Managing Climate Risks in Unequal Socio-Environmental Contexts: Integrating Risk Modelling, Local Knowledge, and Adaptive Governance

Climate risk is not distributed evenly. In regions marked by structural inequality, much of the Global South, and Latin America in particular, the same climatic hazard produces sharply different outcomes depending on who is exposed, what resources they can draw on, and how governance operates. Semi-arid regions face deepening water scarcity, coastal zones contend with erosion and saltwater intrusion, and rapidly urbanising areas concentrate risk among the least protected. Global-scale climate research captures long-term trends well but often misses the local specificities that determine whether risk information can actually be turned into action.This Research Topic advances applied, place-based climate risk management for unequal socio-environmental contexts. Its distinctive focus is the integration of quantitative risk analysis and modelling with local knowledge, socio-economic data, and adaptive governance, bridging the persistent gap between climate information and context-sensitive risk-reduction measures where adaptive capacity is constrained. Rather than treating vulnerability as a backdrop, it asks how climatic hazards interact with existing inequalities, and how that understanding can be encoded in the tools, indicators, and institutions that govern risk.We particularly welcome empirical and methodological work grounded in the Global South and other underrepresented regions, and contributions operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales.Themeso Integrative and multi-scalar climate risk modelling that couples quantitative analysis with local and Indigenous knowledgeo Water resource management and risk under climate extremes in semi-arid and water-stressed regionso Vulnerability mapping that incorporates social, economic, and cultural dimensions of inequalityo Governance mechanisms and institutional arrangements for equitable, adaptive risk managemento Tools, indicators, and metrics for quantifying differentiated exposure and monitoring risk-reduction outcomeso Translating climate risk information into actionable policy in low-adaptive-capacity settings Topic editors: Jório Bezerra Cabral Júnior, Edicle De Souza Fernandes Duarte, Gabriela Viviana Müller, Gabriel de Oliveira, Daniele Tôrres Rodrigues Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81944/managing-climate-risks-in-unequal-socio-environmental-contexts-integrating-risk-modelling-local-knowledge-and-adaptive-governance