Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

230 never asked why they weren’t doing more or completing their tasks (former Delhi Department of Environment employee, 30 April 2012, personal communication). According to this same person, development issues are more important to the city than climate change and so climate change actions are not prioritized. Another NGO representative said “climate change is an add-on in agencies’ plans, the city is not serious about it” (NGO representative, 20 May 2012, personal communication) and sees the government’s plans to address climate change as a way of placating an increasingly environmentally aware middle class with negative consequences for the poor. Meeting justice criterion 3 requires that observed impacts of adaptation enhance the freedoms and assets of vulnerable groups in the city. Because of the difficulty of the conflation of the aims and implementation of the climate change agenda with other programs and plans, the fact that the city has not undertaken a targeted assessment of its own, and the lack of evidence that the assets of vulnerable groups in Delhi have significantly increased during this time period, the impacts of adaptation in Delhi do not meet the third justice criterion. Mechanisms underlying adaptation injustices in Delhi The analysis shows that in applying the criteria for justice in adaptation, the process, priorities, and impacts in Delhi do not meet these criteria. Based on the same interview results, there are at least two mechanisms of injustice at play in the city that are contributing to these outcomes: a lack of institutional capacity and the political economy of poverty. The issue of capacity is evidenced by the shifts in planning process and priorities that have come with the involvement of the UNDP and the development of a common framework for climate change planning at the state level in India. The common framework has introduced the notion of stakeholder workshops, vulnerability assessments, and outreach, all of which have the potential to increase justice in adaptation in Delhi. The Climate Change Agenda for Delhi 2009-2012 was the result of entrepreneurial but isolated work on the part of the Delhi government. With additional resources and guidance from the UNDP and the national government it is the possible to improve the city’s capacity to undertake just adaptation planning that includes vulnerable populations in the process, prioritizes their needs, and ultimately enhances their freedoms and assets in ways that reduce their vulnerability. Additional capacity issues remain, however. Funding for climate change adaptation is extremely limited. There are currently no dedicated funding streams for climate change at the city level. Funding from the national level will depend on the extent to which the state action plan aligns with national priorities. Funding through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) tends to favor very large projects that may not address the needs of poor and marginalized communities. There is also a lack of technical capacity in the city. All of the assessment components of the state action plan have been contracted to outside entities, including the vulnerability assessment, emissions inventory, and climate projections and scenario development (Local Governments for Sustainability representative, 9 May 2012, personal communication). Finally, there is a lack of institutional capacity. There is no dedicated office for climate change in the city and currently very little invested leadership in developing a robust and just state action plan. Further investment in capacity from within the city will be necessary for just adaptation in Delhi. A second mechanism of injustice in adaptation for Delhi is the political economy of poverty. The poor and informal populations of the city have very limited venues for accessing decision making, government programs, and public services in Delhi. This is evidenced in part by the provisional status of unauthorized settlements in the Bhagidari System to form RWAs and in the lack of services in these areas because the city is not required to provide water and sanitation to unauthorized colonies (NGO representative, 2 May 2012, personal communication). As the middle class has expanded, poor areas have become increasingly marginalized (Ghertner 2012). According to a representative from an NGO in Delhi, “the government doesn’t feel a moral commitment to the poor” because “it is too captivated by the rising power phenomenon” (Delhi NGO representative, 25 May 2012, personal communication). Development goals, then, tend to reflect these ambitions rather than the needs of the most vulnerable groups. In addition, the political dynamics in the city are such that the poor are often marginalized or discounted in decisions about new infrastructure. One NGO representative describes the decision making process surrounding Delhi’s metro system built in 2002: “Even for the Metro, the original plan was to go through poor localities to provide public transport. But the real estate mafia re-drew the Metro routes to go through their middle class housing areas and home values went up even higher” (NGO representative, 25 May 2012, personal communication). If climate change continues to be tied to development goals, it will be subject to the same political economic dynamics. There are signs of this changing. The most recent national five-year plan, entitled Faster, Sustainable and More Inclusive Growth, highlights the need to include all Indian citizens in the country’s development (representative from the India Planning Commission, 21 May 2012, personal communication). Because state action plans will be tied explicitly to national priorities, this could serve to circumvent city-level mechanisms of injustice. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION My aim was to develop criteria that can be used to evaluate whether urban adaptation is just, to identify the mechanisms that may underlie injustice in urban adaptation, and to use these criteria and mechanisms to evaluate the case of Delhi. By reviewing the classic literature on justice as well as more modern urban interpretations, three criteria for justice in urban adaptation were proposed: (1)