A Critical Feminist Perspective on Climate Change Adaptation Plans: Mapping Municipal Recognition, Dialog, and Budgeting

Abstract Feminists’ scholarship and critique of gender climate injustice have exposed just how scarce the practical efforts to correct it are. The challenge of generating incentives designed to encourage urban planning that accounts for expected intersectional vulnerabilities during climate disasters reflects a gap in knowledge: how does professionals’ awareness of intensified vulnerabilities inform climate adaptation plans (CAPs)? We propose an intersectional critical feminist perspective evaluating recognition, dialog, and budgeting that decodes the social process by which professionals’ knowledge of intersectional vulnerabilities is lost before informing CAPs. Based on an empirical investigation of the increasing gender awareness among administrators who accumulate knowledge about women’s vulnerabilities, our analysis contributes an explanation of the marginalization of gender mainstreaming toolkits in urban CAPs. We show that even in municipalities characterized by increasing levels of recognition, relevant knowledge rarely informs the dialog, and planning appropriate responses for intersectional vulnerabilities is left unbudgeted.