Jenny Åkeson and Léopold Salzenstein

 

Cities have historically been perceived as large polluters. London, for example, has been plagued with issues of air quality throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, largely because of coal consumption (1). 

Today, tables have turned and cities are frequently framed as solutions to the climate crisis (2). From the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, cities are increasingly joining forces to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and implement projects to adapt the urban environment to our rapidly changing climate (3). These climate change adaptation projects are often portrayed as win-win, one-size-fits-all solutions (4). Emphasis is usually put on their potential co-benefits, seldom on their negative externalities.

However, researchers have started to emphasize that climate change adaptation projects can also create and reproduce vulnerabilities, while simultaneously invisibilizing power struggles around the deeply political decisions of who to protect and how to fund these efforts (5). Consequently, it seems essential to better understand the different outcomes of climate change adaptation projects and policies, so as to avoid maladaptive outcomes – when adaptation policies end up being counter-productive and increasing climate vulnerabilities (6). As most climate change adaptation projects are still in their infancy, however, assessing their long-term impacts proves to often be time challenging (7).

This was our starting point when we started our research last year, as part of our Master’s degree in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation at Lund University in Sweden. How could we study the long-term impact of often recently implemented climate change adaptation projects?

While looking into the future was obviously beyond our capacity, we thought of reversing our approach: could we instead draw insights from the past? Historical studies seemed to provide a valuable lens to climate change adaptation research – while the term of adaptation is fairly recent, cities have shaped their local environment for centuries (8). Historical accounts could help us document the impact of these past adaptation measures — such as flood risk management — and help us unveil the deep roots of potentially inequitable adaptation policies (9).

But we quickly came across a new obstacle: historical searches for origin have their limits, and often end up relaying overly simplified, linear and misleading narratives (10). This is where we decided to turn to an approach specifically aimed at avoiding this culprit: Foulcauldian genealogy. By embracing past complexities — descent — and power relationships — emergence — genealogy provides a useful tool to question the taken-for-granted nature of adaptation narratives, as well as their consequences for socio-economic inequalities.

Our study applied a genealogical lens to flood risk management and urban development, in the context of Glasgow in Scotland. Glasgow has a long history of floods, which are expected to worsen in the coming decades due to climate change (11). At the same time, the city suffers from significant socio-economic disparities as well as some of the highest flood disadvantage levels in Scotland. Flood disadvantage is a measure of the flood risk experienced by the most socially vulnerable part of the population (12). Consequently, Glasgow proved an interesting and insightful case study.

Genealogy helped us to unveil the complex history of flood risk management and urban development in Glasgow. While flood risk management only played a marginal role in the urban development of the city, we found that it was impossible to understand its modern characteristics without accounting for the many complexities which formed the city’s past. Studying the past of flood management in Glasgow showed us how modern narratives of sustainability, cooperation, regeneration and the responsibilities of the individual were far from apolitical. Similar narratives could be identified in the past, where they tended to silence deeply rooted inequalities and power struggles – pointing towards similar mechanisms at play in today’s policies.     

Overall, our study criticises the “taken-for-grantedness” of modern climate adaptation narratives and problematizes the linear historical thinking in flood risk management and climate change adaptation research. It also highlights the role of inequalities and power struggles in shaping what is often presented as apolitical measures. These insights, in turn, bring perspective and historical depth to the academic literature on climate urbanism, green gentrification, maladaptation and resilience.

If you are interested in reading our study, you can find it here: https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/9065032 

 

References:

1. Ritchie, A. (2017). What the history of London’s air pollution can tell us about the future of today’s growing megacities. Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution

2. Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2020). Why does everyone think cities can save the planet? Urban Studies, 57(11), 2201-2221.

3. Chu, E., Anguelovski, I., & Roberts, D. (2017). Climate adaptation as strategic urbanism: Assessing opportunities and     uncertainties for equity and inclusive development in cities. Cities, 60, 378-387.

 Anguelovski, I., Shi, L., Chu, E., Gallagher, D., Goh, K., Lamb, Z., Reeve, K. & Teicher, H. (2016). Equity impacts of urban land use planning for climate adaptation: Critical perspectives from the global north and south. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 36(3), 333-348.

4. Newman, G., Dongying, L., Rui, Z., & Dingding, R. (2019). Resilience through regeneration: The economics of repurposing vacant land with green infrastructure. Landscape architecture frontiers, 6(6), 10-23.

 Mees, H. L. P., & Driessen, P. P. (2011). Adaptation to climate change in urban areas: Climate-greening London, Rotterdam, and Toronto. Climate law, 2(2), 251-280.

 Woodruff, S. C., Meerow, S., Stults, M., & Wilkins, C. (2018). Adaptation to resilience planning: Alternative pathways to prepare for climate change. Journal of Planning Education and Research.

5. Sovacool, B. K., Linnér, B. O., & Goodsite, M. E. (2015). The political economy of climate adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 5(7), 616-618.

 Shi, L., Chu, E., Anguelovski, I., Aylett, A., Debats, A., Goh, K., Schenk, T., Seto, K. C., Dodman, D., Roberts, D., Roberts, J. T., & VanDeveer, S. T. (2016). Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research. Nature Climate Change, 6, 131–137.

 Atteridge, A. & Remling, E. (2018). Is adaptation reducing vulnerability or redistributing it?. WIREs Climate Change, 9, 1-16.

 Anguelovski, I., Connolly, J.J., Pearsall, H., Shokry, G., Checker, M., Maantay, J., Gould, K., Lewis, T., Maroko, A. and Roberts, J.T. (2019b). Opinion: Why green “climate gentrification” threatens poor and vulnerable populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(52), 26139-26143.

6. Atteridge, A. & Remling, E. (2018). Is adaptation reducing vulnerability or redistributing it?. WIREs Climate Change, 9, 1-16.

 Barnett, J. & O'Neil, S. (2010). Maladaptation. Global Environmental Change, 20(1), 211- 213.

7. Juhola, S., Glaas, E., Linnér, B.-O. & Neset, T.-S. (2016). Redefining maladaptation. Environmental Science & Policy, 55(1), 135-140.

8. Adamson, G. C., Hannaford, M. J., & Rohland, E. J. (2018). Re-thinking the present: The role of a historical focus in climate change adaptation research. Global Environmental Change, 48, 195-205.

9. Shi, L. (2020b). From Progressive Cities to Resilient Cities: Lessons from History for New Debates in Equitable Adaptation to Climate Change. Urban Affairs Review, 00(0) 1-38.

10. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 139–164.

 Tamboukou, M. (1999). Writing Genealogies: an exploration of Foucault's strategies for doing research, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 20(2), 201-217.

11. Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). (2015). Flood Risk Management Strategy - Clyde and the Loch Lomond. Retrieved from: https://www2.sepa.org.uk/frmstrategies/pdf/lpd/LPD_11_Full.pdf

 England, K., Morris, M., Wolstenholme, R. Allen., K. and Macpherson, D. (2018). Towards a Climate Ready Clyde: A climate change risk and opportunity assessment for Glasgow City Region. Glasgow: Climate Ready Clyde.

 Climate Ready Clyde (2020). Draft Glasgow City Region Climate Adaptation Strategy 2020- 2030 - Choosing to flourish in our future Climate. Retrieved from: http://climatereadyclyde.org.uk/our-adaptation-strategy-and-action-plan-v2/

12. Kazmierczak, A., Cavan, G., Connelly, A., & Lindley, S. (2015). Mapping flood disadvantage in Scotland 2015. Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Government.

 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). (2020). Retrieved from: https://simd.scot/#/simd2020/BTTTFTT/14/-4.3123/55.8688/

 

 

 

Cover image: John Ainslie’s Map of the County of Renfrew (1800), showing physical alterations of the river’s banks. Available at https://maps.nls.uk/joins/669.html

First published: 7 June 2022

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