Localising Global Climate Agendas: Challenges and Opportunities in Informal Settlements

The effectiveness of global climate agendas, such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), depends on how they are translated into action on the ground. Yet little is known about how these frameworks reach informal settlements in the global South, where climate risks are most acute, and state presence is uneven. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in informal settlements in Ghana, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic, this article shows that climate action in these contexts unfolds largely outside the influence of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs. Across all three sites, residents and community leaders had limited knowledge of these global agendas, and local responses to climate impacts emerge instead from everyday negotiations with risk, scarcity and institutional neglect. Although community organisations demonstrate significant adaptive capacity, their efforts remain constrained by insecure tenure, funding exclusion and territorial stigma. The article argues that the limited reach of global frameworks reflects a deeper structural misalignment between climate governance architectures and the sociopolitical realities of informality. Meaningful localisation therefore requires institutional recognition, accessible financing and the co-production of climate strategies with the non-state actors already shaping adaptation on the ground. By identifying the mechanisms that inhibit localisation and highlighting grassroots agency, this study advances debates on climate justice, urban informality and multilevel climate governance.