Centering Equity and Justice in Participatory Climate Action Planning - Guidance for Urban Governance Actors

Oct 19, 2026

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Advancing equity and justice in climate action planning (CAP) poses major challenges for urban governance actors. This paper delivers practical guidance for designing participatory approaches that prevent planners from reinforcing dominant knowledge systems and planning interventions that have produced climate change alongside social inequity. Equity and justice in CAP call for reflexive, participatory practice that foregrounds vulnerable residents and enables communication across social positions and meaning systems, grounded in a deeper account of social processes shaping vulnerability.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Equity and justice debates in municipal climate action planning

Key concepts and discourses

Distributive, procedural, and recognition justice

Practical implications for plan design

Deciding who participates and how

Recommendations and evidence base

Literature review and selection approach

Planning Theory & Practice ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: [https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rptp20](https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rptp20) Centering Equity and Justice in Participatory Climate Action Planning: Guidance for Urban Governance Actors Kayleigh Swanson To cite this article: Kayleigh Swanson (2023): Centering Equity and Justice in Participatory Climate Action Planning: Guidance for Urban Governance Actors, Planning Theory & Practice, DOI: 10. 1080/14649357 .2023.2189288 To link to this article: [https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2189288](https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2189288) Published online: 04 Apr 2023. | Submit your article to this journal | | --- | | View related articles | | View Crossmark data | Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at [https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rptp20](https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rptp20) RPTP: PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE [https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2189288](https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2189288) Centering Equity and Justice in Participatory Climate Action Planning: Guidance for Urban Governance Actors Kayleigh Swanson University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada ABSTRACT Advancing equity and justice in climate action planning (CAP) presents a considerable challenge for urban governance actors. This paper provides necessary and practical guidance for developing participatory approaches that help planners avoid perpetuating dominant knowledge systems and corresponding planning interventions that have brought us to the current state of climate change and social inequity. Advancing equity and justice in CAP requires reﬂexive, participatory practice that centers vulnerable residents and supports communication across differences in social position and systems of meaning. These actions require a fuller accounting of the underlying social processes that drive vulnerability to climate change. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 13 September 2022 Accepted 6 March 2023 KEYWORDS Climate action planning; equity; justice; participation Introduction As climate change increasingly disrupts our natural and societal systems, cities are rapidly developing climate action plans as a comprehensive policy mechanism for reducing carbon emissions and adapting to the risks and opportunities posed by climate change (Boswell et al., 2012) . Debates about equity and justice are central to this trend, but clarity is needed about how these concepts are deﬁned and deployed, and whether efforts to integrate equity and justice concerns into local climate action planning lead to better outcomes for marginalized residents. The current state of municipal climate action planning indicates a discernible trend toward trying to address equity and justice concerns in local government planning systems, but substantive engagement with these concepts in climate action planning is mainly rhetorical (Finn & McCormick, 2011) . Local governments recognize that equity and justice are essential for addressing disparate climate vulnerability, but proposed climate actions rarely direct resources to the people or places identiﬁed as vulnerable (Zoll, 2022) . At the same time, deliberation on climate change continues to privilege scientiﬁc and rational types of knowledge over ways of knowing that tend to be possessed by communities rendered less powerful through colonialism, racism, and structural discrimination (Byskov et al., 2021; Olazabal et al., 2021) . Climate justice scholars emphasize the need to prioritize disadvantaged residents in our responses to climate change, but participatory planning scholarship is much less explicit about the need to prioritize marginalized residents during decision-making processes. Consequently, the voices of people experiencing various forms of marginalization are largely excluded from so-called “participatory”climate action planning processe

FAQs

What central challenge does the paper address in climate action planning?

It addresses the difficulty urban governance actors face when advancing equity and justice within climate action planning through effective participatory approaches.

How should participatory climate action planning be structured to support equity and justice?

It should be reflexive and participatory, center vulnerable and marginalized residents, and enable communication across differences in social position and systems of meaning.

Why does the paper critique current municipal efforts to integrate equity and justice?

It argues that engagement is often mainly rhetorical, with proposed climate actions rarely directing resources to people or places identified as vulnerable.

Oct 19, 2026

Upload by Angel