What is the purpose of urban climate resilience? Implications for addressing poverty and vulnerability

•Consider how poverty and vulnerability can be incorporated in urban climate resilience.•The analytical concept of resilience alone is inadequate to address concerns for poverty.•Risks and connotations surrounding the discourse of resilience for poverty concerns.•Potential for resilience and systems thinking for urban poverty and climate vulnerability.

This paper considers how development policy concerns for poverty reduction and social justice can be accommodated in emerging theories and practice on urban resilience and adaptation in response to climate change. There is growing interest in applying resilience to address the challenges of urban climate change. The application of resilience theory has considerable potential for furthering our understanding of the particulars of urban climate vulnerability with its emphasis on complex systems that are increasingly important to urban life. But there are also significant risks. Resilience theory does not adequately address critical issues of power, voice and equity. Moreover, much of the uptake of resilience is as a buzzword rather than a conceptual framework. As such, the discourse of resilience has connotations that can run counter to interests of poverty reduction. Drawing on experience in Asia, the authors argue for a critical application of resilience, with special attention to concerns of resilience for and by whom.