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Plural climate storylines to foster just urban futures

Nature Cities volume 1, pages 732–740 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Managing climate change-related risks requires robust and actionable insights into future climates. Here we develop the plural climate storylines framework to complement existing physical climate storylines, which have strengthened the usability of climate projections yet struggled to generate action for just climate futures. By taking urban adaptation as a case in point, we illustrate the plural climate storylines framework through four complementary methodological schools that bring together multiple knowledges on complex social and climatic processes: power-sensitive storylines, decolonizing storylines, co-producing storylines and aspirational storylines. Our framework generates storylines with the potential to advance transformative policies and new pathways towards climate-just futures.

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Fig. 1: Multiple approaches to generating climate information.
Fig. 2: Current and future heat and water stress in urban centers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Maria Rusca & Diana Mitlin

  2. Department of Planning, Property, and Environmental Management, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Alice Sverdlik

  3. IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands

    Amitangshu Acharya & Margreet Zwarteveen

  4. Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Britt Basel

  5. Ecothropic, Cimarron, CO, USA

    Britt Basel

  6. Ecothropic Mexico A.C., San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico

    Britt Basel

  7. Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Emily Boyd

  8. Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction (RDR), University College London, London, UK

    Thaisa Comelli & Mark Pelling

  9. Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    David Dodman

  10. School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Arabella Fraser

  11. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

    Dylan Matthew Harris

  12. Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Sara Lindersson, Elena Raffetti & Gabriele Messori

  13. Swedish centre for impacts of climate extremes (climes), Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Sara Lindersson, Elena Raffetti & Gabriele Messori

  14. Department of Water and Climate Risk, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Maurizio Mazzoleni

  15. Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Marcellus Forh Mbah

  16. School of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Delhi, India

    Anshu Ogra

  17. Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Elena Raffetti

  18. Department of Geography and the Environment, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Farhana Sultana

  19. Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, University College London, London, UK

    Erica Thompson

  20. Department of Geography, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Arianna Tozzi

  21. Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Governance and Inclusive Development, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Margreet Zwarteveen

  22. Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gabriele Messori

  23. Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gabriele Messori

Authors
  1. Maria Rusca
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  2. Alice Sverdlik
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  3. Amitangshu Acharya
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  4. Britt Basel
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  5. Emily Boyd
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  6. Thaisa Comelli
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  7. David Dodman
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  8. Arabella Fraser
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  9. Dylan Matthew Harris
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  10. Sara Lindersson
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  11. Maurizio Mazzoleni
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  12. Marcellus Forh Mbah
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  13. Diana Mitlin
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  14. Anshu Ogra
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  16. Elena Raffetti
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  17. Farhana Sultana
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  18. Erica Thompson
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  19. Arianna Tozzi
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  20. Margreet Zwarteveen
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  21. Gabriele Messori
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Contributions

M.R. and G.M. conceptualized the study. All authors contributed to the formal analysis, writing the original draft, and reviewing and editing the paper. S.L., M.R. and E.R. developed the figures. M.R., A.S., T.C. and A.A. developed the table.

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Correspondence to Maria Rusca.

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Nature Cities thanks Eulàlia Baulenas, Cymene Howe and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Rusca, M., Sverdlik, A., Acharya, A. et al. Plural climate storylines to foster just urban futures. Nat Cities 1, 732–740 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00133-6

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