Urban Resilience in Climate Change – Lecture Notes (Fall 2025)

Social Equity

  • Social Equity: fair access to livelihood, education and resources; full participation in the political and cultural life of the community; self-determination in meeting fundamental needs. Source: Ecotrust, 2011 [in Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) 2012].
    • Key components: access, participation, and self-determination.
  • Relationship to resilience: ensures that vulnerability reductions and adaptation benefits are shared equitably across communities.

Environmental Justice

  • Environmental Justice: the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. Source: CA Government Code Section 65040.12 [in ART 2012].
  • Core idea: no group bears disproportionate environmental burdens.

Climate Justice

  • Climate Justice:
    • All species have the right to access and obtain the resources needed to have an equal chance of survival and freedom from discrimination.
    • Focuses on the root causes of climate crisis through an intersectional lens of racism, classism, capitalism, economic injustice, and environmental harm. Source: United Frontline Table (2020).
  • Significance: centers equity in climate action by addressing systemic inequalities and historical drivers of harm.

Climate Equity

  • Climate Equity: “Climate Equity ensures the just distribution of the benefits of climate protection efforts and alleviates unequal burdens created by climate change. This requires intentional policies and projects that simultaneously address the effects of -- and the systems that perpetuate -- both climate change and inequity.”
  • Source: Portland Climate Action Plan, 2015.
  • Practical implication: embed equity in implementation, not just goals.

Just Recovery

  • Just Recovery: “a framework that resists the status quo solutions of disaster recovery that focuses on aid, extraction, and displacement and moves toward transformative solutions that respond, recover, and rebuild.”
  • Source: United Frontline Table (2020).
  • Implication: recovery should transform underlying vulnerabilities, not reproduce them.

Frontline Communities

  • Frontline Communities: “those impacted most by climate change and its root causes, which include white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization.”
  • Also described as embedded in legacy struggles against extractive and polluting industries…
  • They experience “disproportionate exposure… result[ing] in acute and chronic impacts to human and environmental health.”
  • Source: United Frontline Table (2020).

4 TYPES OF JUSTICE (SOCIAL EQUITY)

1) Procedural Justice: structuring a decision-making process for equitable participation.
2) Distributive Justice: equitable distribution of resources, burdens, or impacts.
3) Interactive Justice: respectful and inclusive social relationships between participants and decision-makers.
4) Restorative Justice: participants take active steps to repair trust when harm has been done, possibly including restitution of land, money, etc.
Source: based on J.L. Aranda Nucamendi (2018).

Equity-focused Examples (based on Aranda Nucamendi 2018)

  • Equity focused on representativeness (Interactive Justice, Restorative Justice): Seattle launched an initiative to end institutional racism and promote social justice across government sectors.
  • Equity based on need (Distributive Justice, Restorative Justice): California’s cap-and-trade system for GHG emissions uses 25%25\% of income for disadvantaged communities.
  • Equity focused on accessibility (Distributive Justice, Interactive Justice): Philadelphia’s Water Department launched an income-based water rate structure.
  • Source: J.L. Aranda Nucamendi (2018).

Restorative, Regenerative (Brown et al. 2018)

  • Brown et al. discuss a shift from a conventional/green/sustainable framework toward a restorative and regenerative economy. The regenerative economy emphasizes rebirth of life itself and ongoing self-renewal, building relationships so socio-economic and ecological systems can evolve.
  • A regenerative economy depends on renewable energy sources and uses fewer materials, contrasting with conventional and green theories that often focus on economic growth as the primary path to wellbeing.
  • Sustainability becomes more robust and integrated in a regenerative system by incorporating humanistic and ecological values.
  • In Fullerton (2015), Figure 11 presents stages from conventional to regenerative economy:
    • Stages: CONVENTIONAL → GREEN → SUSTAINABLE → RESTORATIVE → REGENERATIVE
    • Additional labels in the diagram: DEGENERATING; mechanistic design vs holistic thinking; energy/materials usage trends: LESS energy/materials required at regenerative stages.
    • Elements shown: Economy placed within context of Place, Culture, Enterprise, Government, and Commons.
  • Key contrasts:
    • Regenerative vs circular economy: circular aims to keep products at high utility; regenerative aims to rebirth life and continually renew itself.
    • Regenerative economy emphasizes systemic renewal, relationships, and alignment of ecological and social values.
  • References: Brown et al. (2018); Lyle (1994) for regenerative concept; Fullerton (2015) for Figure 11.

Frontlines Climate Justice [Demos 2020]

  • Environmental Justice: Protect frontline communities from continuing harms of fossil fuel, industrial, and built environment pollution.
  • Just Recovery: Ensuring just and equitable recovery from, and resiliency against, climate disasters.
  • Climate Equity Accountability: Elevating equity and stakeholder decision-making in federal climate rules and programmatic investments.
  • Energy Democracy: Remaking the monopoly fossil fuel energy system as a clean, renewably-sourced, and democratically-controlled commons.

DISCUSSION PROMPT

  • Discussion: Discuss the definitions of Climate Justice and Just Recovery, giving examples from course readings, pertinent news, or a community you care about.
  • Highlight examples of how we do climate justice in resilience efforts (not only the injustices).

END SLIDES / FOOTER

  • Slide 14 appears to contain a footer with the text “PAYEMEN PROTECTORS” (content not provided in the transcript). Use as a note of end-of-presentation material.