Justice in climate change adaptation planning: conceptual perspectives on emergent praxis

Abstract

Abstract. The measures implemented to adapt to climate change are primarily designed to address the tangible, biophysical impacts of climate change in a given geographic area. They rarely consider the wider social implications of climate change, nor the politics of adaptation planning and its outcomes. Given the necessity of significant investment in adaptation over years to come, adaptation planning and implementation will need to place greater concern on justice-sensitive approaches to avoid exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and creating maladaptive and conflicting outcomes. Building on recent calls for more just and transformative adaptation planning, this paper offers a flexible analytical framework for integrating theories of justice and transformation into research on climate change adaptation. We discuss adaptation planning as an inherently normative and political process linked to issues pertaining to recognition justice as well as distributional and procedural aspects of justice. The paper aims to contribute to the growing discussion on just adaptation by intersecting theoretical justice dimensions with spatial, temporal and socio-political challenges and choices that arise as part of adaptation planning processes. A focus on justice-sensitive adaptation planning not only provides opportunities for examining spatial as well as temporal justice issues in relation to planning and decision-making processes. It also paves the way for a more critical approach to adaptation planning that acknowledges the need for institutional restructuring and offers steps towards alternative futures under climate change conditions.

Introduction to the special issue “Climate and marine justice – debates and critical perspectives”

“…Knowledge and power asymmetries, as many of the contributions to this SI show (cf. Alba et al, 2020;Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020;Fünfgeld and Schmid, 2020;Ruiz-de-Oña Plaza, 2020), are deeply intertwined with epistemic and ontological injustices in environmental and climate governance. Finally, the articles of this SI and avenues for future research are presented.…”

“…This is true of adaptation (cf. Alba et al, 2020;Fünfgeld and Schmid, 2020;Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020) and mitigation measures, such as market-based mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions like the Clean Development Mechanism and REDD+, and it is also relevant for the rights of indigenous and peasant communities to have self-determination, development, and livelihoods (Schroeder and McDermott, 2014;Hein, 2019;Corbera and Brown, 2010;Smits and Middleton, 2014).…”

“…We embrace the various ways in which people with different (knowledge) backgrounds are producing and defending their environments across the world. This situated and, at the same time, relational approach challenges the "coloniality of knowledge" (Ruiz-de-Oña Plaza, 2020;Fünfgeld and Schmid, 2020;Alba et al, 2020) and takes different forms of knowledge and various modes of being in the world seriously. We want to encourage our social scientist colleagues to respond to these thoughts and movements and to become more involved in the discussion about a restructuring of sci-ence within society and not leaving the debate on the societal effects of climate change and the ecological crisis to our natural science colleagues.…”

“…Inspired by artistic interventions and lively discussions at our EnJust kick-off conference on such innovative and expressive methodologies, we are convinced that the arts and creative methods can help us to explore different socio-ecological imaginaries and understandings of a good, sustainable future and to foster dialogue amongst different epistemic and ontological cultures. These often participatory and co-creative modes of knowledge production based on, for example, the visual arts (photography, video making, and painting), storytelling, or conceptual arts are able to meet the epistemological, ontological, and political challenges associated with more relational modes of thinking and doing research (Hawkins et al, 2015). Arts-based research methods are especially valuable to produce "multifaceted knowledge" (van der Vaart et al, 2018:16) in times of socio-ecological crisis.…”

Considering time in climate justice

“…The concept of climate justice has gained momentum in recent years thanks to growing recognition that climate change is also an ethical issue (Gardiner, 2011;cf. Schlosberg and Collins, 2014, on the conceptual expansion of environmental justice to climate justice), since climate change adversely affects basic human rights of life such as the right to justice, health, well-being and subsistence (Adger et al, 2013;Caney, 2006;Gach, 2019). The impacts of climate change will affect and are already affecting some communities more and earlier than others, depending on their exposure to climate change in time and space.…”