Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

222 Justice in Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Criteria and Application to Delhi by Sara Hughes This article was originally published in Ecology & Society, 18(4), 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05929-180448 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license ABSTRACT Cities around the world are increasingly developing plans to adapt to the consequences of climate change. These plans will have important consequences for urban populations because they are likely to reshape and reconfigure urban infrastructures, services, and decision making processes. It is critical that these adaptation plans are developed in a way that is just. Criteria was developed that can be used to assess justice in adaptation so that the processes, priorities, and impacts address the needs of the most vulnerable urban populations. Further, mechanisms are outlined that have been proposed as responsible for producing urban injustice. The justice criteria are applied to the case of adaptation planning in Delhi and the extent to which poor and informal populations are included and affected by this planning. The analysis shows that adaptation planning in Delhi does not meet the justice criteria in part because of a lack of capacity and the political economy of poverty in the city. The criteria for justice and mechanisms of injustice offer an important step toward developing a greater understanding of not only whether city-level adaptation planning is just, but also why it is or is not. Keywords: adaptation; cities and climate change; equity; justice; planning INTRODUCTION Climate change is, and will continue to be, a policy and planning concern for cities around the world. Given the variability in existing capacities, exposures, and development priorities in cities, urban adaptation planning will be a particularly challenging task (de Sherbinin et al. 2007). One important challenge will be ensuring that the processes and outcomes of climate change adaptation are just and that the introduction of adaptation planning does not serve to reinforce or exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in the city (Bulkeley 2010). A first step in achieving this goal is developing clear criteria to use in identifying justice in urban climate change adaptation. In addition, a better understanding of the mechanisms through which policy and planning contribute to urban injustice will help identify entry points for enhancing justice in adaptation. Criteria for justice in urban climate change adaptation, drawing on classical texts as well as more recent applications related to cities and climate change, contribute to adaptation research and the themes of this special issue. However, it is not enough to simply knowwhether the adaptation is just; we must also understand why it came to be that way. Four possible mechanisms of injustice are examined: the political economy of poverty, thick injustice, technocratic governance, and institutional capacities, along with the role they may play in urban climate change adaptation. Finally, the case of climate change planning in Delhi is used as an empirical application of the criteria and an examination of the mechanisms of injustice. The criteria, mechanisms, and case study forward our ability to not only evaluate the outcomes of urban climate change adaptation, but also to improve our understanding of why the outcomes occur and how they can be improved. Promoting justice in adaptation is a critical issue for urban residents and communities and one to which the urban politics community can contribute substantial insights. CITIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION Climate change adaptation can be a direct response to perceived or expected climatic changes, i.e., “clearly identified as being triggered by climate change” (Adger et al. 2005:78), or the result of other, nonclimate related factors such as economic changes. These actions are at times purposefully directed toward addressing climate change and at other times are designed with other, or additional, policy goals in mind (Aall et al. 2007). Adaptation has been defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities” (Field et al. 2012:36). Drawn from this definition, those adaptation actions conceived of and implemented by city governments explicitly as a response to climate change are of concern to this research. Cities face significant adaptation challenges. They are sites of climate change impacts such as floods, heat waves, and heat islands (Grimmond 2007, Gasper et al. 2011). Sea level rise will especially affect coastal cities. For example, in the city of Rio de Janeiro sea level rise is predicted to affect 400,000 people (Young 2011), and coastal flooding is predicted in Dar es Salaam (Kebede and Nicholls 2012). Many inland cities, such as Mexico City, are predicted to experience floods that will be more severe and will inflict greater damage