ABSTRACT
Cities around the world have experienced increasing climate change associated hazards that have impacted the livelihood of millions. Urban resilience emphasizes the adaptive capacity in coping with climate change. Green infrastructure serves as one critical climate change adaptation strategy for enhancing adaptive capacity and urban resilience in communities. Disparity of adaptive capacity among communities, however, results in unjust consequences borne by socially vulnerable populations from climate change associated hazards.
In the United States, the catastrophic 2005 Hurricane Katrina is a wakeup call for climate justice at the local scale. Has the Climate Justicescape persisted in the continental United States in 2005–2015? This project applies an integrated social–ecological–technological systems (SETs) vulnerability assessment framework to analyze spatial patterns of climate justice in 48 continental states in the United States. A Social Vulnerability Index was constructed through statistical methods using socio-economic indicators (e.g. race, poverty, age, income, education) to natural hazards. An Ecological Vulnerability Index combined the number of climate change associated hazards (e.g., heavy precipitation, extreme cold and heat, floods, hurricanes) and the economic loss in each county of the states. Technological Vulnerability Index represents a lack of green infrastructure measured by percent coverage of non-vegetated land cover types. Climate Justice Index was constructed through the synthesis of the social, ecological and technological vulnerability indices. Spatial analysis was employed to identify hot spots of climate justice cities. The findings suggest Climate Justicescape can be employed for identifying gaps in urban resilience planning and to help prioritize resources in investing green infrastructure in socially vulnerable communities for enhancing adaptive capacity and achieving urban resilience.
