Tackling knowledge and power: an environmental justice perspective on climate change adaptation in Kiribati

Reducing vulnerabilities is at the core of climate change adaptation interventions. This goal is usually approached from the perspective of increasingly universal adaptation methodologies, tools and services that are grounded in Western scientific thought and knowledge. Questions of (in-)justices and new or reproduced vulnerabilities play a marginal role in adaptation interventions. In this paper, we argue that a failure to acknowledge, let alone address, the intricate linkages between knowledge and power risks creating fundamental injustices as part of well-intended adaptation processes and their outcomes. Using the Kiribati Adaptation Project (KAP) as a case study, we examine how knowledge hegemonies lead to unsatisfactory adaptation processes and outcomes when viewed from a justice perspective. Environmental justice lenses provide a useful framework for applying distributional, procedural and epistemic notions of injustice to tackle and interrogate the knowledge-power relations, which we identify as a profound part of adaptation interventions.