Emily Boyd

Recognizing that privilege and marginalization intersect in complex manners, researchers are calling for intersectional approaches to climate adaptation and climate justice research. Despite these growing calls, the extent to which intersectionality has been used in adaptation research and how it deepens understandings of power and justice in climate adaptation is understudied. We use a combined Systematic‐Narrative review of empirical academic literature ( n = 37) focused on intersectionality and climate adaptation to thematically examine these questions and identify topics to explore further. Our results highlight that intersectional adaptation research remains limited and that critical challenges of doing intersectional adaptation research remain. Empirical focus has been geographically clustered, especially in South Asia and parts of Africa, and gender remains a central focal point of intersectional analysis. We find that intersectionality can help expand understandings of justice and power in adaptation research related to unequal distribution of adaptation costs and benefits, access to and influence over decision‐making, and recognition of diversity in worldviews and values. It can also situate adaptation across scales and help understand adaptation as a power‐laden process. While intersectionality has empirical utility for adaptation research, its application requires reflection on and grappling with methodological and conceptual challenges. However, given intersectional adaptation research's policy‐relevance and potential contribution to driving adaptation justice in practice, these are challenges that adaptation scholars should endeavor to address.

With sea‐level rise and increasingly frequent extreme weather events threatening communities, ecosystems and built infrastructure alike, climate change adaptation is pressing. This remains true in high‐income countries where research capturing power dynamics underpinning adaptation continues to develop with implications for how policy and exclusion can be understood. Through a systematic review, the state‐of‐the‐art concerning climate adaptation politics in high‐income countries is analyzed, identifying n = 31 articles from Scopus and Web of Science. Key literature findings include a dominance of technical‐scientific narratives with possible consequences for community exclusion and an implicit acknowledgement of actor network importance. This review expands conceptually around power dynamics relevant to narratives and inclusivity in adaptation politics through a governmentality framework that could usefully foreground the identification and analysis of cross‐scale power dynamics implicitly identified by the literature, but which remain open to more explicit development. Governmentality could thereby facilitate enhanced understandings of adaptation power, politics and networks, which research and policy have recognized as important yet been slow to address within high‐income countries possessing climate vulnerabilities. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation Policy and Governance > Governing Climate Change in Communities, Cities, and Regions The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice

The international discourse on Loss and Damages (L&D) under the climate convention is ongoing. Significant attention has been given to a dedicated fund to assist vulnerable countries to recover from climate related L&D. While much of the political discussion focuses on the amount of funding needed and who should pay, less attention is given to risk reduction initiatives eligible for the L&D funding mechanisms. There is also an emerging need to link L&D funding with adaptation (funds) which is not yet being given enough consideration. Against this background, the paper presents different dimensions of loss and damage for example on severity and compensability, and provides a new perspective that goes beyond the current discourse of economic versus non-economic or direct versus indirect loss and damage. This analysis is complemented with a set of L&D related case studies to explore both conventional economic dimensions of L&D, and under-represented dimensions, such as population displacement and human mobility, territory and cultural heritage. These cases highlight how different types of L&D are articulated in climate related initiatives. The cases point towards the need to better connect L&D and adaptation strategies and funding to strengthen climate resilience. The paper informs the ongoing international debate on L&D, highlighting the importance of understanding its different dimensions, the effectiveness of climate-related policies across countries and the need to rethink the concept of L&D as compensation, since this falls short of supporting climate resilience. Recommendations emphasize national and local level monitoring, funding tools and international cooperation.

To a large degree, economic metrics and mechanisms underpin the design of adaptation policies. Such a focus has undesired consequences on the effectiveness of adaptation measures as well as on our ability to prevent incommensurable losses. The article puts forward four strategic changes in adaptation policy that shift the focus away from markets and toward community-level visions of what a liveable future entails. These changes involve accommodating diverse ethical positions, through decision-making processes that are rich in information, include diverse perspectives, and are transparent with respect to the value trade-offs they entail; reflecting social norms in adaptation, through community-led initiatives whereby local priorities and cultural expressions are given centre-stage in the design of adaptation responses; limiting path dependence, through champions within key institutions that are prepared to affect change in times of disruptive climate disasters; and enfranchising marginalised groups, notably by incorporating multiple knowledges and worldviews in adaptation policy, promoting deliberation and negotiation, and subverting exclusionary practices.

Non-technical summary: Cities typically treat migration and sustainability as separate policy domains. When migration is highlighted in the context of sustainability in urban destination areas, it is typically understood to have no, or at worst, negative impacts on sustainability. As a result, migration and migrants are commonly left out of sustainability policy and planning. Here, we present emerging evidence to reframe the debate, demonstrating that migration is a force for sustainable development and that migrants can be sustainability actors in urban environments. We point to key action points for cities to better address the migration–sustainability nexus and harness this potential. Technical summary: For long, migration has been recognized in literature as a force for societal transformations. Yet, mainstream policies dealing with sustainability generally downplay the role of migration. The Sustainable Development Goals, for example, frame migration as a temporary phenomenon needing management rather than as an integral part of sustainable development. As a result, cities generally overlook broader perspectives on migration and transformation in their sustainability strategies. Here, we present key policy insights building on an emerging field of research exploring the migration–sustainability nexus in urban governance. We focus specifically on the city scale, recognizing that cities are situated at the crossroads of migration and sustainability challenges and opportunities, bringing new possibilities to address current sustainability challenges. For example, migrants interact with their destination areas through influencing consumption behavior and resource conservation and migration contributes to sustainable development through the potential of enhancing wellbeing of residents. There is thus an urgent opportunity to address policy gaps to embrace the potentially transformative role of migration for sustainability transitions. We present critical action points to incorporate new insights into policymaking, emphasizing integrated, coordinated and reflexive approaches across all levels of governance. Social media summary: Migration drives sustainable development. We show how urban governance can seize opportunities for transformation.

The scientific concept of losses and damages relates to residual climate change impacts after mitigation and adaptation. Losses and damages are truly borderless, albeit experienced differentially between and within countries due uneven spatial vulnerability. Despite Australia being a high-income country, losses and damages have been particularly severe. Just over the last 6 years, farmers in East Gippsland, Victoria – the site of this research – have been severely affected by prolonged drought, extreme heat, bushfires, and floods, with emerging extreme event attribution evidence for specific extreme events such as heatwaves and bushfires. In this mixed-methods study, we explore a range of questions related to climate change and extreme event opinion, experienced losses and damages, disproportionality, responsibility, and thresholds to leaving the sector and relocation. We find that while East Gippsland farmers’ perceptions of anthropogenic climate change remains polarised and vary immensely, they are already experiencing significant economic and non-economic losses and damages; they recognise farmers are disproportionately affected by climate extremes compared to the broader population but always thought there were others more affected than themselves; they generally perceive everyone is responsible for the management of extreme events; and very few have or are planning to leave the sector or relocate despite an increasingly uncertain future. Our research extends knowledge on climate change losses and damages as part of a global stocktake – who it affects, how and why, and at what scale.