Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-6 (section)

=== 6.3.6 Cross-Cutting Themes ===

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This section builds on 6.3.4 to offer two entry points for assessing urban adaptation that extend beyond individual infrastructure types and that demonstrate the interdependent and dynamic natures of urban systems.

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==== 6.3.6.1 Equity and Justice ====

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Questions of equity and justice influence adaptation pathways for cities, settlements and infrastructure (see also Chapter 8). Although infrastructure, ranging from social to ecological and physical to digital, can help to reduce the impacts of climate change ( [[#Stewart--2014|Stewart and Deng, 2014]] ; Baró Porras et al., 2021), there is ''limited evidence'' of how infrastructures, implemented to reduce climate risk, also reduce inequality. Rather, there is more evidence to suggest that both adaptation plans and associated infrastructure implementation pathways are increasing inequality in cities and settlements (Chu, Anguelovski and Carmin, 2016; Anguelovski et al., 2016; [[#Romero-Lankao--2019|Romero-Lankao and Gnatz, 2019]] ). Social, economic and cultural structures that marginalise people by race, class, ethnicity and gender all contribute in complex ways to climate injustices and need to be urgently addressed for adaptation options to shift to benefit those most vulnerable, rather than mainly benefitting the already privileged and maintaining the status quo (Thomas et al., 2019; Porter et al., 2020; [[#Ranganathan--2019|Ranganathan and Bratman, 2019]] ). Innovation and imagination are needed in adaptation responses to ensure that cities and settlements shift from perpetuating structural domination and inequality to fairer cities (Porter et al., 2020; [[#Henrique--2019|Henrique and Tschakert, 2019]] ; [[#Parnell--2016b|Parnell, 2016b]] ). To support these possibilities, this section explores adaptation through the lens of distributive and procedural justice. Although not expanded on here, spatial and recognition injustices are equally important ( [[#Fisher--2015|Fisher, 2015]] ; [[#Chu--2018|Chu and Michael, 2018]] ; Campello Torres et al., 2020). Recognition can be supported through a capabilities approach that helps to bring attention to past cultural domination and enable citizens to develop the functioning life they choose (Schlosberg, Collins and Niemeyer, 2017). This brings a focus on local action, emphasising the relevance to vulnerability reduction and resilience building of individual and local/community capacities and supporting structures. This blurs the distinction between climate change adaptation and community development, with the former firmly embedded in the latter. Struggles for recognition are deeply political and central to adaptation responses which requires increased focus on power to support more equitable and just adaptation ( [[#Nightingale--2017|Nightingale, 2017]] ). Justice questions are not static, Box 6.4 overviews the implications of COVID-19 for urban justice and vulnerability.

Distributive justice calls attention to unequal access to urban services, land, capital and technology. Related to this, exposure to health, flooding and drought risks of people living in low-income and informal settlements is a growing concern, as is disaster preparedness and the ability to support the needs of vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children and disabled, where data is often lacking (Lilford et al., 2016; Castro et al., 2017). There are also differences in who benefits from infrastructures, as they are inherently political, embedded in social contexts, politics and cultural norms ( [[#McFarlane--2017|McFarlane and Silver, 2017]] ) and often tend to benefit those already privileged ( [[#Henrique--2019|Henrique and Tschakert, 2019]] ). As an example, fixing water leaks can depend as much on the politics of who is involved and whose knowledge is prioritised as on the technical aspects ( [[#Anand--2015|Anand, 2015]] ).

The quality and maintenance of infrastructure is often unequal across cities, benefiting some and increasing vulnerability of others. Some property is seen as dangerous and of lower value if highly exposed to risk (Wamsley et al., 2015). Similarly, areas suffering from disinvestment in infrastructure might have a high risk of flooding ( [[#Haddock--2013|Haddock and Edwards, 2013]] ). Zoning and land use trade-offs have been seen to be unequally skewed in favour of prime real estate and economically valuable assets (e.g., protecting factories and refineries from flooding) (Anguelovski et al., 2016; Carter et al., 2015). Urban planning reforms are therefore central to building a fairer urban adaptation response ( [[#Parnell--2016b|Parnell, 2016b]] ).

Infrastructure is often not adequately implemented in low-income urban areas and not equally accessible to all (Meller et al., 2017). For example, low-income neighbourhoods often have less green space and therefore less associated cooling benefits. Even in high-income areas, there is often unequal access to services. For example, an assessment of sustainable urban mobility plans in Portugal showed that some areas have considered equity in their plans and increased access for disadvantaged users including the elderly and disabled, but in other cities this is lacking (Arsenio, Martens and Di Ciommo, 2016). Understanding who has access to what infrastructure can help to redress the drivers of social vulnerability that are central to just urban adaptation (Michael, Deshpande and Ziervogel, 2018; Shi et al., 2016).

Changing land use and increasing green spaces to reduce climate risks and attract investments and job opportunities has increased real estate values, triggered climate gentrification in some areas (Keenan, Hill and Gumber, 2018) and decreased access to affordable housing in other areas ( [[#Larsen--2015|Larsen, 2015]] ; Carter et al., 2015). Displacement through evictions and relocations linked to land use conversion and resettlement in the name of adaptation has also increased people’s vulnerability (Anguelovski et al., 2016; [[#Henrique--2019|Henrique and Tschakert, 2019]] ).

Understanding social and economic elites and their investment in infrastructure has implications for distributive justice, particularly when there is secession from public infrastructure services that has financial implications for viability (Romero-Lankao, Gnatz and Sperling, 2016). In the case of the 2015–17 Cape Town drought, wealthy households secured their water needs through off-grid technologies such as rainwater tanks and boreholes. Although this resulted in more water being available in the dams, it also led to less revenue being collected for municipal water and less ability to cross-subsidise water for poor households ( [[#Ziervogel--2019b|Ziervogel, 2019b]] ; [[#Simpson--2019|Simpson, 2019]] ; [[#Bigger--2019|Bigger and Millington, 2019]] ). More attention needs to be paid to how shifts in infrastructure are serving the interests of urban elites, often driven by the state, and failing to adequately consider the needs of the disadvantaged (Bulkeley, Castán Broto and Edwards, 2014; [[#Ajibade--2017|Ajibade, 2017]] ; Shi et al., 2016). Equally, more risk-reducing infrastructure is needed across all urban areas (Reckien et al., 2018a).

Procedural justice, which focuses on the institutional processes by which adaptation decisions are made, brings attention to the lack of opportunity for engaging in political decision making and limited representation of diverse voices in cities and settlements, and in relation to investment in infrastructure ( [[#Coates--2020|Coates and Nygren, 2020]] ; [[#Henrique--2019|Henrique and Tschakert, 2019]] ). Even when inclusive adaptation processes are run, they seldom produce procedurally just outcomes ( [[#Malloy--2020|Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020]] ). Understanding who is excluded and included is important (Sara, Pfeffer and Baud, 2017). One example is the increasing numbers of migrants who are confronted with lack of access to citizenship rights and housing tenure ( [[#Romero-Lankao--2018|Romero-Lankao and Norton, 2018]] ). Often, migrants are not allowed to formally claim public provisions in health, finance and shelter ( [[#Chu--2018|Chu and Michael, 2018]] ). Further, migrants and their settlements are likely unrecognised in spatial or infrastructure development plans. In this context, social infrastructure, zoning and land use planning for climate adaptation has triggered inequity through omission, as some planning process have been racialised and excluded groups such as migrants and ethnic minorities (Anguelovski et al., 2016). Urban adaptation policy-making processes that explicitly integrate multiple stakeholder interests can help to balance top-down solutions (Reckien et al., 2018a).

Identifying who is least able to adapt to climate risks sufficiently is important (Thomas et al., 2019). Some people may have few opportunities to relocate away from flooded areas in the long term or to evacuate in the short term. It is also harder for many from low-income areas to rebuild after an extreme event. Lack of housing tenure and sub-standard housing has been shown to limit the ability of residents to improve and manage their landscapes and therefore it is hard for them to enhance energy efficiency (Dempsey et al., 2011). Access to information is critical for adapting to climate risk and reducing vulnerability to hazards, yet access to this information is often not equally available (Ma et al., 2014). For example, low literacy can hamper ability to respond to early warning information (Dugan et al., 2011). In other instances, racial violence has surfaced during disasters, with Black victims’ lives being seen as less important than others (Anderson et al., 2020).

When looking at justice issues in urban adaptation, it is important to recognise that the adaptation of one individual or household may lead to maladaptation and negative impacts elsewhere ( [[#Holland--2017|Holland, 2017]] ; Limthongsakul, Nitivattananon and Arifwidodo, 2017; [[#Atteridge--2018|Atteridge and Remling, 2018]] ). For example, the case of an area of peri-urban Bangkok experiencing localised flooding due to unregulated private sector development saw households take both individual (building flood walls around homes, digging temporary drainage swales in the carriageway) and collective action (petitioning authorities, pumping water into vacant land). These actions, to a certain extent, merely displaced the flood water to other areas, or created new problems by damaging the carriageway, creating negative impacts on other households and the wider community. However, ultimately, it was the actions of improperly regulated private sector developers driving the need for this autonomous adaptation (Limthongsakul, Nitivattananon and Arifwidodo, 2017).

One of the tensions that emerge when addressing injustice is that the global provision of modern infrastructure is increasingly seen as unfeasible. It is unfeasible, both in terms of the current high emissions associated with infrastructure ( [[#World%20Bank--2017|]] [[#World%20Bank--2017|World Bank, 2017]] ) and the centralised, high standard ideal (Lawhon, Nilsson and Silver, 2018; [[#Coutard--2015|Coutard and Rutherford, 2015]] ). Decentralisation is increasingly needed, which the urban poor already engage in through their use of ‘informal’ infrastructure technologies, given their limited access to infrastructure networks. Transformative adaptation pathways that reduce climate risk whilst reducing inequity require an approach that sees infrastructure as inherently social and political.

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==== 6.3.6.2 Mitigation and Adaptation ====

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As analytical concepts, mitigation and adaptation have helped, over the years, to structure thinking and action around climate change. However, since AR5 there has been a growing debate about the adequacy of a neat separation between adaptation and mitigation ( [[#Castán%20Broto--2017|Castán Broto, 2017]] ).

The delivery of climate change action has revealed numerous co-benefits between adaptation and mitigation, around diverse areas such as implementing NBS and delivering health and development benefits (Ürge-Vorsatz et al., 2014; Suckall, Stringer and Tompkins, 2015; [[#Puppim%20de%20Oliveira--2016|Puppim de Oliveira and Doll, 2016]] ; Spencer et al., 2017). There has been a strong interest in delivering development benefits alongside climate mitigation, thus benefiting the overall infrastructure base (Suckall, Stringer and Tompkins, 2015). Some of these co-benefits have also emerged in experiences of urban planning, pointing toward the dilemma of separating adaptation and mitigation in a context in which integration, rather than an analytical differentiation, was seen as being required to transcend work in silos ( [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett, 2015]] ). Because urban planning needs to carefully consider long time scales, the neat separation between mitigation and adaptation runs counter to integrated forms of planning that can consider scales (time and space) carefully and that are aimed to deliver the sustainable city as a whole (Solecki et al., 2015; Grafakos et al., 2020).

For example, the ideas of climate resilient development and climate compatible development help planners to consider the simultaneous wins that emerge between adaptation, mitigation and development, requiring institutional building and partnerships to deliver triple win solutions (Stringer et al., 2014; Seo, Jaber and Srinivasan, 2017; [[#Mitchell--2010|Mitchell and Maxwell, 2010]] ). While the evidence base for the actual possibility of achieving such triple wins remains scarce (Tompkins et al., 2013; [[#Sharifi--2020|Sharifi, 2020]] ), emerging examples show important developments. For example, establishing safe and convenient walking and cycling infrastructure can lead to improvements in population health, thereby highlighting the close interaction between urban land use, infrastructure and population health (Schuster et al., 2017), while clean cooking has the potential to deliver positive health outcomes alongside improvements in air quality and emissions reductions and through reducing pressure on woodland as a fuel source for expanding urban populations ( [[#Msoffe--2017|Msoffe, 2017]] ). Furthermore, active transport infrastructure reduces air pollution and related health risks, and helps to mitigate further climate change (Schuster et al., 2017). These are supported by city networks such as the C40 Clean Air Cities Declaration and the Clean Air Coalition that complements WHO guidelines and standards, for example through the Breathe Life Campaign. In conclusion, in both urban environments and infrastructural sectors, triple wins are only realisable through broader perspectives that link climate compatible development to institutional change or the achievements of wider welfare objectives such as those enshrined in the United Nations 2030 Agenda of Development (Castán Broto et al., 2015; England et al., 2018) ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ).

The aspiration to deliver climate change action within a broader agenda of transformative change, introduced in the SREX report, received renewed attention after the publication of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, which argues for a focus on urban transformations and highlighted that informal settlements were vital for understanding the delivery of these transformations. Deep decarbonisation has emerged as a new idea that regards the development of low or zero carbon pathways as a condition for good adaptation in the long term. Decarbonisation becomes urgent in the face of growing impacts attributable to climate change (Ribera et al., 2015; Bataille et al., 2016; Wesseling et al., 2017). Urbanisation opens opportunities for deep mitigation in low-impact developments, and hence, it is imperative to understand the implications of those opportunities for climate action ( [[#Mulugetta--2018|Mulugetta and Broto, 2018]] ). These gains are not limited to urban areas. The reliance on connected urban–rural systems for water, food and fuel has led to city government and urban-based businesses supporting landscape adaptations in rural hinterlands with strong potential for mitigation and rural development co-benefits. Water Funds bring downstream urban public and private finance to support upstream rural residents to make land use and agricultural management decisions to avoid damaging runoff, soil erosion and downstream sedimentation with reduction in water quality and increased flood risk. There are more than 30 Water Funds in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. These operate at landscape scale; the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund, Kenya (Vogl et al., 2017), planned for a USD 10 million investment in Water Fund-led conservation interventions, with a projected return of USD 21.5 million in economic benefits over a 30-year timeframe ( [[#Apse--2015|Apse and Bryant, 2015]] ). However, these investments do not occur where communities lack funding or the institutions to direct funding from downstream beneficiaries to upstream residents (Brauman et al., 2019).

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'''Box 6.4 | Adapting to Concurrent Risk: COVID-19 and Urban Climate Change'''
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COVID-19 impacts have highlighted the depth and unevenness of systemic social vulnerability and the compounding characteristics of contemporary development models, with direct relevance to climate change risk accumulation and its reduction (Patel et al., 2020b; [[#Manzanedo--2020|Manzanedo and Manning, 2020]] ; [[#Bahadur--2020|Bahadur and Dodman, 2020]] ). This is plain at the global level: of the estimated 119–124 million additional people induced into poverty by COVID-19 in 2020, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa each contribute two-fifths (Lakner et al., 2021). These are rapidly urbanising and highly climate-hazard-exposed world regions, indicating COVID-19 impacts may further concentrate risk in these regions. Within cities, COVID-19 and climate change risk and loss is concurrent by gender, race and income or livelihood, for example, when vulnerable elderly populations are simultaneously exposed to COVID-19 and heatwave risk. Globally, in 2020, about 431.7 million vulnerable people were exposed to extreme heat during the COVID-19 pandemic, including about 75.5 million during the July and August 2020 European heatwave, with an excess mortality of over 9000 people arising from heat exposure ( [[#Walton--2020|Walton and van Aalst, 2020]] ).

The pandemic has demonstrated the multiple, often reinforcing, ways in which specific drivers of vulnerability interact both in generating urban risk and shaping who is more or less able to recover (Phillips et al., 2020; Honey-Rosés et al., 2020) (see [[#6.2|Section 6.2]] ). Again, this is not a new lesson for urban climate change adaptation, but it is a lesson that has not yet been seen to enter into routine practice for urban adaptation. Two key challenges for climate change adaptation are the associations between COVID-19 risk and urban connectivity and overcrowding. Connectivity has been presented in urban adaptation policy as a virtue, a means to share risk and diversity inputs (Ge et al., 2019; [[#Kim--2020|Kim and Bostwick, 2020]] ), COVID-19 has surfaced the unevenness with which people and places are connected and also the need to balance connectivity against risk transfer, through the failure of food supply chains or remittance flows, as well as by the direct transfer of disease (Challinor et al., 2018). High-density living has advantages for urban resource efficiency including benefiting climate change mitigation. When high-density living is not supported by adequate access to critical infrastructure (sufficient internal living space, access to potable water and sanitation, access to open green space), this exacerbates overcrowding and generates vulnerability to multiple risks, including climate change hazards and communicable disease (Bamweyana et al., 2020; Hamidi, Sabouri and Ewing, 2020; [[#Peters--2020|Peters, 2020]] ; Satterthwaite et al., 2020). Where overcrowding coincides with precarious livelihoods, for example in informal settlements, risk is further elevated ( [[#Wilkinson--2020|Wilkinson, 2020]] ). Neighbourhood associations (a benefit of high-density living) have been an important source of resilience through providing trusted information, access to food and water for washing during the pandemic and serving populations unable to access government or market provision (Pelling et al., 2021). Here local organising has not only met gaps in service provision, but opened dialogue to vision and organise for alternative development futures. These distinctly urban challenges should be read as a sub-set of wider cross-cutting lessons for recovery from COVID-19 (see Cross-Chapter Box COVID in Chapter 7).

Where responses to COVID-19 include addressing inequities in social infrastructure, this opens a considerable and potentially society-wide opportunity to reduce social vulnerability to climate change risks (see Cross-Chapter Box COVID in Chapter 7).

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