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

==== 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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