Riskscapes and the socio-spatial challenges of climate change

Abstract

Abstract Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of the physical threats to human and planetary wellbeing. However, climate change risks, and their interaction with other “riskscapes”, remain understudied. Riskscapes encompass different viewpoints on the threat of loss across space, time, individuals and collectives. This Special Issue of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society enhances our understanding of the multifaceted and interlocking dimensions of climate change and riskscapes. It brings together rigorous and critical international scholarship across diverse realms on inquiry under two, interlinked, themes: (i) governance and institutional responses and (ii) vulnerabilities and inequalities. The contributors offer a forceful reminder that when considering climate change, social justice principles cannot be appended after the fact. Climate change adaptation and mitigation pose complex and interdependent social and ethical dilemmas that will need to be explicitly confronted in any activation of “Green New Deal” strategies currently being developed internationally. Such critical insights about the layered, unequal and institutional dimensions of risks are of paramount import when considering other riskscapes pertaining to conflict and war, displaced people and pandemics like the 2019–2020 global COVID-19 pandemic.