The Role of Socio-Economic Projections in Supporting Just Urban Climate Change Adaptation

Prall, Mia Cassidy

4. semester

Joint European Master in Environmental Studies - Cities and Sustainability (JEMES CiSu)

2022

2022-05-26

Urban climate change adaptation efforts have often been criticized for exacerbating the inequitable impacts of climate change by failing to address the social and economic consequences of adaptation. There is an urgent need to incorporate equity and justice concerns into adaptation planning; however, climate justice scholarship to date has been overwhelmingly theoretical and has failed to provide operational tools for supporting climate justice. Socio-economic projections could act as a promising tool to facilitate the consideration of justice in urban climate change adaptation planning. Therefore, this research investigates the question: how can socio-economic projections be utilized in urban climate change adaptation policy and planning to ensure climate justice? To answer this question, a systematic review of urban adaptation research utilizing socio-economic projections is conducted and urban adaptation policies from 18 global cities are analyzed. Grounded in a conceptual framework on urban climate justice, the research analyzes the evolution of research and policy applications of socio-economic projections and evaluates the potential for existing socio-economic scenario applications to promote climate justice. Results show that while socio-economic projections have not been explicitly linked to justice in the existing literature or policy, clear potentials exist for socio-economic projections to be used as a tool to promote distributive, procedural, and recognition and restorative justice. Consequently, a proposed framework is developed for the application of socio-economic projections to promote justice centered urban adaptation. Applying such a framework to urban adaptation planning and policy can help center justice concerns in larger strategic adaptation planning efforts and promote a new form of inclusive, data driven climate governance in cities.

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