Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

Leveraging critical race theory to produce equitable climate change adaptation

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 623–631 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Climate change and adaptation are inextricably connected to justice and equity. Often, researchers and decision-makers conceptualize climate justice through frameworks of distributive and procedural justice, which have been central to environmental justice discourse for decades. However, critical race theory provides alternative perspectives. Here I identify three themes that are most salient to climate change adaptation discourse: (1) racialization and race consciousness, (2) racial capitalism and (3) intersectionality. By drawing on these themes, I articulate a framework to analyse how racialized climate injustices are reproduced and can be ameliorated. As this Perspective demonstrates, climate adaptation informed by critical race theory can effectively challenge dominant systems of marginalization in contrast to status quo adaptation practices that uphold inequitable power dynamics.

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Framework for applying CRT to analyse climate change adaptation.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Althor, G., Watson, J. E. M. & Fuller, R. A. Global mismatch between greenhouse gas emissions and the burden of climate change. Sci. Rep. 6, 20281 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Füssel, H.-M. How inequitable is the global distribution of responsibility, capability, and vulnerability to climate change: a comprehensive indicator-based assessment. Glob. Environ. Change 20, 597–611 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. IPCC Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (eds Pörtner, H.-O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022).

  4. Anguelovski, I. et al. Equity impacts of urban land use planning for climate adaptation: critical perspectives from the Global North and South. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 36, 333–348 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Swanson, K. Equity in urban climate change adaptation planning: a review of research. Urban Plan. 6, 287–297 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fedele, G., Donatti, C. I., Harvey, C. A., Hannah, L. & Hole, D. G. Transformative adaptation to climate change for sustainable social–ecological systems. Environ. Sci. Policy 101, 116–125 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Schrock, G., Bassett, E. M. & Green, J. Pursuing equity and justice in a changing climate: assessing equity in local climate and sustainability plans in US cities. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 35, 282–295 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Shi, L. et al. Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 131–137 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Coggins, S. et al. Empirical assessment of equity and justice in climate adaptation literature: a systematic map. Environ. Res. Lett. 16, 073003 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Rudge, K. Participatory climate adaptation planning in New York City: analyzing the role of community-based organizations. Urban Clim. 40, 101018 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Schlosberg, D. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

  12. Carbado, D. Critical what what? Conn. Law Rev. 43, 1593–1643 (2011).

  13. Gotanda, N. A critique of ‘our constitution is color-blind’. Stanford Law Rev. 44, 1–68 (1991).

  14. Guinier, L. & Torres, G. The Miners Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002).

  15. Antwi-Agyei, P., Amanor, K., Hogarh, J. N. & Dougill, A. J. Predictors of access to and willingness to pay for climate information services in north-eastern Ghana: a gendered perspective. Environ. Dev. 37, 100580 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Djoudi, H. et al. Beyond dichotomies: gender and intersecting inequalities in climate change studies. Ambio 45, 248–262 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Gonzalez, C. Racial capitalism, climate justice, and climate displacement. Oñati Soc. Legal Ser. 11, 108–147 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Taylor, M. The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation: Livelihoods, Agrarian Change and the Conflicts of Development (Routledge, 2014); https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203762486

  19. Webber, S. Climate change adaptation as a growing development priority: towards critical adaptation scholarship. Geogr. Compass 10, 401–413 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. See, J., McKinnon, K. & Wilmsen, B. Diverse pathways to climate change adaptation through a postdevelopment lens: the case of Tambaliza Island, Philippines. Clim. Dev. 14, 945–956 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Crenshaw, K. Race, reform, and retrenchment: transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Rev. 101, 1331–1387 (1998).

  22. Harris, C. Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Rev. 106, 1707–1791 (1993).

  23. Rothstein, R. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liverwright, 2017).

  24. Taylor, D. E. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (New York Univ. Press, 2014).

  25. Hoffman, J. S., Shandas, V. & Pendleton, N. The effects of historical housing policies on resident exposure to intra-urban heat: a study of 108 US urban areas. Climate 8, 12 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Annamma, S. A., Jackson, D. D. & Morrison, D. Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society. Race Ethn. Educ. 20, 147–162 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Bonilla-Silva, E. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

  28. Ranjitkar, P. & Haukanes, H. Participation in climate change adaptation programs in Nepal: an intersectional study. Forum Dev. Stud. 49, 155–174 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Pulido, L. Flint, environmental racism, and racial capitalism. Cap. Nat. Social. 27, 1–16 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Robinson, C. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Univ. North Carolina Press, 2000).

  31. Pulido, L. Geographies of race and ethnicity II: environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 41, 524–533 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Gilmore, R. W. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Univ. California Press, 2007).

  33. Crenshaw, K. Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Rev. 43, 1241–1299 (1991).

  34. Grillo, T. Anti-essentialism and intersectionality: tools to dismatle the master’s house. Berkeley Womens Law J. 1, 16–30 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Harwood, S. A. Struggling to embrace difference in land-use decision making in multicultural communities. Plan. Pract. Res. 20, 355–371 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Solis, M. Racial equity in planning organizations. J. Am. Plan. Assoc. 86, 297–303 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Grove, K., Barnett, A. & Cox, S. Designing justice? Race and the limits of recognition in greater Miami resilience planning. Geoforum 117, 134–143 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Hardy, R. D., Milligan, R. A. & Heynen, N. Racial coastal formation: the environmental injustice of colorblind adaptation planning for sea-level rise. Geoforum 87, 62–72 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Sanders, M. C. Equity in addressing climate change: using law and policy to serve frontline communities. Traumatology 27, 48–51 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Zavar, E. & Fischer, L. A. Fractured landscapes: the racialization of home buyout programs and climate adaptation. Curr. Res. Environ. Sustain. 3, 100043 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Alexander, M. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2012).

  42. Waymer, D. & Heath, R. L. Black voter dilution, American exceptionalism, and racial gerrymandering: the paradox of the positive in political public relations. J. Black Stud. 47, 635–658 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Ahuja, N. Race, human security, and the climate refugee. Engl. Lang. Notes 54, 25–32 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Francis, A. R. Global Southerners in the North. Temple Law Rev. 93, 689–711 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  45. G. Gonzalez, C. in Research Handbook on Climate Change Law and Loss & Damage (eds Doelle, M. & Seck, S. L.) 43–59 (Edward Elgar, 2021); https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788974028.00009

  46. Gonzalez, C. Migration as reparation: climate change and the disruption of borders. Loyola Law Rev. 66, 401–444 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  47. Mascarenhas, M. Where the Waters Divide: Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (Lexington Books, 2012).

  48. Telford, A. A threat to climate-secure European futures? Exploring racial logics and climate-induced migration in US and EU climate security discourses. Geoforum 96, 268–277 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Baldwin, A. Racialisation and the figure of the climate-change migrant. Environ. Plan A 45, 1474–1490 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Boyce, G. A., Launius, S., Williams, J. & Miller, T. Alter-geopolitics and the feminist challenge to the securitization of climate policy. Gend. Place Cult. 27, 394–411 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Fair, H. Their sea of islands? Pacific climate warriors, oceanic identities, and world enlargement. Contemp. Pac. 32, 341–369 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Methmann, C. & Rothe, D. Tracing the spectre that haunts Europe: the visual construction of climate-induced migration in the MENA region. Crit. Stud. Secur. 2, 162–179 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Nichols, R. Theft is Property! Dispossession & Critical Theory (Duke Univ. Press, 2020).

  54. Tuck, E. & Yang, W. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization Indigeneity Educ. Soc. 1, 1–40 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  55. Whyte, K. Settler colonialism, ecology, and environmental injustice. Environ. Soc. 9, 125–144 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Dhillon, C. M. Indigenous feminisms: disturbing colonialism in environmental science partnerships. Sociol. Race Ethn. 6, 483–500 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Whyte, K. Indigenous climate change studies: indigenizing futures, decolonizing the Anthropocene. Engl. Lang. Notes 55, 153–162 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Miller Hesed, C. D. & Paolisso, M. Cultural knowledge and local vulnerability in African American communities. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 683–687 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Graham, S., Barnett, J., Fincher, R., Mortreux, C. & Hurlimann, A. Towards fair local outcomes in adaptation to sea-level rise. Climatic Change 130, 411–424 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Diver, S., Vaughan, M., Baker-Médard, M. & Lukacs, H. Recognizing ‘reciprocal relations’ to restore community access to land and water. Int J. Commons 13, 400 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Reano, D. Using Indigenous research frameworks in the multiple contexts of research, teaching, mentoring, and leading. TQR https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4317 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Osborne, N. Intersectionality and kyriarchy: a framework for approaching power and social justice in planning and climate change adaptation. Plan. Theory 14, 130–151 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Singleton, B. E., Rask, N., Magnusdottir, G. L. & Kronsell, A. Intersectionality and climate policy-making: the inclusion of social difference by three Swedish government agencies. Environ. Plan. C 40, 180–200 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  64. Enarson, E. in Human Security and Natural Disasters (eds Hobson, C. et al.) Ch. 3 (Routledge, 2014).

  65. Udas, P. B. et al. Basin level gendered vulnerabilities and adaptation: a case of Gandaki River Basin. Environ. Dev. 31, 43–54 (2019).

  66. Sultana, F. Gendering climate change: geographical insights. Prof. Geogr. 66, 372–381 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  67. Sultana, F. Critical climate justice. Geogr. J. 188, 118–124 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Dietz, S. Disaster and Gender in Southern Illinois Paper No. 412015 (Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, 2015).

  69. Laska, S., Morrow, B. H., Willinger, B. & Mock, N. in Katrina and the Women of New Orleans, 2008 (ed. Willinger, B.) 11–21 (Newcomb Institute, 2008).

  70. Alibudbud, R. Gender in climate change: safeguarding LGBTQ+ mental health in the Philippine climate change response from a minority stress perspective. J. Prev. Med. Public Health 56, 196–199 (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  71. Ahmed, S. & Fajber, E. Engendering adaptation to climate variability in Gujarat. India Gend. Dev. 17, 33–50 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Grove, K., Cox, S. & Barnett, A. Racializing resilience: assemblage, critique, and contested futures in Greater Miami resilience planning. Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr. 110, 1613–1630 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  73. Collins, T. W., Grineski, S. E. & Chakraborty, J. Environmental injustice and flood risk: a conceptual model and case comparison of metropolitan Miami and Houston, USA. Reg. Environ. Change 18, 311–323 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. Kahrl, A. W. From commons to capital: the creative destruction of coastal real estate, environments, and communities in the US South. Transatlantica https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.16278 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Ueland, J. & Warf, B. Racialized topographies: altitude and race in southern cities. Geogr. Rev. 96, 50–78 (2006).

  76. Kahrl, A. W. The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South (Univ. North Carolina Press, 2016).

  77. Ranganathan, M. & Bratman, E. From urban resilience to abolitionist climate justice in Washington, DC. Antipode 53, 115–137 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  78. Mach, K. J. et al. Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties. Sci. Adv. 5, eaax8995 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  79. de Vries, D. H. Temporal vulnerability and the post-disaster ‘window of opportunity to woo:’ a case study of an African-American floodplain neighborhood after Hurricane Floyd in North Carolina. Hum. Ecol. 45, 437–448 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  80. Bolin, B. & Kurtz, L. C. in Handbook of Disaster Research (eds Rodríguez, H. et al.) 181–203 (Springer, 2018); https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_10

  81. Finch, C., Emrich, C. & Cutter, S. Disaster disparities and differential recovery in New Orleans. Popul. Environ. 31, 179–202 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  82. Maldonado, A., Collins, T., Grineski, S. & Chakraborty, J. Exposure to flood hazards in Miami and Houston: are Hispanic immigrants at greater risk than other social groups? Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 13, 775 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  83. Maldonado, A., Collins, T. W. & Grineski, S. E. Hispanic immigrants’ vulnerabilities to flood and hurricane hazards in two United States metropolitan areas. Geogr. Rev. 106, 109–135 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  84. Burke, S., Bethel, J. W. & Britt, A. F. Assessing disaster preparedness among Latino migrant and seasonal farmworkers in eastern North Carolina. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 9, 3115–3133 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I thank A. Doolittle from the Yale School of the Environment as well as the graduate and undergraduate students in her research lab for their assistance in providing feedback and helping to revise this article. I also thank G. Torres from the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School for helping me gain expertise as a scholar of critical race theory.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Kieren Rudge

  2. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Kieren Rudge

Authors
  1. Kieren Rudge
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kieren Rudge.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Climate Change thanks Dean Hardy, Gerald Taylor Aiken and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rudge, K. Leveraging critical race theory to produce equitable climate change adaptation. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 623–631 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01690-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01690-9

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing