“Eliminate the sources of harm”: Reframing climate adaptation through a community-defined resilience framework

Source abstract

As cities respond to climate change, what adaptive measures do residents of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods prioritize, and why? As part of a Participatory Action Research study in metropolitan Boston, we conducted semi-structured interviews with residents of nine rapidly developing neighborhoods to explore their conceptualizations of resilience to climate change and their desires for climate adaptation. We found that residents in these communities experience climate change through chronic stressors, mainly through heat, high utility bills, and flooding. Residents connect climate resilience to other stressors in their lives like displacement, structural racism, and trauma, and they see strong community ties as a key element of climate resilience. Based on our findings, we argue that adaptation measures that promote community-held notions of resilience should consider the root causes of unjust systems, respond to the compounding stressors in people’s lives, emphasize community ownership and control in interventions, and strengthen social ties by building on networks of community care.