Climate Adaptation Across the Rural-Urban Divide: Lessons on Place-based Solidarities and Political Action

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

The accelerating pace of climate disaster is raising crucial questions about how communities can enhance their resilience and mitigate future harms in the face of entrenched socio-economic interests. Outcomes hinge in large part on how effectively actors can leverage post-disaster solidarity into political struggle that transforms policy and builds durable, more liberatory social structures—and these dynamics vary considerably across urban and rural settings. This session highlights recent scholarship at the intersection of the climate crisis, urban studies, and rural sociology. Panelists will address: (1) how American cities come to “know” and act on climate risks, and how these resilience efforts impact the racial formations of the city; (2) how climate displacement and the housing crisis are exacerbating one another across the wildland-urban interface in California, with implications for solidarity and political struggle; (3) disaster resilience and self-organized collective action among farmworkers in rural Florida; and (4) the role of international institutions in mediating possibilities for climate adaptation and resilience among rural and migrant populations in Bangladesh.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Irem Inal, University of California-Berkeley

Panelists

• Savannah Cox, Sheffield University

• Miriam Greenberg, University of California-Santa Cruz

• Fernando I. Rivera, University of Central Florida

• Danielle Falzon, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Session Organizer

• Kirstin Krusell, University of California-Berkeley