Balancing socio-economic development goals and coping with climate impacts: lessons from historically marginalised communities in New York City

Increasing climate impacts around the world are having the largest effects on historically marginalised communities. These communities are facing a plethora of social inequalities, and therefore must meet the challenge of addressing climate adaptation while also improving socio-economic conditions, stretching often limited resources. This challenge presents an opportunity to use existing resources more effectively by finding ways that climate resilience can serve social development, and vice versa. Using a new database of community-based climate resilience plans in New York City, this study explores (1) What are the predominant goals of NYC communities in these plans? (2) How and to what extent are communities linking social development and climate resilience? (3) What does this reveal about the state of environmental justice in NYC? Methods include textual analysis of 43 NYC community-led climate plans to better understand community priorities and the potential areas of overlap between climate resilience and social development. GIS visualisations reveal geographical patterns. Results show that these plans are likely to be located within disadvantaged communities, highlighting the importance of community-led organisations in filling planning voids, but also the fundamental inequality in city-wide resources. Further, results demonstrate disparities in which objectives are being accounted for at the community level, for example neglecting challenges related to housing, temperature change, and flooding. Moving forward, we can use data from these plans to help monitor what actually gets implemented and whether it aligns with community priorities, working to ensure accountability around inclusive decision-making on climate adaptation investments across the city.