While parts of New York and New Jersey were “ building back better ” after Superstorm Sandy, residents of flood-prone public housing in Rockaway, Queens, were left without heat or running water for years .
A perspective published in Nature Water in February underscores how adaptation and mitigation measures to address urban flooding often exacerbate environmental injustices for society’s most vulnerable groups — not just in the US, but around the world. Led by Rebecca Hale of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and co-authored by urban ecologist Elizabeth Cook of Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies , the piece offers strategies for governments, organizations, and individuals involved in climate adaptation to break the cycle.
“We have to be really intentional about how we address these challenges,” said Cook, “because otherwise we end up recreating and reinforcing the injustices that already exist. It’s really hard to break these cycles, but our paper includes case studies where some of this is already happening.”
Together with coauthors Krista Capps from the University of Georgia and Rachel Scarlett from Georgia State University, Hale and Cook lay out three main points:
A person’s risk of exposure to floods, water scarcity, or water contamination depends heavily on factors such as race, gender, migration status, and income. Socially and economically disadvantaged communities bear the brunt of these hazards.
The perspective identifies two reasons for this unequal distribution of risk.
First, these groups have higher exposure to climate hazards. Globally, people of color and people living in poverty are more likely to inhabit flood zones. These patterns are often linked to legacies of oppression, such as segregation and redlining. Infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants and combined sewers are also disproportionately sited in Black communities, exposing residents to untreated wastewater — as was the case in Mobile, Alabama , Baton Rouge, Louisiana , and Jackson, Mississippi , to name a few US examples.
Second, with fewer resources and less power, people in these groups are more vulnerable to climate threats and have a lower capacity to bounce back. Within the US, cities that are whiter and wealthier have more capacity to participate in federal programs and raise funds to pay for flood protection. Among the less affluent, costs of recovery fall on vulnerable individuals and households, who are less likely to have flood insurance or be able to secure a loan to rebuild after a flood. In particular, women in informal settlements — communities where residents lack land rights and have little or no access to safe housing, sanitation, clean water, waste disposal, or electricity — may not have savings to fall back on or access to credit to recover their microbusinesses after a disaster.
When planners don’t consider the uneven exposures and vulnerabilities created by historical oppression, said lead author Hale, climate adaptation measures can worsen disparities.
St. Louis, Missouri, for example, has historically had different types of water infrastructure between the predominantly white side of the city and the predominantly Black side. These systems flow into two different rivers, with different water quality regulations. So, in 2011, when the city decided to address the problem of combined sewer overflows, which dump sewage into neighborhoods and waterways, it took two different approaches . The more privileged side received new pipes, storage tanks, and systems that separate storm water from sewage. The poorer part of the city, with more communities of color, received rain gardens to absorb water, and the burden of maintaining these gardens fell on these less privileged communities, even though they already had fewer resources.
“In part, it made sense,” said Hale, “because that area had more vacant lots and less stringent water regulations. But it illustrates how patterns such as housing segregation can have cascading impacts on adaptation and how we make the next decisions. These decisions are often made by people who want to do the right thing, but there’s a lack of awareness of the history, the complications, and the dynamics, and a lot of scientists and engineers just aren't trained at that.”
Related article: Gifting a white elephant, in the form of green infrastructure
Increasingly, profit-driven and market-based tools are used to support climate mitigation and adaptation, but these tools may also exclude vulnerable populations. For example, some programs offer financial incentives for people to install green infrastructure, but because these programs require property ownership, it limits the ability of low-income households to participate and benefit.
“With any of these private market financing tools, you have to have a return on your investment,” said Hale. “And that tends to incentivize investment in places that have higher economic value.”
In some cases, climate adaptation in wealthier communities can even make conditions worse for vulnerable communities — such as when flood protections in one area redirect floodwaters to lower-income communities.
Even when climate adaptations are focused on more vulnerable communities, they may increase the risk of gentrification, uprooting people of color and the working class. In cities across the US and Europe, urban greening for improved livability and climate adaptation is a leading cause of gentrification. In Medellín, Colombia, a large-scale greenbelt designed to restrict urban growth and enhance climate protection and biodiversity is displacing residents of informal settlements. Similarly, a nature-based flood control project in São Paulo, Brazil, has forced residents of informal floodplain settlements to relocate.
“Displacement breaks up communities,” said Hale, “and having a good community and social safety net matters a lot in terms of flood resilience and capacity to adapt to those problems. If you are displaced and you don't know your neighbors, you're not going to have people you can reach out to if you need help.”
For climate adaptations that repair, rather than replicate, legacies of oppression, the authors suggest four interrelated approaches:
Centering racial justice . “Rather than focusing on narrow climate-centered outcomes,” they write, “prioritizing the everyday needs of marginalized communities (for example, healthcare, education, and livelihoods) is expected to increase adaptive capacity at both the household and community levels.” Two approaches for centering racial justice, discussed below, include co-production and the development of novel governance arrangements.
Co-production . Many adaptation plans lack effective or meaningful community involvement, concentrating decision-making power in the hands of a limited few. “But the ‘experts’ don't always know what the problems are, and differences in vulnerability can really reshape how the biophysical environment is manifesting in social impacts,” said Hale. Co-production involves communities in the process of climate adaptation, giving them a voice in defining problems and goals, evaluating tradeoffs between potential solutions, and assessing success. This strategy requires changing the usual power dynamics and de-centering academic and technical experts.
Novel governance arrangements . Governance arrangements should enable public participation, improve transparency and accountability, and address power imbalances.
Adaptive and flexible management . Adaptive management incorporates opportunities to identify areas of success and room for improvement, to realign goals and strategies as demands and risks evolve. Ideally, the metrics used to evaluate adaptation programs are developed with or by communities to assess outcomes that are valued locally.
“These changes have to happen in tandem. While each is important individually to address legacies of oppression, together they will be more powerful to create system change and break the cycle of inequities,” said Cook.
If done right, climate adaptation provides opportunities to not only increase urban resilience to climate change but also to address historic injustices. Systemic change is never easy, but amplifying community voices, sharing power, and meaningful engagement can challenge these legacies, the authors write.
The paper includes several case studies that show that change is possible.
In the steep surroundings of Bogotá, Colombia, people living in informal settlements face high risk of flooding and landslides, and other hazards such as insufficient water, sewage, and electricity services. In the absence of government help, community-led coalitions such as Arraigo have stepped up to solve these challenges.
“Arraigo has been advocating for social justice and community-based resilience projects by designing their own nature-based solutions to manage environmental risk and to provide for themselves,” said Cook. “For example, they’ve developed terraces that reduce landslide risk and work as catchment basins for water and areas for planting food.”
A great example of co-production comes from Austin, Texas, with the Dove Springs Climate Navigator . This portal allows community members to share their flooding experiences with the City, creating a two-way flow of information. The program also trains and pays community members for their participation, and works together with the community to incorporate local knowledge into adaptation planning.
“I think this is a really great example of investing in community involvement from the ground up, in a way that's not taking advantage of communities, but respecting their knowledge and their time,” said Hale.
In Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1990s, community activists challenged municipal plans to discharge raw wastewater during storms in a Black neighborhood. By getting involved in the decision-making process, community members convinced the city to abandon its original plans and instead build separate wastewater and stormwater management systems — a win for residents all over the city.
And that’s the goal of the new perspective. “When you're doing a better job at climate adaptation,” said Hale, “hopefully it’s going to improve everybody's lot in society.”
Rebecca L. Hale - Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Krista Capps - University of Georgia
Elizabeth M. Cook - Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Barnard College
Rachel Scarlett - Georgia State University
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an independent nonprofit center for environmental research. Since 1983, our scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Our findings lead to more effective resource management, policy actions, and environmental literacy. Staff are global experts in the ecology of: forests, freshwater, soils, cities, and disease.
Nature Water
Transformative adaptation needed to break cycles of inequitable urban flood management
4-Feb-2026