Cities and the challenge of multiscalar climate justice: climate governance and social equity in Chicago, Birmingham, and Vancouver

ABSTRACT

The imperative of climate justice has been gaining political and discursive power in international climate negotiations. Yet scholars are just beginning to investigate how climate policies are impacting social equity in practice. This paper contributes concrete examples and a multiscalar analysis to this emerging understanding. As cities are increasingly important players in global climate governance, it examines cases from three cities in the global North that have made notable attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way: Chicago, Illinois; Birmingham, England; and Vancouver, British Columbia. These cases show that there is significant potential for cities to further global climate justice through emission reductions while enhancing social justice locally. However, they also demonstrate the importance of understanding just carbon mitigation as a multiscalar phenomenon. In each of these cities, leaders’ abilities to mitigate climate change in a just way are shaped by larger processes of changing global markets, political opportunities and constraints, and inconsistent national regulatory environments. To the extent that cities continue to act as important sites of the carbon mitigation necessary to achieve global climate justice, this research highlights the necessity of creating national and global political conditions that enable the implementation of just climate mitigation in urban areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate justice
• city sustainability
• Vancouver
• Chicago
• Birmingham

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 49th annual meeting of the International Studies Association on 19 February 2015. I would like to thank Nik Janos and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts, as well as everyone in Birmingham, Chicago, and Vancouver who took the time to talk with me about their city. Funding for this research was provided by the Colorado College Social Science Executive Committee and the Mrachek Fellowship for Early Career Scholars.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In each case questions of the justice of participation and recognition are also present. See McKendry (forthcoming) for a discussion of the importance of participatory justice in Birmingham and Chicago.

2. In England the government defines households as being in fuel poverty if they have required fuel costs that are above the national median level, and were the household to spend that amount on fuel, they would be left with a residual income below the official poverty line. The Devolved Authorities determine their rates of fuel poverty separately, using a different definition.

3. BES was originally called the Green New Deal.

4. Accessed 15 January 2015 from https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/birmingham_energy_savers_carilli.

5. For example, in my interviews with opposition candidates conducted in Vancouver in August 2014, both the Green Party candidate and the conservative Cedar Party candidate were highly critical of the city's densification efforts.