Contested waters, contested spaces: rethinking justice-driven flood adaptation in informal settlements in the global South

Abstract

Across the urban global South, flood adaptation is too often framed as a technical exercise, even though the deepest risks are concentrated in informal settlements shaped by long-running social and spatial injustices. This paper reframes flood adaptation as a justice project, asking who is protected, who is displaced and whose knowledge and claims to space shape decisions about risk. Using a qualitative, document-based comparison of 13 informal settlements across Africa, Asia and Latin America, the paper identifies recurring ‘infrastructures of exclusion’, planning by omission and partial participation that stratify resilience. The paper proposes a Justice-Oriented Framework for Flood Adaptation (JOFFA), integrating distributive, procedural, recognitional and spatial justice into operational tools such as equity audits, citizen mapping, justice scorecards and spatial justice dashboards. Grounded in practices from Mukuru, Khayelitsha, Dharavi, Vila Autódromo and nine other sites, the paper advances a seminal agenda for co-produced, justice-driven flood adaptation in the urban global South and beyond.