- Title
- Capabilities and climate justice: analysis of climate adaptation policy and practice
- Creator
- Tennakoon, Hasanthi S.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- As climate change continues its relentless trajectory towards a warmer future, adaptation is becoming crucial and increasingly urgent, particularly in the developing world. However, the disjuncture between who is responsible for climate change, who must bear its biggest impacts, and who is required to adapt has become problematic. It has raised some ethical challenges and questions about what is fair and just. The idea of climate injustice highlights this disproportionate distribution of ‘benefits’ and ‘burdens’, which has resulted from fossil fuel-enabled economic growth. These stark inequities not only exist between countries; they also exist within countries. Given that climate adaptation action is concerned with specific, localised impacts, there is a need to understand local-level climate vulnerabilities and their interactions with local contexts, as well as local perspectives on climate justice concerns. For these reasons, this study examined climate justice implications in adaptation policy and practice in the Global South, taking climate adaptation initiatives in Sri Lanka as a case study. The study consisted of a doctrinal analysis of relevant international and national policy frameworks and an empirical study of how adaptation interventions are implemented at the grassroots level. The capability approach was used as a conceptual framework for studying adaptation practice within the Sri Lankan context, paying attention to people’s capabilities to adapt, conversion factors and key justice principles such as social inclusion, participatory parity, and fair resource distribution. The study found that conceptions of climate justice at the grassroots level are multifaceted and that its meanings are shaped to a significant degree by the setting in which adaptation interventions are implemented. The study also revealed that climate justice is sustained and reinforced by peoples’ capabilities and levels of empowerment to pursue the outcomes that they value. Apart from normative conceptions of justice such as procedural, distributive and recognition justice, what counts as climate justice is context-dependent. Therefore, a contextualised approach to climate justice is proposed, especially with regard to adaptation policy and practice.
- Subject
- climate change; climate justice; capabilities; climate adaptation; policy; law; capability approach; distributive justice; procedural justice; recognition justice; adaptive capacity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1504573
- Identifier
- uon:55553
- Rights
- Copyright 2022 Hasanthi S. Tennakoon
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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