, traditional, or indigenous knowledge) in climate adaptation science and practice. Building on recent comparative assessment studies, we identify limitations of current local adaptation action in its typical application of scientific knowledge and illustrate key pathways through which the subaltern can be integrated to better inform current approaches. We argue that subaltern knowledge can be a critical source of innovation and can help to broaden the adaptation solution space by enhancing both the effectiveness and the social legitimacy of actions.

Cities and local governments are important actors in the global governance of climate change; however, the specific governance principles and arrangements that enable urban climate plans and policies to realize commitments to social equity and justice remain largely unexplored. This article uses the City of Barcelona, Spain, as a critical case study of emerging “intersectional climate justice” practice, where plans to build resilience to climate change are pursued in conjunction with efforts to tackle structural inequalities in accessing the built environment, health services, energy, housing, and transportation experienced by frontline communities. The study illustrates how Barcelona and its community partners do this through four different categories of governance and decision-making tactics, which include: (1) experimenting with disruptive planning strategies; (2) working transversally across agencies and actors to institutionalize climate justice over time; (3) putting care at the center of urban planning; and (4) mobilizing place-based approaches to tackle intersecting vulnerabilities of frontline residents. These tactics seek to redistribute the benefits of climate-resilient infrastructures more fairly and to enhance participatory processes more meaningfully. Finally, we assess the limitations and challenges of mobilizing these tactics in everyday urban politics. Barcelona's experience contributes to research on climate governance by challenging the notion of distinct waves of governance and revealing concurrent dimensions of climate urbanism that coexist spatially and temporally. Our research also illustrates lessons for fairer climate governance in the city, where different tactics are mobilized to address structural and intersecting socioeconomic vulnerabilities that exacerbate the experience of climate change of frontline residents.

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 inequalities; (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 examples 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.

Climate shelters are critical urban infrastructures to support adaptation to extreme weather. They offer spaces – e.g., parks, libraries, and civic centers – where residents can take refuge during episodes of extreme temperatures. With over 200 public spaces designated as “Climate Shelters”, Barcelona (Spain) serves as an emblematic example of whether these emerging spaces are meeting the needs, expectations, and everyday experiences of the most vulnerable residents. By applying an intersectional climate justice perspective and mixed-method approaches rooted in a survey of a particularly climate-exposed working-class neighborhood (La Prosperitat), we found that the intersecting vulnerabilities of marginalized populations remain poorly addressed, largely due to differences in access to coping mechanisms that overlap with intersecting social positions, exacerbating vulnerability to climate risks. We also found that housing inadequacy and energy poverty experienced by low-income residents and those originally from Global South countries made them the most affected and least able to cope with extreme temperatures. Women were also more affected by climate impacts and more concerned about current and future risks. We argue that unequal lived experiences of thermal (dis)comforts inform heat and cold inequalities, which, in turn, are attributed to intersecting social positions and structural vulnerabilities. These uneven lived experiences shape – and are reshaped by – limited adaptive capacity, culturally inappropriate approaches, and insufficiently inclusive public spaces, thus complicating an equity-driven provision of refuge infrastructures. Results call for developing refuge infrastructures that address the intersecting social and climate needs of residents who need them the most.

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-thinking in adaptation planning—namely ideology and recognition. In an ideology-driven pathway, where beliefs are shared, adaptation efforts are mobilized through local actors and within public agencies who decide on the appropriateness of social equity definitions. Recognition-driven pathways occur when climate equity rhetoric is reflected and normalized through adaptation planning procedures, where cities strive to be early adopters of equitable climate strategies. This result therefore highlights the multiple ways urban leaders, decision-makers, and planners can have in steering policies and designing different planning and implementation processes.

This working paper discusses how governments can use practical, flexible approaches to determine if and how finance is supporting locally led adaptation (LLA) to climate change. As national governments invest in building resilience to climate impacts, many are recognizing the importance of LLA. LLA recognizes that people closest to the effects of climate change are often best placed to identify adaptation solutions and must have financing and decision-making power to ensure that adaptation investments reflect their priorities. The paper provides metrics for governments to track how much finance reaches the local level for adaptation, and how well that finance supports local agency in adaptation decisions. It also recommends tracking and reporting options governments can adapt to their country contexts and climate finance objectives. These recommendations are practical, near-term steps toward longer-term transformational change needed to support locally led adaptation. Tracking and reporting finance for LLA is important for ensuring adequate and sound investments, and ultimately for ensuring that finance reaches and meets the needs of those most directly affected by climate change.