Special Issue Introduction: Adding insult to injury: Climate change and the inequities of climate intervention (original) (raw)

2012, Global Environmental Change

Adding insult to injury: Climate change and the inequities of climate intervention I assume that justice today requires both redistribution and recognition. And I propose to examine the relation between them. In part, this means figuring out how to conceptualize cultural recognition and social equality in forms that support rather than undermine one another. [Adding Insult to Injury, Nancy Fraser, 2008, p. 69] There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to his neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him. [R.H. Tawney, 1966. Land and Labor in China. Boston: Beacon Press. Quoted by James Scott (1976)]. Climate change is redistribution. It alters the timing and intensity of our rains and winds, the humidity in our soils, and the sea level around us. As redistribution, climate change is also a matter of justice-it is about who gains and who loses as change occurs and as interventions to moderate change unfold. Like climate change, climate-response measures and the discourses surrounding them have their own, even-less-understood, stratifying outcomes for vulnerable populations. The ecological conditions, distribution of assets, and systems of power that place certain communities at greater risk in the face of change can also place them at risk in the face of policy responses. Vulnerable communities may be at risk of material injury following climate change or climate change intervention; and, be further insulted and injured by their lack of recognition and by misrecognition as simplified, stereotyped victims in local, national and international climate conversations. Bio-physical changes in the earth system enter a stratified social world (Saunders, 1990), altering assets, meanings and security (Oliver-Smith, 1996; Wisner et al., 2004; Ribot, 2010). Facing changes, those closer to the threshold of disaster-living near subsistence with a minimum of assets-are most at risk. This essay and the articles that follow explore the stratifying effects of climate adaptation and mitigation interventions and related discourses. While climate change interventions and discourses may open new opportunities for vulnerable communities to gain recognition and reduce risk; these essays show that communities vulnerable in the face of climate change can also be vulnerable when confronted with adaptation and mitigation intervention and discourses. Climate mitigation and adaptation interventions are necessary and inevitable; but without understanding their effects, we can inadvertently reproduce or deepen the damages they intend to redress (Barnett and O'Neill, 2010). The articles in this volume illustrate how, in a stratified world, climate change, climate change interventions, and climate