From Competitive to Cohesive Adaptation: Unveiling Spatial Inequities in EU Urban Climate Adaptation Finance

Abstract

My dissertation examines spatial inequities in climate adaptation finance by analysing the socio-political factors affecting the accessibility and allocation of funding and finance. I deploy mixed-methods research, including a survey conducted with 148 municipalities across 17 European countries and qualitative research in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, to unpack these relationships. Building on climate urbanism research, with a particular focus on critical geography and political ecology perspectives, I make four main contributions. First, I advocate for a shift in financing towards equity, emphasising the needs of marginalized communities through reparative approaches, the democratization of climate finance, and anti-displacement policies. Second, by contextualising intra-urban inequities within broader multi-scalar inequities in climate adaptation finance, I argue that climate finance operates within a dynamic arena as a political-ecological process, generating ripples that frequently fail to benefit vulnerable groups across scales. Third, I show how funding barriers in the EU disproportionately affect smaller municipalities and how climate risk levels do not correlate with funding accessibility or availability, proposing a nuanced understanding of financialization's role in climate urbanism based on the European experience to date. Fourth and finally, through a grounded case study of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, I uncover how access to EU funding programmes depends on factors such as administrative capacities, track records, networks, and the commitment of municipal leaders and technical staff, rather than climate vulnerability or risk indicators, further shedding light on the unequal geographies of climate adaptation. I conclude the dissertation by critiquing the current competitive model for municipal climate adaptation funding and finance and proposing an alternative model centred around the concept of cohesive adaptation.

Date of Award	27 Nov 2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Melissa García-Lamarca (Director) & Marta Olazabal Salgado (Director)