Connecting decarbonization and social justice in cities

This special issue of Environment and Urbanization seeks to expand understanding of how climate change mitigation policies and practices can align with the imperative to secure social justice in cities and to support the agendas of urban social movements.  

Bringing together papers that respond to gaps in knowledge around the links increasingly being made between decarbonisation and social justice in cities, this issue offers empirical research and practical knowledge about grounding climate justice in low-income and informal settlements. It seeks not to supplant adaptation priorities for low-income and marginalised communities living on the front line of climate change, but rather to explore and demonstrate how decarbonisation as a process of mitigation is an essential component for efforts to achieve urban climate justice and climate-resilient development.

Areas of exploration include the engagement of low-income communities in Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg in local infrastructural development; social movements focused on housing occupations in São Paulo, Natal and Johannesburg; waste pickers’ knowledge and practice around climate action in Brazil; household waste management practices in Santiago de Cali and their implications for municipal ‘zero waste’ projects; the shortcomings of ‘green’ infrastructural investment in Guangzhou; the impact of municipal green bonds in San Francisco, Mexico City and Cape Town; and the promise of urban labs as an alternative governance arrangement that could provide innovative solutions to non-linear challenges such as climate change.