Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

224 judged in the capability approach by a person’s capability to do things he or she has reason to value” (Sen 2009:231) as the result of a policy or development intervention. Capability, therefore, becomes the metric with which policies, and society more broadly, are judged. Applying these concepts of justice empirically to urban policy and planning can be difficult, but researchers have found various ways of translating broader concepts of justice, such as those proposed by Rawls and Sen, into evaluative criteria for cities. Some have built on Sen’s emphasis on ends-based justice to promote climate change adaptations in cities that benefit vulnerable groups. For example, Moser and Satterthwaite have proposed an asset-based framework for “pro poor adaptation” in which investments in the assets, intellectual and physical, of vulnerable and poor communities are used to reduce vulnerability and improve capacity (Moser and Satterthwaite 2008, 2010, Moser 2011). Hastings (2007) has proposed a “territorial justice” of service provision in which the level of provision always meets the level of need. However, there is a growing emphasis within the urban environmental justice community to include both means-based and ends- based justice criteria in evaluations. Although too much emphasis on process and institutions can shift focus away from people’s lived experiences, which is Sen’s central argument, ignoring these factors “does not permit an assessment of procedural injustice” (Boone 2008:150, emphasis in original) and discounts the “social structure and institutional context that often help determine distributive patterns” (Young 1990:15). Again highlighting the importance of including both means- and ends-based criteria, Jekwu Ikeme (2003) distinguishes justice from equity by defining environmental justice as encompassing both procedural and distributive justice, although equity is often only interested in the distributive outcomes. Agyeman and Evans (2003) argue that the meaningful involvement of all people in decision making and implementation, as well as the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens, are the necessary components of environmental justice in cities, a definition that encompasses both procedural and substantive outcomes. Likewise, Susan Fainstein (2010) has proposed that democracy, diversity, and equity are the basic elements of a just city. Within the climate change justice community, focused at the global scale, there is also an emphasis on both procedural and distributional justice (Adger et al. 2006). Understanding the justice dimensions of both the way in which decisions are made and the outcomes of these decisions therefore becomes a powerful tool for evaluating the justice of a new policy or program, such as adaptation planning. Despite the growing body of work surrounding urban environmental justice, there is a need to better understand what climate change adaptation in cities will or could mean for vulnerable populations and how to evaluate the process and outcomes of adaptation using justice as a criterion. The growing emphasis on both means- and ends-based, or procedural and distributive, criteria reflects Harvey’s description of justice as “a just distribution justly achieved” (Harvey 1973:116). Drawing on this idea, and the work of environmental justice scholars, justice in urban climate change adaptation is defined as ‘just adaptation justly achieved.’ The criteria for meeting this definition are: (1) inclusiveness, i.e., representation of vulnerable groups in adaptation planning processes for the city; (2) prioritization, i.e., priority setting and framing that recognize the adaptation needs of the vulnerable groups in the city; and (3) impacts, i.e., impacts of adaptation that enhance the freedoms and assets of vulnerable groups in the city (Table 1). These criteria reflect both the means- and ends-based approaches to evaluating justice and also account for the distinction typically made in evaluations of the effectiveness of public policies between outputs, outcomes, and impacts. Representation of vulnerable groups meets the process criteria for justice and enhances people’s ability to affect change in their city through open and democratic decision making processes. Explicit prioritizing of vulnerable groups and framing adaptation as, in part, a tool with which to reduce their vulnerability ensures that planning documents and institutions that develop around adaptation, i.e., outputs and outcomes, reflect equity and fairness concerns. Finally, the tangible results of adaptation planning, i.e., impacts, should meet the criteria of enhancing the freedoms and assets of the city’s most vulnerable groups. THE MECHANISMS OF INJUSTICE Although identifying injustice in urban adaptation is important, it is equally important to understand why injustices occur so that strategies for improving the processes and outcomes of urban adaptation are developed. Research in urban politics and planning has shown that there are a variety of mechanisms that have the potential to contribute to continuing injustice in cities. These mechanisms, although not necessarily exclusive or independent, can be categorized as: the political economy of poverty, thick injustice, technocratic governance, and institutional capacities. The extent to which any given mechanism contributes to injustice varies between cities and between policy issues. Thick injustice Contemporary injustices may be the result of past decisions and resource allocations, thus making it difficult to track the source of the injustices to a particular event or institution. This is referred to as thick injustice or “unjust power relations that are deep and densely concentrated, as well as opaque and relatively intractable” (Hayward and Swanstrom 2011:4). Thick injustice is rooted in the historical patterns of a city’s governance and infrastructure in a way that makes it difficult to identify and change. From this perspective, injustice in the distribution of burdens and benefits in cities is rooted in historical processes and is a legacy of past policies that continue to affect the participation opportunities, engagement, and outcomes of decisions surrounding land use planning and public services. Past programs for economic restructuring and suburbanization can foster a spatial mismatch between where people can live, where people