Higher seminar “The politics of urban climate adaptation in Malmö: challenges, vulnerabilities and the role of social movements”
Presenter: Salvatore Paolo De Rosa, KTH, Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment. Salvatore is a postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Humanities Lab of KTH. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from Lund University, Sweden. His research areas are political ecology, geography and environmental anthropology, while his work focuses on environmental conflicts, socioecological metabolisms and grassroots ecological and climate politics. Currently, he is investigating the interactions between municipal administrators and grassroots movements around urban adaptation to climate breakdown in Malmö, and the multiple declinations of climate activism against climate consensus in Sweden. He is among the founders and editors of the political ecology platform Undisciplined Environments, and collaborates with the Italian independent magazine Napoli Monitor. His work has appeared on scientific journals, popular magazines, research blogs, collective books and NGOs websites.
Time: Mon 2020-11-23 13.15 - 14.45
Location: Zoom. Sign up to this seminar by sending an email to higher-seminar@kth.se before 10 am, Nov 23
Participating: Salvatore Paolo De Rosa, KTH, Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment.
Abstract
This article, co-authored with Joost de Moor and Marwa Dabaieh, is currently at an early stage. It addresses urban climate adaptation from a transformative and climate justice perspective, adding empirical rigor to these debates through an in-depth analysis of Malmö's adaptation politics. In particular, it focuses on adaptation challenges and on the distribution of vulnerabilities, asking which actors can actually be expected to address them. Our first aim is to make the critique posed by transformational adaptation more concrete by unearthing the limits of mainstream urban climate adaptation. Our second aim is to understand whether and how such challenges may or may not be politicized by certain actors. We find that social movements outside the usual suspects of climate politics have immediate relevance in redressing climate vulnerabilities and injustices, and should therefore be considered crucial allies for transformative approaches to urban climate adaption.
