The research aimed to understand how the PRS addresses environmental justice concerns in its efforts to adapt the city and build resilience to climate change. To answer to that question, it is possible to state that the strategy does acknowledge the necessity to tackle climate change impacts as well as the importance or reinforcing social cohesion. As a matter of fact, social cohesion is the very first challenge of the strategy and it is presented as a core consideration for the metropolis of the Greater Paris, characterized by social inequalities and divisions. What the strategy lacks, however, is a proper articulation of those two challenges and how they converse with each other. One year before, Paris was the location of the first real global consensus around the justice behind environmental issues, and the need to come together and give a voice to both state and non-state actors with the aim to understand how the benefits and burdens of climate change are distributed. This global realization has been partly articulated and partly neglected in the Paris Resilience Strategy.
The Paris Resilience Strategy after the first reading seems truly promising. It shows that governance actors, most important the Municipality of Paris but also the larger entity that represents the Greater Paris, are taking into consideration the modern issue of climate change and its impact on urban development, impact notably social. The actions of the strategy surely initiate a dynamic towards adaptation to climate change as well as more social inclusion.
However, as this research argue, building such adaptation efficiently necessitates taking into consideration the interrelation between environmental impacts and social cohesion and inequalities. The lenses of environmental justice were hence used throughout the research and analysis, and I argue that the PRS requires environmental justice within the development and implementation of the actions in order to efficiently and effectively build urban resilience to face the challenges of climate change. That environmental justice dimension is brought forward in a dual dynamic by in one hand building a fair adaptation by distributing the benefits and burdens of climate change equitably among the population (taking into consideration different vulnerabilities and contributions), and on the other hand shaping a just governance by designing process of inclusion and participation in the decision-making process and strengthening the legitimacy of those decisions.
Through the analysis of different actions as case studies to understand the fair adaptation and just governance, this thesis has highlighted the strength and loopholes of the strategy and its environmental justice implication in the metropolis of the Greater Paris.
In regard to distributive justice, even though vulnerabilities of the city and of its individuals are mapped out and acknowledged in the beginning of the document, the actions do not specifically address one vulnerability or another. Diving deeper into different cases was needed to understand their ins and out. The analysis of fair adaptation through the lenses of distributive justice revealed that the PRS initiates great adaptative strategies for the city to better face the current and future negative impacts of climate change. It also succeeded, in the examples detailed previously, in distributing fairly the benefits of those strategy to the extent of Paris intra-muros (intra-walls). However, this achievement remains limited to the narrow limits represented by the ring road since the benefits are unevenly or even not all distributed in the territories of the rest of the Greater Paris. When designing the adaptive actions, the vulnerabilities of individuals and especially spatial inequalities of the Greater Paris were not acknowledged sufficiently to distribute the benefits fairly.
Furthermore, the decision-making process, that is presented as inclusive and participative, in reality tend to create transference of responsibility and tokenistic participation. This document of the municipality of Paris contains a significant number of attempts to construct and reinforce the procedural justice of the plan. The will of reshaping the conversations and dependencies between the different stakeholders at various levels stands out. It is undoubtedly possible to say that the strategy designs new ways of governing and invites frequently stakeholders to take part in the decision-making processes. Yet, from the examples developed in the previous chapter, one can wonder if that new governance is a fully just governance. Just governance, or good governance, as mentioned in the second chapter, is defined by the United Nations as a governance that is: "participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law."168 Procedural justice is consequently an essential part of it, even though it is not the only one. Howbeit, the strategy and the procedural justice dimensions present in its actions are not without imperfections. It is possible to affirm that inclusion, participation and legitimacy are promoted by the strategy, and not in an unjust manner, yet those dimensions are insufficient developed to advance the strong argument that the PRS is creating environmental justice. This is supported by other studies, for example, in an article evaluating the integration of capabilities by adaptation strategies in the region Ile-de-France (including the PRS), Pommerieux et al.
highlight that: "Citizens are not involved in setting goals or adopting common values and principles. There is no analysis of what would foster their commitment, what would enable
168 United Nation Economic and Social Commission. (2016). What is good governance?
them to act for a future they desire"169. As a concluding sentence on both procedural justice and environmental justice, it is possible to state that the Paris Resilience Strategy endeavors to define and enforce a good and just governance and that the document presents interesting baseline to do so. Nevertheless, that conceptualization of governance cannot be identified as just or reproducing procedural justice because of multiple flaws detailed above.
To sum up the answers to the research questions in one paragraph, the Paris Resilience Strategy does advance and improve environmental justice in its adaptative actions. However, as demonstrated in the examples analyzed in the previous chapter (see chapter 5), that strengthening of environmental justice is often insufficient and present imperfections, thus leaving room for improvement. The distribution of the benefits is fairly arranged if one would only look at the territories within the ring road, yet the recognition and consideration of the rest of the Greater Paris territories is insufficient. The decision-making processes are including a various range of stakeholders relevant for the development and implementation of precise actions and provides efficient participative platforms. Yet, the voice of the most vulnerable is insufficiently represented, especially those of the ones located outside of the ring road.
Finally, I would like to bring a broader and more conceptual argument on the concept of resilience itself. It is interesting to come back on the definition that the strategy gives of resilience: "Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and thrive no matter what kinds of chronic emergencies and acute shocks they experience"170. This definition encompasses a wide range of different actors and challenges they face. In academic literature, and as seen in chapter 2, this is a criticized concept. The broadness and vagueness of the definition illustrates the vagueness of some of the actions proposed. For Michael Mikulewicz, there is a "lack of conceptual clarity on the relationship between vulnerability and resilience, often understood rather simplistically as two sides of the same coin whereby adaptation’s goal is to decrease the former while increasing the latter"171. This conceptual loophole is translated into the configuration of the actions and notably into the frequent absence of articulation of the vulnerabilities identified previously.
169 Pommerieux, M., Blanc, N., Laigle, L., & Tonnelat, S. (2021). Capabilités et adaptation en Île-de-France. De la difficulté à intégrer les capabilités dans les plans locaux d’adaptation au changement climatique. Natures Sciences Sociétés
170 The Paris Resilience Strategy. Municipality of Paris. (2017, June), p11
171 Mikulewicz, M. (2019). Thwarting adaptation’s potential? A critique of resilience and climate-resilient development. Geoforum
I have here researched and analyzed an adaptative strategy from the city of Paris through underrepresented lenses in France, the ones of environmental justice. This allowed me to bring a new, critical gaze on a strategy presenting tangible political, environmental, and social implications. This contributes to get a better understanding of the challenges that the city of Paris and more broadly urban development are to take into account when developing adaptation strategies to climate change. This refers specifically to socio-environmental inequalities and how they can create or reinforce environmental injustices. I argue that efficient adaptation strategies must acknowledge and act upon those disparities, both in distribution of rights and burdens and in decision-making processes, in order to be efficient. Reflecting on the findings of the research in relation to the theory and its implication (presented in Chapter 1 and 2), it is possible to express worries and concerns as even though the Paris Resilience Strategy is a first step towards fair adaptation to climate change, its insufficiencies indicate the lack of prioritization of environmental solutions in the political agenda of the municipality. Indeed, the introduction of the research highlighted to importance of the threat and the urgency of action, which does not sufficient translated in the implementations of the PRS. Based on this conclusions, further urban development policies, especially in the Greater Paris, should consider a better articulation of different vulnerabilities of both individuals and infrastructures as well as a more inclusive governance to successfully adapt the city and avoid the presence of injustices. In the future, a more particular attention to the vulnerable territories above the limits represented by the ring road would be of high importance for an efficient adaptation of the region to climate change. At last, further research could complement the limitations of this one, as it lacks a representation of the individual perceptions of an adaptative strategy such as the PRS and does not analyzed the lived experienced of the Parisians and the citizens of the Greater Paris metropolis, which a qualitative research based on interview could achieve.
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