apologies for cross-posting
Special Issue in Sustainability: Ethics of Climate Adaptation
It is now widely accepted by climate scientists that climate change requires
both mitigation actions to reduce climate change and adaptation to cope with
its effects, such as increased droughts, heat waves, and flooding. In recent
years, resilience has emerged as one of the leading paradigms for adaptation
policies. These policies prompt important ethical questions. First, climate
adaptation and resilience policies establish a role division in terms of who
has to do what, with that settling questions about which parties are included
and excluded, and which parties are beneficiaries, victimized, and forgotten.
These policies confront us with strong queries about social justice and
responsibility, necessitating critical reflection. Second, addressing the
different effects of climate change may require conflicting interventions. For
example, strategies to prevent flooding may conflict with drought strategies
or ecological objectives. This prompts questions about how to reconcile or
prioritize these different interventions and about whose claims to
acknowledge. Additionally, addressing issues of climate change involves a
long-term planning orientation taking place at different territorial scales.
This may shift the focus away from the everyday environmental justice
struggles that local communities are currently struggling with. Third, climate
adaptation policies demand new kinds of solutions, which to a large extent are
informed by scientific expertise. The way these science-based activities
affect matters of social justice often seem to focus mainly on the
effectiveness of policies instead of their legitimacy. This calls for critical
analysis of the interwoven character of scientific knowledge development,
policy-making, and societal impacts, and particularly the epistemic injustices
that emerge when local knowledge is dismissed.
This Special Issue aims to address the different ethical questions raised by
climate adaptation from a multidisciplinary angle. We especially welcome
papers on the following topics:
-
The inclusion and exclusion of specific social groups in climate
politics;
-
The designation of responsibilities to actors regarding climate
adaptation and resilience policies;
-
Scalar politics in climate adaptation policy, as climate change issues
transcend geographical, administrative, and temporal scales;
-
The conceptual and/or empirical influence of resilience studies on
climate adaptation policies and the impact of social justice;
-
Questions of epistemic justice and the role of local knowledge in
climate adaptation and resilience policies;
- Quantitative approaches that allow for modelling ethical
considerations in climate adaptation and resilience policies.
For more information: https://www.mdpi.com/si/43526
Prof. Dr. Neelke Doorn
Dr. Udo Pesch
Guest Editors
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