Framing justice in urban climate adaptation policy in 14 frontrunner cities

Introduction

Urban areas are socio-ecological systems where the social, environmental, and economic spheres intersect (Byrne, 2021) and where issues of climate change adaptation land at the intersection of power, politics, and representation. The diversity of urban populations, livelihoods, and people’s differential needs and values creates questions and conflicts about the fairness and justice of climate change adaptation. Adaptation policies in cities may affect the lives of billions worldwide (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019). There is concern that urban adaptation may create new inequities and vulnerabilities, or exacerbate existing ones, if adaptation policies are not carefully considered and designed with justice questions in mind (Eriksen et al., 2021).

Two issues need to be considered regarding justice and urban adaptation. First, the impacts of climate change are not divided equally among the population in the urban space, rather, they vary based on, for example, the existing spatial distribution of people and socio-economic status (Mohtat and Khirfan, 2021), and disproportionately affect the demographics already more vulnerable to climate impacts because of, for example, their age, gender, ethnicity or social status (Juhola et al., 2022b; Yang et al., 2021). These vulnerabilities and their uneven distribution are not born out of thin air but are often the results of historical, socio-political and institutional processes, where stakeholders have shaped planning and urban management in ways that have become detrimental to groups that held – and often continue to hold – less power in society to affect change (Chu and Cannon, 2021; Paavola et al., 2006; Shi et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2021).

Second, attempts to address these unequally distributed impacts – that is, climate change adaptation – are not a separate societal process happening in a vacuum. Rather, adaptation is largely implemented within existing structures of governance and can, as such, be in danger of repeating and exacerbating the very same patterns that have created current vulnerabilities and issues of inequity (Anguelovski et al., 2016; Bulkeley et al., 2014; Eriksen et al., 2021; Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020).

While it is also stressed that climate change adaptation is not always necessarily connected to issues of justice (e.g. Bulkeley et al., 2014), these issues have still often remained in the periphery of urban adaptation policy considerations (e.g. Juhola et al., 2022a), though some cities have begun to pay increasing attention to them (Cannon et al., 2023). Scholars have argued that if adaptation policies do not take justice into account, the results of adaptation can lead to unfair and inequitable outcomes that do not necessarily improve vulnerable populations’ positions (Reckien et al., 2025), nor share the benefits and harms of adaptation in a way that is equitable, and which may lead to conflict over their acceptability (Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020; Shi et al., 2016).

Much of urban adaptation policy research has focused on policy progress by identifying ‘frontrunners’ or ‘extensive adaptors’ (e.g. Araos et al., 2016; Reckien et al., 2023). Here, the focus has thus far been more on adaptation as a whole, which does not reveal how exactly justice issues are considered in these policies and plans. There are emerging studies on indices for analysing how to include justice matters into the adaptation assessment criteria in urban policies (e.g. Juhola et al., 2022a), as well as studies analysing justice implications of adaptation policies and projects (e.g. Chu et al., 2025; De Gopegui et al., 2025).

However, the literature is still lacking critical research on how policies utilise the notion of justice in adaptation policy and how they frame and contextualise issues of justice (e.g. Mohtat and Khirfan, 2021). Climate change adaptation has real, material impacts on well-being and livelihoods, and the way justice issues are framed in adaptation policy affects how urban adaptation is planned and implemented, and whether that is done in a way that is just and equitable.

This study focuses on a selection of adaptation plans of cities that are recognised as advanced, that is, paying substantial consideration to adaptation or resilience to climate change, as we argue that the frontrunner status implies a more likely integration of justice issues. We ask: How are issues of justice in adaptation framed in advanced urban climate change adaptation policy? We apply frame analysis to study the material, with an emphasis on the importance of problem framing in how justice issues are represented.

Urban adaptation governance and justice

Urban adaptation is a complex, contested multi-level process, and it is widely acknowledged that responses to climate change can also have negative impacts, possibly leading to maladaptation and exacerbation of vulnerability, that is, people’s susceptibility to be adversely affected by climate hazards (e.g. Andrews et al., 2023; Juhola et al., 2016). Maladaptation refers to unwanted, and often unexpected, negative impacts of adaptation actions that – while advancing adaptation from one perspective or group of people – cause harm to another (cf., Juhola et al., 2016). While adaptation actors in urban areas range from individual citizens and private-sector actors to municipal and public-sector actors within city governments, adaptation policy remains dominated by the environmental wings of local governments (Shi et al., 2016). This may partly explain the overemphasis on urban greening as a panacea for urban sustainability issues, including adaptation needs, which tends to overshadow inequity issues (Mengato and Haase, 2026).

It has been argued that much of adaptation planning is biased towards technocratic and managerial approaches, which focus less on the social consequences or equity implications of climate change and adaptation itself (e.g. Eriksen et al., 2021; Juhola et al., 2022b). The technocratic bias in adaptation planning is claimed to overemphasise regulatory, financial and engineered adaptation interventions (Chu and Cannon, 2021), and climate resilience is driven primarily by perceived risks to urban economies (e.g. ‘climate urbanism’; see Long and Rice, 2019). Even successfully implemented adaptation efforts can be inequitable, such as in cases where they end up prioritising the protection of affluent people’s assets at the cost of protecting more vulnerable parts of the population, or when adaptation measures lead to the displacement of people (Anguelovski et al., 2016; Mohtat and Khirfan, 2021).

Previous studies have shown that when questions of justice are considered in urban adaptation planning, they are primarily focused on distributive justice, followed by procedural justice considerations (Coggins et al., 2021; Fiack et al., 2021). Urban adaptation often focuses on the relation between the distribution of resources and services, and differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity of citizens, with less attention being paid to the structural and systemic drivers of vulnerability (Chu and Cannon, 2021; Chu et al., 2025) – such as how poverty can affect access to cooling, or lack of participation can impact local land-uses and thereby increase vulnerability to climate hazards (Kaswan, 2021).

There is growing research interest in equity and justice in cities’ adaptation policies (e.g. Cannon et al., 2023) that, however, does not trickle down to adaptation implementation (Chu and Cannon, 2021). Despite the rich global selection of competing imaginaries of adaptation in academic literature, the transformational and just adaptation imaginaries fail to translate prominently into grey literature and actual governance, which remain at a business-as-usual level (e.g. Harris et al., 2017; Loroño-Leturiondo et al., 2025; Kanarp et al., 2025). The way justice is framed in policy plays a pivotal role in shaping the outcomes. In general, there is a discursive disconnection in adaptation in regard to justice issues, with governing bodies being more focused on risk-management, technical solutions and provision of incentives and information, while others, such as community groups and scholars, call for a focus on the deeper, systemic and structural causes of vulnerability in urban areas (Schlosberg et al., 2017).

To study the framing of justice in urban adaptation policy, we employ a theory guided framework that draws on the existing literature on adaptation justice, which is still a relatively new field but is closely associated with the established theories and concepts of environmental and climate justice, particularly, the division between recognition, distributive and procedural justice (e.g. Paavola et al., 2006) and, more recently, restorative justice (e.g. Juhola et al., 2022a), as well as the capabilities approach (e.g. Schlosberg, 2012), see Table 1.

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Table 1.

Dimension of urban adaptation justice.

Dimension of adaptation justice	Definition	References
Recognition justice	Approach to justice issues that recognises the variety of different factors impacting vulnerabilities and inequities. In the urban area, this can show, for example, in the way policies address the special needs and vulnerabilities of certain populations, such as older people, in the face of intensifying heat.	Coolsaet and Néron (2021), Mohtat and Khirfan (2021), Schlosberg (2012)
Distributive justice	Focus on fair and equitable distribution of the benefits, harms and burdens of climate change and adaptation to it. In an urban context, as an example, this might mean that resources for adaptation are allocated in a way that is fair and equitable, putting the most vulnerable groups first.	Fiack et al. (2021), Kaswan (2021), Shi et al. (2016)
Procedural justice	How adaptation is being planned, implemented, who has a say in it, and how barriers to participation can be addressed. This has manifested in critiques of the differential political capabilities citizens may have in cities and how people’s values and needs are being heard and met, as one example.	Eriksen et al. (2021), Holland (2017)
Restorative justice	Efforts may seek to undo and reform land-use decisions and patterns that underlie present inequities.	Foster et al. (2024), Juhola et al. (2022a)
Capabilities approach to justice	Approach which combines aspects of the approaches mentioned above. It is focused mainly on the different material and immaterial resources people possess and have access to, and how those enable them to function in their social context.	Bulkeley et al. (2014), Malloy and Ashcraft (2020), Schlosberg (2012), Schlosberg et al. (2017), Shi et al. (2016)

We employ these concepts of justice in the context of urban adaptation together with the literature on adaptation framing that broadly defines the three main frames presenting adaptation as resilience (the ability of a given system to maintain its functioning in changing conditions), equity, or transition/transformation (Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020; Pelling, 2010). By highlighting certain aspects and problem definitions of issues and centring discussions around specific themes, framing consequently impacts policy decisions and actions (Keller, 2013; Van Hulst et al., 2024). Hence, we present the following operationalised questions in the analysis: (1) What concepts are used in the policies, and what topics are the issues centred around? What is pushed to the side or ignored?; (2) What justice topics are present in the policy documents?; and (3) How are dimensions of urban adaptation justice represented when adaptation is framed as resilience, equity or transition and transformation?

Materials and methods

The material for this study consists of a set of adaptation plans from cities considered frontrunners in climate change adaptation (see Table 2). These frontrunners were chosen based on two studies – the set of the highest-ranked cities originally from Araos et al. (2016), adapted by Pietilä (2023), and another top seven cities from Reckien et al. (2023). These cities’ ‘frontrunner’ status is owed to factors such as the assessed fact base, the quality and quantity of their adaptation initiatives (Araos et al., 2016), and qualitative assessments of their goals, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and participation (Reckien et al., 2023). These qualities are usually identified in affluent Euro- and anglophone-centric countries, resulting in a sample that excludes many regions worldwide.

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Table 2.

Dataset.

City	Document name	Publisher and publication year
Barcelona, Spain	Climate emergency action plan for 2030**	Barcelona City Council, 2021
Boston, United States	Climate ready Boston*	The City of Boston and Climate Ready Boston, 2014
Budapest, Hungary	Sustainable energy and climate action plan of Budapest**	Budapest Municipality, 2021
Cape Town, South Africa	City of Cape Town climate change action plan*	The City of Cape Town, 2021
Dublin, Ireland	Dublin city council climate change action plan 2019–2024**	Dublin City Council and Dublin’s energy agency Codema, 2017
Galway, Ireland	Climate resilient Galway city**	Galway City Council, 2019
London, United Kingdom	London environment strategy*	Greater London Authority, 2018
Melbourne, Australia	Climate change adaptation strategy refresh 2017*	The City of Melbourne, 2017
Sacramento, United States	Sacramento county climate action plan 2022*	Sacramento County, 2022
Sofia, Bulgaria	Sustainable energy and climate action plan 2021–2030**	Sofia Municipality, 2021
Tallinn, Estonia	Sustainable energy and climate action plan 2030**	The City of Tallinn, 2021
Toronto, Canada	Toronto resilience strategy*	The City of Toronto, 2019
Vancouver, Canada	Climate change adaptation strategy: 2018 update and action plan*	The City of Vancouver, Sustainability Group, 2018
Waterford, Ireland	Climate change adaptation strategy 2019–2024**	Waterford City and County Council, 2019

*

Case selected based on Araos et al. (2016) and adapted by Pietilä (2023).

**

Case selected based on Reckien et al. (2023).

We use frame analysis (e.g. Khan and MacEachen, 2021; Keller, 2013; Van Hulst et al., 2024) to analyse the plans for the manner in which they represent justice issues. ‘Frames’ are understood here as central meaning patterns of a discourse that highlight and centre specific aspects of an issue while giving less attention to others or omitting them (Keller, 2013; Van Hulst et al., 2024). The analysis follows an abductive logic (Van Hulst and Visser, 2025) that moves iteratively between theory and data. We conducted the thematic coding (Silvasti, 2014) in ATLAS.ti software (version 25.0.1), and it followed the theory-informed framework (Table 1) of adaptation justice dimensions and the operationalised questions. We started coding by identifying the general content and structure of the documents, and the sections that dealt with adaptation; then, sections that addressed either explicitly or implicitly issues of justice in adaptation and the framing of adaptation were coded. Next, we organised the coded excerpts inductively around emerging themes related to justice issues – such as the resilience of systems, functions and citizens, and the recognition of underlying issues – creating additional codes accordingly (Silvasti, 2014), for example, vulnerability from climate risks and place, or affordability. Finally, we carried out an interpretive analysis to synthesise the main frames, that is, central meaning patterns of a discourse with specific thematic focuses and internal structures (Keller, 2013), by reading the coded text fragments, theorising and engaging with the literature, and rereading and recoding the fragments.

To avoid the potential bias involved in an interpretive analysis (e.g. Khan and MacEachen, 2021), we discussed the coding choices and findings between the authors, while the corresponding author carried out the main coding work, acknowledging that by analysing discourse, the analysis also contributes to it – there is no clear line between analysis of discourse and participating in it (Keller, 2013).

Results

Three different ways of framing justice issues in adaptation are used in the policy documents to varying degrees, and they partly overlap, that is, the frames do not fully describe the policy documents’ stances. The frames centred the justice issues around the topics of (i) protecting citizens from climate change, (ii) fairness and equitability and (iii) systemic and structural factors that underlie vulnerabilities and inequities in adaptation. The main dividing lines between the frames lie in (1) the way vulnerability and reasons for it were conceptualised; (2) the way underlying structural and systemic factors of inequities and vulnerability were recognised – or not recognised – and handled; and (3) the way procedural issues were – or were not – approached.

Discussion

These empirical findings reveal three ways of framing justice issues in adaptation policies of 14 advanced cities, mostly in the Global North, that reflect adaptation frames previously identified in research (Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020; Pelling, 2010). Each frame provides a representation of what the justice issues are seen to be about and where the limits are to how the policy documents approach them. Our findings contribute to the discussion on advancing just adaptation and on how current adaptation policy supports this by showing alternative ways of understanding adaptation justice and the types of limitations and preconditions these views impose on the adaptation actions that the documents are meant to guide in our sample cities. This leads us to raise three considerations.

First, the three frames illustrate how the differential treatment of vulnerability shapes what is just and whether vulnerability assessments hold a vital position in adaptation planning, for example, in guiding the prioritisation of actions to benefit the most vulnerable. Approaching vulnerability this way can, however, conceal the underlying factors that create it and may allow them to persist under the guise of ‘just’ adaptation (Eriksen et al., 2021; Tschakert et al., 2013). This can be considered as a type of maladaptation where the vulnerability of the target group ‘rebounds’, that is, is increased through adaptation (see Juhola et al., 2022a). This can be seen in our sample, where identification and resilience-building for the most vulnerable groups receive more attention than the underlying structures that contribute to their state. This was evident in the Boston case, studied by Malloy et al. (2022) after the implementation of the adaptation plan, where injustices are reproduced through conventional policy-making procedures and the exclusion of the views of residents who participated in the process, that is, in a tokenistic way.

In some cities, as our sample demonstrates, vulnerability is understood as more than an inherent quality. Rather, as discussed in the literature, it results from complex, dynamic factors ranging from political capabilities and discrimination to individuals’ health and age, which interact with adaptation and the changing climate (e.g. Eriksen et al., 2021; Schlosberg, 2012). Furthermore, some studies (e.g. Eriksen et al., 2021; Holland, 2017; Tschakert et al., 2013) emphasise that power is an inherent factor in adaptation, and in the way vulnerability is framed within adaptation processes. Therefore, the use of static indicators and assessments that are structured in advance may fail to capture dynamic factors central to maladaptive outcomes and the continued existence and reproduction of vulnerabilities. While this may be understood or even stated in urban adaptation policy, it rarely translates into an assessment method that goes beyond current indicator-based methodologies. The ‘Equity Lens’ tool of the City of Toronto is an interesting opening that seems to hold potential for a more dynamic way of assessing the justice issues in adaptation planning and implementation, although research on the use of the tool is limited to infrastructure planning (see LeClair et al., 2023).

Second, the three frames illustrate that when vulnerability is connected to political capabilities and underlying societal structures, the issue of recognition becomes central. Increased attention to participation and political capabilities in the framing of justice issues stands in contrast to imaginaries of adaptation, which frame the process through a top-down, specialist-oriented vision of governance. Multiple studies have highlighted the importance of addressing citizens’ differential political capabilities to avoid maladaptation through the implementation of solutions which reinforce or create new inequities (e.g. Eriksen et al., 2021; Holland, 2017; Shi et al., 2016). This can result from prioritisation of the resilience of urban economies and infrastructure, or greening, as universally beneficial strategies, over the well-being of citizens (see, e.g. Chu and Cannon, 2021; Long and Rice, 2019; Mengato and Haase, 2026).

Whether adaptation is apolitical is where the frames diverge. In the justice through transformation frame, inequity in political capabilities is important. This reflects previous literature (Coolsaet and Néron 2021; Schlosberg 2012), which stresses that recognition justice is not only relevant in procedural issues but also for achieving equitable distribution of harms and benefits, as well as for effectively reducing vulnerability (Eakin et al., 2022) and, eventually, putting restorative justice in effect. The acknowledgement of the injustices related to colonialism may be the first step toward this in a few of our case cities. This, however, is not the case with the justice through protection and justice through equity and participation frames, which approach justice in more apolitical terms. Increasingly, in literature that calls for more transformative adaptation, the focus is on citizens’ political capabilities and on disrupting existing relations of power (Holland, 2017; Malloy and Ashcraft, 2020; Pelling, 2010; Tschakert et al., 2013). Coolsaet and Néron (2021) and Schlosberg (2012), for example, point to the role misrecognition and political disenfranchisement play in the (in)equitable distribution of environmental goods and harms in society. This raises a question about the framing of justice in adaptation; can it lead to equitable adaptation, if the way justice is framed does not engage with the socio-political aspects of the system it is being implemented within, and, further, what are the prevailing social and political conditions that allow a shift in the justice framing?

Third, our three frames reveal the extent to which policy documents in our sample cities acknowledge and are willing to tackle these existing power structures through transformative adaptation, which is most evident in the transformation frame. Key limitations in achieving just outcomes are those set by the governance systems within which adaptation takes place (Siders, 2022). This is the core challenge for the kind of resilience outlook identified in the protection frame that does not engage with socio-political questions. Recognition justice is relevant here as it further draws attention to the fact that adaptation is not in fact a depoliticised process and operates within the same sphere as other development efforts in the urban environment and is subjected to the same impacts, from social structures to systemic effects, from the governing bodies as well as the surrounding culture (Bulkeley, 2021). There are, however, degrees of recognition, too. While the equity and participation framing works towards equitable adaptation and integrates aspects of recognition, its ideas of equitability and fairness are not visibly connected to critiques of socio-political and structural conditions that underlie them. Many adaptation initiatives, even those framed as being about equity, are still implemented within established ways of governance and structures of power, which have often contributed to the very problems they aim to address (Anguelovski et al. 2016). This makes the goal of just adaptation a fundamentally political one, as seen in the transformation frame, which sets the action in terms of fundamental structural change and the improvement of stakeholders’ political capabilities.

This study offers a view of how policies frame justice issues in policy documents, yet it does not study implementation on the ground or whether this implementation is, in fact, more just and results in more just outcomes. It also focuses on which frames are present, but not on quantitative aspects, that is, how much each city’s policies utilise them. Further research, therefore, can focus on gathering more empirical evidence, as the language of equity and fairness is not a guarantee of just adaptation (Anguelovski et al., 2016; See and Wilmsen, 2020), especially when empirical evidence supporting this assumption is largely lacking. Policies and plans might not change anything in practice if the measures laid out in them do not actually translate into implementation, which places the onus on tracking the credibility and implementation of those actions (e.g. Olazabal et al., 2019). Future studies might also explore the way in which framings – and representations – of justice issues in adaptation have evolved temporally, and in which ways different governmentalities of adaptation (Keskitalo et al. 2012) impact how justice issues are (1) framed and represented in the policies and (2) implemented via adaptation actions. Furthermore, in addition to the justice theories applied in this study, there are recently emerging theories that may be pertinent to the discussion of urban adaptation justice, for example, epistemic justice, intergenerational justice, intersectional justice and multispecies justice.

As the selection of frontrunner cities is mostly Euro- and anglophone-centric, from relatively affluent countries, it is worth noting that this provides a look at cities that may skew towards having more justice-inclusive framings of adaptation than those deemed in earlier studies to be lacking in adaptation. The frames are also a reflection of the socio-political contexts of those cities; an example of which can be seen in how talk of colonialism and Indigenous voices was reflected in the policies of Cape Town and Toronto. These aspects add to the limitations of generalising the results of this frame analysis; the results must be treated within their contextual environment as a snapshot of a specific time, place, and type of discourse. While this study did not delve into the temporal aspect of the analysis, it is worth noting that time is also a factor that may affect the results.

Conclusion

At the same time as literature and theories on framing may focus on adaptation as a vehicle for comprehensive structural and systemic change in society, the adaptation solutions need to be workable. Adaptation does not need to be approached as a silver bullet that will fix all of society’s ills. This, however, does not mean that the way justice issues are framed in policies is inconsequential, as policies are central to shaping understandings of adaptation.

Adaptation policies play a central role in shaping adaptation, as the framing and language used in them shape how issues are represented and what actions are taken. While some adaptation actions can be beneficial for all and a resilience goal can be a good one, there is a real possibility that they could recreate and exacerbate existing inequities and vulnerabilities. At the core of this often lies a misrecognition of how adaptation impacts and is impacted by existing social inequities, as well as a misrecognition or ignorance of the values and needs of the residents. We argue that there are multiple ways of defining just adaptation, ranging from framing it as protection from risk to ways that recognise the socio-political and complex nature of adaptation and its justice issues, not limited to ‘resilience’. We stress that the language of fairness and equity is not a guarantee of just adaptation, as it can move attention away from more deeply rooted problems by focusing on surface-level issues.

To address misrecognition and efforts that exacerbate vulnerabilities and inequities, policies should engage more with how societal inequities affect different aspects of adaptation and utilise frames that present adaptation as a complex, contested socio-political process when addressing justice issues. Increased attention should be paid to the differential capabilities citizens have in decision-making, as well as to how society shapes those capabilities and based on what underlying assumptions.