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In Australia, local communities often enact Community-Based Initiatives (CBIs) to respond to climate change through Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). CBIs can also be integrated into the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) agenda. The paper explores the extent to which CBIs promote the mainstreaming of CCA into DRR. Primary data were obtained from interviews with representatives of CBIs and supporting organisations in three local governments of the Hunter Valley (New South Wales, Australia). Findings show that CBIs recognise the potential contribution of climate change in modifying the local hazard profile. CBIs mainstream CCA into DRR by following four approaches: environmental and social justice; sustainability and transition; ecosystem-based approach; and adaptive planning. Partnerships were identified both among CBIs and between CBIs and City Councils; however, conflicts between CBIs, City Councils and business actors emerged, and a lack of commitment by multi-level governments in responding to climate change was revealed. The findings show that CBIs consider CCA and DRR within a broad everyday context related to vulnerability and local development. But we argue that assigning responsibility for climate change issues to CBIs is not a panacea and should not be the only local climate change response. Instead, CBIs need to be included in a larger and long-term commitment by actors that possess access to resources, such as higher levels of government. The paper provides a local Australian perspective on the effectiveness of mainstreaming CCA into DRR and furthers the conversation for the benefit of other communities facing similar challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate adaptation is a complex policy domain, spanning multiple sectors, scales and actors, and wherein those most at risk have the least power. The influence of linear positivist models of science uptake are proving ineffective in a world with increasingly concentrated wealth and power, institutional barriers, and rapidly growing risks facing the many. A plurality of approaches is needed to better examine those dynamics of climate adaptation which are often invisible in models of science uptake – equity, the value of contestation, path dependency – and to consider how to empower communities to find solutions. In this conceptual paper, we argue that bridging existing positivist and interpretivist methods with insights from post-foundational theory so as to underpin pluralism and re-orient ethical principles of justice, strengthens the capacity of social research to support transformative climate adaptation. Principles are proposed to facilitate such bridging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global dimensions of climate change necessitate a response that takes national differences – social, economic, geographic, and cultural – into account. Action-oriented education has a key role to play in advancing citizen engagement in a culture of sustainability. This paper describes research conducted with one such education programme, Youth Leading Environmental Change (YLEC), which operates in six countries and engages university-aged youth in discussion and practice related to global sustainability, systems thinking, and environmental justice. YLEC aims to advance four key competencies; this paper focuses on the goal of action competence, which involves acquiring knowledge, reflecting on experience in the context of one’s values, envisioning alternative futures, and acting individually and collectively to advance those alternatives. The present article examines the impacts of YLEC on environmental action competence in two of the countries involved in this research: Uganda and Germany. In-depth interviews were conducted with participants in both countries to examine the development of action competence during and after the programme. Findings suggest that outcomes differed in each country, reflective of participants’ different lived experiences. YLEC effectively built on the conditions faced in each country to accompany youth to a higher level of awareness and action. These findings have implications for environmental education programmes striving to work with multiple nations and diverse participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how Australia's Indigenous peoples understand and respond to climate change impacts on their traditional land and seas. Our results show that: (i) Indigenous peoples are observing modifications to their country due to climate change, and are doing so in both ancient and colonial time scales; (ii) the ways that climate change terminology is discursively understood and used is fundamental to achieving deep engagement and effective adaptive governance; (iii) Indigenous peoples in Australia exhibit a high level of agency via diverse approaches to climate adaptation; and (iv) humour is perceived as an important cultural component of engagement about climate change and adaptation. However, wider governance regimes consistently attempt to "upscale" Indigenous initiatives into their own culturally governed frameworks - or ignore them totally as they "don't fit" within neoliberal policy regimes. We argue that an opportunity exists to acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous peoples are agents of their own change, and to support the strategic localism of Indigenous adaptation approaches through tailored and place-based adaptation for traditional country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread assumption that most people will not effectively respond to climate risk until they personally experience its negative effects. Yet this assumption raises some interesting questions in the Swedish context. The majority of Swedes say that they have not experienced the negative effects of climate change, but they are among the world's citizens most concerned about and active on the issue. These observations raise the questions – why do many Swedes act progressively if they do not feel environmental risks “closer to home”? Is there something exceptional about Swedish environmental ethics, political culture or governance structures? This paper explores these questions, using the Swedish case to challenge essentialising concepts such as “Giddens’ paradox” which, too often, equate risk perception with self-interest, neglect concern for climate justice and depoliticise climate knowledge. This research suggests that concern for climate justice, rather than self-interest, proves to be a more powerful motivator for climate action in the Swedish context and potentially beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community-based watershed management (CBWM) is today a major policy directive on water resources for most countries. In Latin America, since the 1970s, international aid development agencies have been encouraging decentralisation in water governance through watershed management interventions centred on social participation. This paper discusses whether CBWM projects financed by Canada in some Latin American communities contribute to achieve environmental justice (EJ) in order to shape adaptive capacity to global climate change. It reports the results of a comparative case study between Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Honduras in terms of justice and equity. The central finding is that EJ framework can serve as a methodological tool to better inform on watershed governance and management towards adaptive capacity to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban sustainability issues including climate change mitigation and adaptation, ecological enhancement and livability initiatives have become the rhetorical focus and rationale of many plans and policy documents created by American cities in the last decade. This paper analyses the recent environmentally focused plans for three largest cities of USA to determine how and if their strategies to protect the natural environment engage with the holistic nature of sustainable development strategies promulgated in the literature. Despite the mainstreaming of the sustainability concept, the research shows that these much-lauded and emulated plans largely fail to substantively engage with a fully realised holistic approach, failing to adequately address issues of equitable economic development and environmental justice in their attempts to create a more environmentally sustainable city. The lack of attention paid to such issues suggests not merely that they are perceived as being separate from environmental objectives, but that in some cases they may be seen as oppositional, particularly when contrasted with the way that environmental issues are seen to converge with global city and overall economic development aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice is critical to our efforts to preserve the human habitat from the degradation of pollution and climate change because of the need for cooperation and due to our ignorance of how the intertwined effects of our actions in one locality affect the quality of life in other localities across the world. While environmental justice questions are often focused on the location choices for specific activities that pollute, another important perspective is environmental justice over the life cycle of the production of products. Upon close examination renewable energies, critical alternatives to the fossil fuels which induce climate change, have environmental justice issues over their life cycles. Formal, statutory national law is not sufficient to address environmental justice problems along product life cycles in a world in which production is globalised and environmental effects pass beyond political borders. The responses to this challenge must draw on an interacting combination of information, custom, soft law, such as international standards and certification, and formal national laws. Through an interesting complex of intertwined effects, this system has already advanced our capacity to address environmental justice problems along product life cycles. The magnitude of the challenge and the complexity of the system demand ongoing effort and further innovation. Also, the system is not well configured to address our burgeoning consumption which continues to expand the burdens of future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the “climate gap” in the Southwest US (Arizona and New Mexico), referring to the “disproportionate and unequal implications of climate change and climate change mitigation” for “people of color and the poor” [Shonkoff, S.B.,et al., 2011. The climate gap: environmental health and equity implications of climate change mitigation policies in California.Climatic Change, 109 (Suppl. 1), S485–S503]. The climate and poverty relationship is examined using multi-scaled analysis across three indicators of climate vulnerability, focusing on connections to health, food, and energy during the period 2010–2012. We provide an overview of climate-related social vulnerability in the Southwest based on available federal, state, and county-level census data. We then summarise the results from a stakeholder workshop and in-depth interviews about climate vulnerabilities with social service providers in southern Arizona. We identify a significant Southwest climate gap based on census data and interview findings about climate vulnerability especially relating to high levels of poverty, health disparities, and increasing costs for energy, water, and food. We find that grassroots and community organisations have mobilised to respond to climate and social vulnerability, yet resources for mitigation and adaptation are insufficient given the high level of need. Confronting a changing climate that is projected to be hotter, drier, and with the potential to reach new thresholds, we suggest that more research needs to be done to understand the social and spatial characteristics of climate risk and how low-income populations embody and experience climate risk, and adapt to a changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change presents a complex environmental health and justice challenge for the field of urban planning. To date, the majority of research focuses on measuring local climate efforts and evaluating the general efficacy of adopted climate action plans (CAPs). Cumulatively, these studies argue that socio-economic and demographic variables (such as the fiscal health of cities, city size, and median household income) are important factors in implementing climate policies. Less studied are issues of environmental justice and the impacts of climate change on population health. Through interviews with urban planners and a document analysis of CAPs, this study assesses how California cities with high levels of pollution and social vulnerability address climate change and public health. The findings of this study show that CAPs in these cities rarely analyse whether greenhouse gas reduction strategies will also yield health co-benefits, such as a reduction in the co-pollutants of climate change (i.e. ozone, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxides). In many instances, the net co-benefits of health are not monetised, quantified, or even identified by local governments. In California's most impacted cities, climate planning activities and work on public health are happening in a parallel manner rather than through an integrated approach. The results suggest a need for increased opportunities for interagency coordination and staff training to conduct health analyses, free and easily accessible tools, methods for prioritising funding streams, and the development of partnerships with community-based organisations for linking climate planning with public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relevance of environmental justice (EJ) and climate change debates as points of articulation and mobilisation among community groups responding to a proposed refinery. It then compares media coverage of the refinery project, a bi-national pipeline and other energy and climate-related news events. The analytical frame joins the EJ paradigm with citizen mobilisation on issues of climate change and energy projects that emit greenhouse gases and that discourage development of renewable sources. Data were collected and analysed from websites, public message boards and media documents. Findings indicate that a community-based anti-refinery campaign combined local EJ struggles with climate activism, while challenging fossil fuel dependencies and calling for renewable regional energy. A climate justice community formed – yet their voices were in their blogs and websites, not in local or national media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the potential for cross-fertilisation between the sustainable consumption (SC) scholarship and the environmental justice (EJ) scholarship. The article first maps the two areas of scholarship, discussing the cognitive, social marketing and social provisioning systems literatures of SC and the empirical and conceptual literature on EJ. The article then discusses the potential for cross-fertilisation between the two areas of scholarship. It indicates how SC scholarship can benefit from the social justice sensitivity of the EJ scholarship and how the latter area of scholarship can gain a whole new area of empirical research focusing on social justice aspects of consumption. The article seeks to demonstrate the social and policy significance of the cross-fertilisation by comparing the consumption and EJ implications of carbon taxation and personal carbon allowance trading as tools of carbon management. The article suggests that to be fair both strategies of carbon management require complementary (albeit different) measures that address background inequalities and capabilities to act in the setting created by the instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]