This research is focusing on the metropolis of the Greater Paris, englobing Paris and its suburb. This chapter provides more details about France and Paris in order to contextualize the analysis.
Before diving into the case of France, it is important to come back on its continental context. France is located in central Europe, which according to the IPCC, will face more and more environmental challenges in the times to come. Those challenges can be summarized in three points: increase in rains, increase in rivers flooding, and increase in droughts67. The European Commission support those claims and highlights other challenges. Overall, global warming is increasing temperatures, having specifics impacts worldwide: "Higher temperatures can cause increased mortality, reduced productivity and damage to infrastructure. The most vulnerable members of the population, such as the elderly and infants, will be most severely affected"68. Higher temperature thus threatens health of beings and ecosystems. Droughts are a direct consequence of the rise of temperature along with wildfires, endangering "agriculture, the energy sector and the public water supply"69. The availability of water is more particularly sensitive to droughts as "40% of Europe’s fresh water comes from the Alps"70. All of those negative outcomes of climate change in Europe affect both humans and ecosystems (on which human societies rely). However, those outcomes are unevenly distributed among the population and the most vulnerable undergo the strongest impacts with simultaneously the least capacities to face them71. According to the European Commission, those vulnerable groups are people in low-income urban areas, women, the elderlies, unemployed and marginalized groups as well as displaced communities72. This brings the question of how social inequalities creating disparities among the population relates to climate change and its impacts, hence the relevance of environmental justice.
France is one of the pillar countries of Europe and has some particularities worth mentioning in this debate. As explained before, France academia and political discourse was late compared to other countries of the global North in regard to the politization of environmental injustices. As David Blanchon highlights, "Environmental justice thus appears
67 IPCC Regional fact sheet Europe (Sixth assessment report). (2022).
68 https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/adaptation-climate-change/how-will-we-be-affected_en#sectors-affected
69 ibid
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
in France to be a poorly understood in the academic literature and in public policy, and almost ludicrous since the environment is presented as an apolitical and consensual field"73 [translated by the author]. Yet, this delay was compensated recently, notably with the Paris Agreement and the COP21 in 2016 which made Paris a metropolis at the core of worldwide climate negotiations, and which initiated global concern touching upon environmental injustices. I want to emphasize the particularity of the Paris Agreement as it is one of the first agreement that brings together world leaders on ambitious climate negotiations in a more restrictive, binding way and countries are committing to the reduction of green-house gas emissions74. This now well-known Paris agreement is a treaty that aims to maintain the global warming underneath two degrees Celsius. To do so, the 196 countries that signed the agreement are engaged to transform and adapt their economic and social system, notably to lower their green-house gas emissions75. The particularly of this agreement, aside of the fact that it is legally binding, it that it also aims to take into consideration the different needs of individuals and countries, as well as recognizing that responses to climate change can have unbalanced and unequitable impacts between and within populations. As follow, some examples of how the agreement make those acknowledgments76:
- "Recognizing the need for an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge"
- "Also recognizing the specific needs and special circumstances of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, as provided for in the Convention."
- "Recognizing that Parties may be affected not only by climate change, but also by the impacts of the measures taken in response to it"
- "Emphasizing the intrinsic relationship that climate change actions, responses and impacts have with equitable access to sustainable development and eradication of poverty"
Paris, the capital of France, is the city that welcomed the negotiation of this agreement in 2016. France is thus symbolically taking a leading role in this discussion that articulates
73 Blanchon, D., Moreau, S., & Veyret, Y. (2009). Comprendre et construire la justice environnementale.
Annales de Géographie
74 Paris climate accord set to enter into force. (2016). Physics Today.
75 United Nations Publications. (2016). The Paris agreement (English ed.). United Nations.
76 박시원. (2016). Post-2020 Climate Regime and Paris Agreement - Key Issues and Agreed Results of UNFCCC COP 21 -. Environmental Law and Policy
environmental threats and their different impacts, with a new stronger focus on the relationships between climate threats and social inequalities. The year after, in 2017, the Paris Resilience Strategy, which is the core study material of this analysis, was released. Since it chronologically followed the Paris agreement publication, one can expect from the strategy that it takes into the realizations of the agreement. As its name states, the strategy aims to build resilience in the city, notably in the face of climate change. The term resilience adds up to the term adaptation, as it conveys the idea of transformation: it aims to transform the city to withstand current and future shocks77. However, this transformation to resist to the current and future impacts of climate changes needs to be carefully calculated as not everyone is equal and citizens of a same city will undergo the impacts of climate change differently considering their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and the vulnerabilities they may present. Consequently, the impacts of climate change are not universally distributed, and building resilience efficiently necessitates not only improving the capacity of the city to resist and grow from climate change problems, but also its capacity it to acknowledge disparities within its population and act upon them.
Regarding policies, that awareness should appear both in the decision-making process and in the outcomes (see chapter 2). Policies should not only address the issues at their cause, finding adaptation strategy, but they should also grant more particular attention and protection to those vulnerable groups, as the contrary will strengthen or provoke unfairness and extensively makes the adaptation ineffective (see chapter 2).
The city of Paris, notwithstanding an influent metropolis worldwide, is not a city deprived of environmental inequalities, or disparities at all. Paris within its walls counts approximately 2 million people, and the "Greater Paris", the city and its suburb, counts 7 million78. It is a wide and densely populated area which is highly diversified in terms of socio-economic backgrounds. Figure 479 presents a visual representation for the reader to understand the disposition of the different areas at stake. In French, both territories are qualified under the expressions "Paris intra-muros" for the city within the limits of the ring road and "Paris extra-muros" for the rest of the territories. This comes from Latin and can be translated in "Paris inside-walls" and "Paris outside-walls". I will use this terminology in the next chapters to refer to the territories shown in Figure 4.
77 IPCC, 2014: Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability
78 Comparateur de territoire − Comparez les territoires de votre choix - Résultats pour les communes, départements, régions, intercommunalités. . . INSEE
79 comersis.com. (2016). Cartes et plans de la Métropole du Grand Paris (MGP
Figure 4:
Social justice and adaptive capacities are unequally distributed among that territory. In a study on environmental inequalities in the region Ile-de-France, Gueymard Sandrine proved through quantitative analysis that the sensitive urban areas which present high rate of unemployment and significant proportion of international migrants, were over-represented in terms of "poor environmental quality"80. This implies, as the OECD substantiates, that
"disadvantaged groups more often live-in areas that are noisier, more polluted, more at risk of
80 Gueymard, S. (2012). Inégalités environnementales en région Île-de-France. Répartition socio-spatiale des ressources, des handicaps et satisfaction environnementale des habitants. Les Annales de La Recherche Urbaine
climate-related hazards and with less green space. Such environmental inequality is likely to be more acute in cities"81. It is consequently relevant here to zoom in on the spatial disparities present in the Greater Paris, area of impact of the Paris Resilience Strategy (PRS) to show the territories that are more likely to undertake a heavier environmental burden (compared to the more privileged or wealthy areas). Including four different variables, namely education (percentage of young people having finished high school), median income per household, percentage of employed, and percentage of working-class individuals, Antolinos-Basso et al.
drew a map showing the social deprivation of the city (figure 5)82. This map classifies the different areas form the least deprived (white areas) to the most deprived (dark red) in the Greater Paris metropolis. At this scale, we can see that the most socially deprived areas (in terms of class, education, income and employment) are located in the North and North-East of the region. Those areas can be identified as vulnerable territories that should be given particular attention when developing adaptative polices such as the Paris Resilience Strategy (PRS).
Moreover, the national statistical agency of France, INSEE, also developed a reliable map of the Greater Paris (figure 6)83, more focused on the city itself and its close suburb. This map is classifying the neighborhoods according to the socio-economic classes of their population, using the French social class nomenclature.
Those two maps give us a glance of the spatial distribution of inequalities and vulnerabilities in the Greater Paris. Yet again, we know that socially deprived and low-income neighborhoods are presenting more vulnerabilities in the face of climate change. Indeed, as stated before and emphasized here again, those neighborhoods are usually located in areas of poor environmental quality84. This means that vulnerable territories in general like those neighborhoods are more incline to present "negative environmental existing conditions", which refers to a disproportionate "exposure to nuisances, pollution and risk" and less access to facilities and natural resources85 [translated by the author].
81 Alexander Mackie And Ivan Haščič, A. M. I. H. š. č. č. (2018). The distributional aspects of environmental quality and environmental policies: Opportunities for individuals and household
82 Antolinos-Basso, D., Blanc, N., Chiche, J., & Paddeu, F. (2020). S’engager pour l’environnement dans le Grand Paris : territoires, politiques et inégalités
83 Une mosaïque sociale propre à Paris - Insee Analyses Ile-de-France - 53. (2017). INSEE
84 Gueymard, S. (2012). Inégalités environnementales en région Île-de-France. Répartition socio-spatiale des ressources, des handicaps et satisfaction environnementale des habitants. Les Annales de La Recherche Urbaine
85 Laurent, L. (2017). Reconnaître, en France, l’inégalité et la justice environnementales. Actuel Marx
Figure 5: Map of the index of social deprivation in Greater Paris
Legend translation: from very weak (white) to very strong (dark red) social deprivation
Figure 6: In Paris, wealthy areas in the center west and a social diversity on the right bank
Legend translation:
Orange: Territories middle class Yellow: Territories of executive in the private rental stock
Green: Territories of social diversity Blue: Wealthy territories
Red: Vulnerable territories Grey: Green spaces
----: RER (fast train network)
Aside of the vulnerabilities of its population, Paris also presents vulnerabilities to climate change as an urban area. Those risks linked to the structures and particularities of the city need to be also identified to avoid social and environmental injustices has they often present stronger impacts on the ones already socially deprived. The city is crossed by a river, the Seine, that presents risks of flooding. While its presence has always made Paris vulnerable to floods, this is more and more the case as extreme weather is becoming a norm. Moreover, the Seine creates another vulnerability in the opposite situation of low water level and hence water insecurity and scarcity. The city needs to build resilience and adaptation to potential negative outcomes linked to the Seine, and their consequences. Therefore, even though floods in themselves affect everyone in the city and more primarily the ones living on the shores of the Seine (which, in the case of Paris, are more wealthy neighborhoods), their related water scarcity impact more heavily the ones that usually have less facility of access to natural resources, namely the neighborhoods of poor environmental quality, which, as explained above, present an increased risk of exposure to environmental negative outcomes.
Furthermore, because of its topographic specificities, the rise of temperature makes Paris very prone to the urban heath island effect. This effect refers to "the temperature difference between an urban area and its less urbanized peripheral environment"86 [translated by the author], and it is also characterized by temperatures remaining rather steady during the night. The urban heat island effect has four main impacts, according to the United Stated Environmental Protection Agency87: more air pollution, increase in energy consumption, compromised health, and decrease in water quality. In 2019, the city has seen temperature going up to 42,6 degrees88 and threatened the health and wellbeing of Parisians. Here again the most vulnerable in regard to health, i.e., the elderly, the children but also the underprivileged neighborhoods are the most affected by heat waves89, effect reinforced in the urban context.
Indeed, someone living in an area exposed to urban heat island effect has twice more chance to die than someone unexposed.90 As a supportive example, the heat wave that occurred in 2003 had "no less than 20,000 deaths attributed to it, including 5,000 excess deaths in the Île-de-France region."91, which is the region where the Greater Paris metropolis is located.
86 Agence du climate parisien. (2014). L’îlot de chaleur urbain à Paris Un microclimat au cœur de la ville
87 Heat Island Impacts. (2021, September 15). US EPA
88 Ville de paris direction des espaces verts et de l’environnement. (2021). L’adaptation aux vague de chaleur a Paris
89 Ibid.
90 Effets d’îlots de chaleur : quels impacts ? quels outils pour les identifier ? (2021, June 11). Adaptaville
91 Ibid.
Lastly, the city of Paris presents another significant vulnerability to climate change: air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution" [translated by the author]. In the region Ile-de-France, it is estimated to be the cause of one in ten deaths in 201992, it is consequently a primordial challenge of the city that needs to be addressed. In that regard, Paris is the 4th most polluted city in Europe and its azote dioxide emissions result in the premature death of 7% of its population each year.93 It is thus a pressing matter, and the city needs to build efficient adaptation to it. The pollution of the city finds different causes, among which the ring road infrastructures occupies an important place: "the ring road accounts for more than a third of the capital's nitrogen oxide (34%) and PM10 (39%) emissions"94 [translated by the author].
Although everyone living in the Greater Paris is exposed to levels of pollution exceeding the WHO thresholds, it again affects even more the vulnerable groups. Indeed, "even though in Paris the areas affected by carbon dioxide are also the nice neighborhoods, the public that lives there is way less affected by it than the social groups living in deprived areas similarly exposed"
[translated by the author]95. As a matter of fact, a recent study proved that although the most polluted areas in Paris were not correlated to the deprived neighborhoods, the mortality rate of the deprived social classes was higher than the one of the more privileged96
Overall, each of these challenges (heat waves, floods and pollution) have a double impact: they affect the city's functioning and structures which disproportionally affect the most vulnerable, as demonstrated above. Consequently, it is important to understand those social inequalities and environmental risks to put in perspective the implementation of environmental justice in the region of the Greater Paris. Paris is one of the largest and wealthiest regions of France, welcoming "19 percent of the French population and represent[ing] 30 percent of the country’s GDP"97. The Yellow Vest movement that started in 2018 is a good example of the link between social injustices and environmental injustices. Indeed, the movement started after the president Macron announced the rise of prices of gas, following European policies and
92 R. (2022, February 10). Île-de France : 1 décès sur 10 causé par la pollution de l’air. Reporterre
93 Mandard, S. (2021, January 20). Paris, une des villes où la pollution automobile tue le plus en Europe
94 R Rédaction, L. (2022, May 20). Paris lance l’opération ceinture verte de son boulevard périphérique.
Cityramag
95 Laurent, L. (2017). Reconnaître, en France, l’inégalité et la justice environnementales
96 Deguen, S., Petit, C., Delbarre, A., Kihal, W., Padilla, C., Benmarhnia, T., Lapostolle, A., Chauvin, P., &
Zmirou-Navier, D. (2016). Correction: Neighbourhood Characteristics and Long-Term Air Pollution Levels Modify the Association between the Short-Term Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations and All-Cause Mortality in Paris
97Mufson, C. (2019, June 3). Rich and poor increasingly segregated in Paris region. France 24.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the objective of lowering carbon emissions. Yet, a significant amount of the population already finding themselves in precarious economic situations were deeply affected by this new measure as they did not always had alternatives to a daily use of their car. Without countermeasures to help those people, this created a strong environmental injustice, and the population clearly express its discontent. That injustice is strengthened by the fact that those affected are usually not the ones contributing the most to carbon emissions. This is just one example of many, showing the importance of including environmental justice when developing strategies such as the PRS.
Lastly, as its name indicates, the Paris Resilience Strategy focuses on building and implementing more resilience in the Greater Paris metropolis. Resilience is defined by the PRS as "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"98. In an urban context, it implies to improve and strengthen the structures and infrastructures of the city to make it able to withstand adversity in all its forms. The strategy describes urban resilience as an approach that "aims to find effective and pragmatic solutions that prepare cities for expected shocks or stresses, as well as unforeseen challenges"99. Consequently, the goal of the strategy is to think and design actions that will build up and reinforce the resilient reality of the Greater Paris. Yet, to do so while being environmentally just, both just governance and fair adaptation are necessary, and the next chapter will analyze the strategy to get an understanding of how its resilience building reinforces or fails to create environmental justice throughout the different actions. Indeed, as explained in Chapter 2 (see chapter 2) the strategy needs to be fair in its outcomes (its adaptation) but also in its decision-making process (its governance framing for adaptation) to be qualified as environmentally just.
98 The Paris Resilience Strategy. Municipality of Paris. (2017, June), p10
99 Ibid.