Reinforcing Vulnerability: Urban Adaptation

The paper evaluates a two-year knowledge co-production process in Malmö focused on urban heat vulnerability, finding that collaborative efforts can reproduce power imbalances and sideline certain perspectives. Applying the lens of epistemic injustice, the authors identify seven unintended consequences, including territorial stigmatization and token participation, and argue that adaptation projects must be treated as political and moral undertakings rather than purely technical exercises.

• An evaluation of a two-year knowledge co-production process regarding urban heat vulnerability in Malmö identified seven unintended consequences related to epistemic injustice: reinforcement of territorial stigmatization, prejudicial stereotypes, intra-neighborhood inequalities, token participation, credibility excesses, and power imbalances.
• Collaborative processes in urban climate adaptation, despite being well-intended, can reproduce existing power imbalances and privilege certain forms of knowledge over others, thereby reinforcing vulnerability.
• The authors propose four recommendations for future knowledge co-production: treating it as a political and moral undertaking instead of a technical exercise, reframing vulnerability as structural and relational rather than individual, embracing transparency regarding tensions and trade-offs, and integrating monitoring, evaluation, and learning.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2025). Reinforcing Vulnerability: Urban Adaptation. https://www.sei.org/publications/reinforcing-vulnerability-urban-adaptation/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Reinforcing Vulnerability: Urban Adaptation. 2025. https://www.sei.org/publications/reinforcing-vulnerability-urban-adaptation/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Reinforcing Vulnerability: Urban Adaptation |date=5 December 2025 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/reinforcing-vulnerability-urban-adaptation/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2025reinforcing, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Reinforcing Vulnerability: Urban Adaptation}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/reinforcing-vulnerability-urban-adaptation/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }