Climate (In)Justice in the Megacities of the Global South

In the megacities of the Global South, urban inequalities collide with erratic climatic conditions, creating new crises and exacerbating old ones. Megacities in monsoon deltas face climate-related water crises in a variety of ways. This is exacerbated in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where development policies, haphazard urban planning, rapid urban population growth, and social inequalities reproduce multiple injustices and vulnerabilities at multiple levels and locations. Flooding, waterlogging and water scarcity coexist and pose a serious problem, albeit in a fragmented and unequal manner. As climate change alters hydro-social cycles, a kind of ‘climate class society’ is emerging, as Farhana Sultana shows in her “Kin City” talk. Here, the elite appropriate the city for their own interests, alienating, marginalizing, and essentially displacing up to a third of the urban population.

The eighth panel of the conference, part of the “Kin City” festival, took place on October 17, 2024 as a video stream at ZK/U - Center for Art and Urbanistics and was moderated by Magdalena Taube. You can listen to the recording by clicking the play button above.