As cities worldwide increasingly adopt commitments towards climate justice, questions remain about the ways that city governments will be able to fund more just climate efforts. While the use of novel debt financing schemes has been examined in the literature for its justice implications, scholars have rarely interrogated how the more mundane tools and practices of municipal finance can be applied to enable more just urban transitions. Here, we use the USA as a case study to analyse the impacts of climate change and climate action on municipal budgets and to examine how cities are adapting their financial tools and practices to advance climate action and climate justice efforts. We employ a mixed-methods research design that combines 34 expert interviews with a systematic content analysis of municipal budgets from 15 US cities of different sizes. We find that both climate change and climate action can contribute to cities’ fiscal vulnerability by imposing additional expenditures and/or reducing municipal revenues. While most cities lack transparency about their investments in climate action and climate justice, some city governments are implementingordinary innovationsthat embed climate and justice criteria into budgetary practices and funding tools. These ordinary innovations reveal that cities are beginning to reimagine municipal finance in the service of more just climate futures.
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US cities increasingly integrate justice into climate planning and create policy tools for climate justice
Abstract Climate change is one of the most important ethical issues of our time. Urban scholars and policymakers now recognise the need to address justice concerns associated with cities’ responses to climate change. However, little empirical research has examined whether and how cities have integrated justice into climate mitigation planning. Here, we show that large cities in the US are increasingly attending to justice in their climate action plans and that the recognition of structural and historical injustices is becoming more common. We demonstrate that justice is articulated differently across mitigation sectors, uncover local characteristics that may impact cities’ level of engagement with justice, and introduce four policy tools that pioneer cities have developed to operationalise just climate policies on the ground. More attention to justice in policy implementation and evaluation is needed as cities continue to move toward just urban transitions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1735087
- PAR ID:
- 10473767
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Communications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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