Why green “climate gentrification” threatens poor and vulnerable populations

Abstract

Cities in the Global North are increasingly adopting green interventions meant to enhance their climate resilience capacity. Plans include Philadelphia, PA’s Growing Stronger, Boston, MA’s Resilient Boston Harbor (Fig. 1), Malmo, Sweden’s Green and Blue Infrastructure Plan, and Barcelona, Spain’s Green Infrastructure and Biodiversity Plan. Such plans and interventions mark the emergence of a new type of climate planning: green climate resilience. Fig. 1. If not done right, green infrastructure, such as that shown here in East Boston, is potentially a source of climate injustice. In today’s cities, however, low-income communities, people of color, and migrant communities face well-documented forms of climate injustice. Typically, these populations have contributed the least to climate change, have had the least access to environmental amenities such as green space, are the most exposed to climate hazards and effects (1), and have the fewest resources to adapt (2⇓–4). We argue here that an emerging fifth type of climate injustice arises because these populations are among the social groups most likely to experience residential and social displacement—in the short and mid-term—from green climate infrastructure (5⇓–7) and its associated gentrification risks. It’s what we call green “climate gentrification.” As a group of social scientists who specialize in environmental justice, we thus call for climate researchers to demystify the supposed benefits of green climate interventions and identify inequities embedded in urban green resilience (8, 9), especially interventions related to green climate gentrification. Green infrastructure and urban greening projects—green roofs, resilient parks and greenways, rain gardens, or detention basins and canals—are often hailed as ways to protect cities against climate change impacts. These measures include improved storm water management and mitigation of hazards such as flooding (10), the urban heat island effect, and landslides. As such, green infrastructure projects often require lower operating and … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: Isabelle.Anguelovski{at}uab.cat. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1