Adapting to climate change: the ultimate challenge for the next half-century of local government?

Climate change will have a disproportionate and asymmetric impact on cities and urban areas, and some of their most vulnerable residents will be at particular risk. Studies have found that some municipalities have done far more to adapt to it than others, but there has been a general lack of funding, implementation and engagement with marginalised groups to help them prepare. We suggest that the unpredictable and evolving nature of climate impacts means that adaptation represents a defining public policy challenge for local governments in the coming decades. We set out the broad epistemological, practical and justice issues that this challenge presents for the practice and study of local government, and argue that addressing it will require new approaches that go beyond discrete and familiar solutions.