2024 Theses Master's

Climate Justice in Red Hook, Brooklyn - Hurricane Sandy’s Aftermath

Chesnier, Capucine

Climate change presents an urgent and critical challenge that demands global and immediate attention. While mitigation measures are crucial, it is equally or more essential to shift our focus towards proactive actions to address the consequences of climate change as they manifest in the present. Climate change has far-reaching consequences on multiple levels, yet we observe that its impacts are not borne equally. Certain vulnerable countries, cities, and communities are impacted the most. In effect, we often see that those who contribute the least to climate change (human induced activities resulting in climate change) are also the ones who suffer the most. The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York City revealed a stark disparity in the distribution of both climate impacts and the means to address them. More than 11 years have passed since the catastrophe has hit the city, and yet certain communities find themselves frightened at the idea of potentially facing an important hurricane, with ongoing mental and physical consequences that are still present since October of 2012. This study explores the complex challenges of climate justice, the right to housing reparations, protective infrastructure, as well as potential disparities to extreme weather events across different communities within a single neighborhood.

The research investigates the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy with a case study on the Red Hook community of Brooklyn, one that is close to the waterfront and where the poverty rate lies higher than the national average. Over the last decade, Hurricane Sandy and the new gentrification trend have exacerbated the existing inequality gaps in Red Hook. The research aims to elucidate on the extent to which these communities had and still have little to no access to reparation mechanisms for both infrastructural damages and protection measures. The research also seeks to uncover the dynamics of a vicious circle wherein marginalized groups, despite being the least responsible for climate change, bear the consequences while facing obstacles in equitable access to resources for recovery and resilience.