Enabler 5

Overview

Our fifth and final enabler is to do with ethics and justice. What this means in practice is ensuring that the people and places that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts are given full consideration as we plan our adaptation responses, and that considerations of fairness are fully embedded in everything we do. We understand that some groups and communities are disproportionately impacted by the changing climate or maybe limited in how they can participate in addressing climate action. Communities and groups impacted by issues of vulnerability, inequality and disadvantage must be a part of collaboration and engaged in framing what is fair and just in determining priorities for climate action.

  What does this enabler involve?

1. Inclusion of an equity and justice lens in adaptation policy and statements: our national and local climate adaptation policies and strategies should explicitly mention equity and justice issues, especially ensuring means to participate, and equitable access to adaptation and development opportunities for vulnerable groups. Our policies should challenge social norms that limit participation and exert exclusion.
2. Reducing risk from political attention cycles: we need to build multiple rationales for climate adaptation actions with convincing arguments on what we need to protect and enhance, how it responds to the range of sectors, groups, needs and concerns in a place and why this is important to different groups, so that agreement on the need for adaptation can transcend political faultlines and attention cycles. This must be supported by broad public buy in for climate adaptation actions, supported by formal and informal championsrepresenting different stakeholders and groups.
3. Actions to understand and address unequal exposure to climate risks depending on gender, ethnicity and race: We need to build a strong research and experience-driven evidence base for understanding how different people, ecosystems and places are affected differently by climate change, so that ethical and justice actions can be most effectively targeted. Our adaptation policies and actions should be underpinned by careful consideration of consequences and outcomes through dialogue between people with different expertise and knowledge systems, so that adaptation actions do not inadvertently replicate or increase existing disadvantages and vulnerabilities.

 What drives this enabler forward?

1. A good rationale and understanding of the relevance of adaptation actions to society and the environment with legislative provision capable of sustaining action over political cycles in a way that can sustain action across political faultlines and attention cycles.
2. Policies that foreground the importance of understanding how those most impacted by climate change understand and experience adaptation and resilience challenges in their daily lives.
3. Awareness of cultural differences and sensitivities in understanding vulnerability, exclusion, poverty and climate justice.
4. Consideration of fairness in distribution and process right at the outset of our adaptation decision-making.
5. Deliberate and sustained measures to align local adaptation with social protection, which is targeted towards those who are most socially vulnerable.

 What might inhibit this enabler from being realised?

1. A just and ethical adaptation response might be inhibited by our focus on emergency response-type approaches to adaptation, and to short-term issues.
2. Business-as-usual models that prioritise economic growth and political cycles, rather than taking a longer-term and transformative view, are not conducive to changing the processes and structures that make some people more vulnerable to climate risk in the first place.
3. Previous experiences of unfairness and injustice can make those who are least empowered and most vulnerable cautious to engaging with programmes or initiatives aimed at enhancing their climate resilience. In a similar manner, limited opportunities for the groups of people most vulnerable to climate change, but least empowered, will inhibit progress.