Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
countries that will be hardest hit by climate impacts has been intensifi ed
by the global division of labor and the political economy of production
of goods and resources (Parks and Roberts 2006). Current global funding
mechanisms do little to remedy this imbalance since there is limited
provision to support governments, and poorer governments in particular,
to adapt to climate change impacts (Huq et al. 2007).
The outlook is particularly somber for Africa, because recent studies
demonstrate that the extreme vulnerability of the continent to climatic
changes is aggravated by the interaction of “multiple stresses” occurring
at various levels and by a low adaptive capacity. This vulnerability is
also exacerbated by developmental challenges, fragile institutions, limited
access to capital, weak infrastructure and technology, ecosystem degra-
dation, and complex disasters and confl icts (IPCC 2007a). A further
challenge for Africa is that the political and scientifi c debate around
climate change has primarily focused on characterizing the global nature,
extent, and impact of anthropogenic infl uences leading to climate change.
By comparison, relatively little effort has been spent on understanding
how climate change will impact locales and the costs these communities
will need to bear. The tendency to talk about impacts in generalities
obscures the developmental price that local communities in the South
will have to pay in servicing the global carbon debt.
Environmental and climate inequities, and the related impacts on
marginalized communities, manifest themselves most obviously and
immediately at the regional and local levels. In this chapter, we examine
how climate change is creating inequities between Northern and South-
ern countries and how climate impacts are projected to intensify patterns
of vulnerability, relations of dependence and domination, and sociospa-
tial injustice in cities in the global South. More specifi cally, we draw on
the spatial and climate injustice literatures to understand how climate
change and climate politics are further entrenching local sociospatial
inequities in the multiethnic and global South African city of Durban.
We conclude the chapter with a discussion of how Durban is responding
to these multiscale inequities through climate adaptation planning and
implementation.
Spatial Dimensions of Climate Justice
Traditionally, justice refers to the appropriate division of social advan-
tages between people over time (Rawls 1971). Beyond questions of
fair or unfair distribution, justice scholars are concerned with issues of
