Inclusive urban futures: climate justice in small island developing states

Abstract Climate justice is viewed by small island developing states (SIDS) as critical to their transformative development, especially given that their carbon footprints are small, but the severity of climate change impacts is increasing, forcing them to divert scarce financial resources away from development to disaster preparedness and post disaster recovery. Urban dwellers are highly disadvantaged by frequent flooding and more intense tropical cyclones resulting increasingly in calls from urban stakeholders for greater inclusiveness in shaping the urban future. Climate justice offers a crucial lens for examining urban climate adaptation in SIDS, highlighting the need to urgently address underlying inequities and power imbalances. This paper seeks to explore the critical question of how to take action to achieve urban adaptation in a manner that is simultaneously fair and inclusive. It specifically examines how SIDS can pursue urban adaptation in ways that uphold seven interrelated dimensions of climate justice: distributive, procedural, recognitional, epistemic, corrective, intergenerational, and multi-species justice. It includes examples from the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific, using a qualitative document-based analysis drawing on grey and published literature on urban adaptation initiatives. The main argument put forward in this paper is that urban adaptation in SIDS is not only critical for survival, but it offers an opportunity for transformative change. If done right, climate adaptation can strengthen social inclusion, rectify historical inequities, and safeguard both people and ecosystems for generations to come.