Equity and climate change: Local adaptation issues and responses in the City of Lake Macquarie, Australia

• Climate adaptation highlights the potential perversity of focusing on equity.
• Formal institutions and government practice have ignored equity concerns.
• Institutional barriers to climate adaptation should include equity considerations.
• Procedural equity considerations were emphasized by residents.
• Individual adaptation measures were given precedence over collective action.

Equity in adaptation to climate change is one of the central issues in scholarly and policy debates about improving climate policy and practice. Although equity issues have now captured the attention of diversity of actors and sectors at the international level, they have received little attention in climate change adaptation which is most visible at the local community level. This paper provides a case study of the City of Lake Macquarie in Australia to investigate how different communities perceive climate change, how they are coping with the effects of climate change and how they are likely to respond to changes in the future. The paper demonstrates the predominance of individual actions over collective action, and the low-level of influence that poorer and disadvantaged groups have over climate change policies, even when they are most impacted. The paper concludes that the known institutional barriers to climate change adaptation should be extended to include equity concerns. This extension recognizes the importance of equity in hampering physical aspects of climate change adaptation as, perversely, low income people are likely to be disadvantaged by the loss of property value. Rather than simply adding another barrier, we suggest that in these situations, equity considerations should focus on procedural equity to become part of the solution. Residents in vulnerable localities saw procedural equity, particularly in the transparency of decision-making, involvement in decision-making processes and the provision of clear and accurate information by local governments on climate change, as being the most important steps to enhance equity in climate change adaptation practice.