Abstract
Climate change and the policy responses to it have implications in terms of (in)justice. Research in fields such as political ecology and environmental justice emphasizes the importance of policy-making addressing and responding to climate injustices. It, moreover, stresses that democratic engagement is imperative, since no universal agreement on the meaning of “justice” exists. Democratic engagement on climate (in)justice is, however, hampered by the predominance of technocratic policy frames. Considering this, knowledge of ways to promote democratic engagement is called for. This study develops such knowledge related to policy-making for climate change adaptation and resilience at the local level, in developed country contexts. Specifically, it draws on the “what’s the problem represented to be?” approach to conceptualize different styles of democratic engagement and examine the possibilities and limitations of each. From the data, comprised of previous research, representations of three styles of democratic engagement are identified and analyzed: (1) closure-oriented engagement centered on changing behaviors, (2) closure-oriented engagement centered on changing the systemic production of unjust practices, and (3) disruptive engagement centered on changing the systemic production of unjust practices. The contributions of this study are relevant to researchers, policymakers, activists and others interested in how to promote a democratization of climate policy-making.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
To retrieve as many potentially relevant studies as possible in the sample and exclude those not relevant, I first delimited the research to studies on justice issues related to climate change adaptation and resilience policy-making and planning at the local level in developed countries
This section details the problematizations in the ten analyzed studies that represent different styles of democratic engagement
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The fact that human activities cause climatic changes that undermine the resilience of societies and ecosystems has incited calls for policies that alter such unsustainable activities [1,2]. A circumstance that complicates policy making is, that both the impacts of and policy responses to climate change have implications in terms of (in)justice [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Scholars in research fields such as environmental justice [9,10]
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