Right-scaling and scaling-up knowledge co-production for decarbonization, climate-resilience and equity through multilevel metropolitan climate action planning
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Date
2025-04
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IOP Publishing
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Why co-produce knowledge for sustainable, equitable urban infrastructure transitions?
Sustainable development, broadly defined as achieving wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries, requires transforming key infrastructure and food provisioning systems that foundationally connect people with nature (O' Neill et al 2018). Indeed, these key provisioning systems that supply energy, mobility, construction materials, food, water, greenery, and waste management, contribute to >98% of global water withdrawals and land use, and >94% of global greenhouse gas emission (Ramaswami et al 2016, 2023). At the urban scale, where a majority of the world's people live, these provisioning systems foundationally impact, and are impacted by, social inequality. For example, poverty and socioeconomic status, shaped by gender, caste and race, are associated with lack of access to clean water, energy, housing, mobility and nutritious food, which in turn negatively impact economic opportunity and human health. Further, these essential lifeline sectors are vulnerable to climate change-disruptions manifested by disruptions in power, transportation, food, water and fuel seen in human settlements worldwide that are being impacted by hurricanes, flooding and wildfires (Iglesias et al 2021). Thus, transforming urban infrastructure and food provisioning systems through new technologies, network designs, policies and social innovations has been recognized to be critical for achieving sustainability, both locally and globally (Ramaswami et al 2016, 2023). Such sustainability transitions seek to transform the above multiple sectors toward multiple interconnected goals of resource sustainability, pollution mitigation and decarbonization with climate resilience, health and equity co-benefits—thereby advancing many of the world's sustainable development goals. However, the challenge lies in engaging numerous stakeholders—individuals, communities, industry/businesses and a range of policy actors—in charting these sustainability transition pathways suited to local priorities and contexts, while also recognizing larger-scale (i.e. national or global-scale) drivers and constraints.
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Ramaswami, Anu. 'Right-Scaling and Scaling-Up Knowledge Co-Production for Decarbonization, Climate-Resilience and Equity through [Multilevel] Metropolitan Climate Action Planning', Environmental Research Letters, vol. 20/no. 4, (2025), pp. 42001.