Climate protection unevenly distributed? A spatial analysis of climate protection and social inequality in Hamburg

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Surveys on climate change show that support for climate protection is linked to a person's socio-demographic characteristics. The lower a person's income and education, the less they consider climate change to be an urgent problem, participate less in climate protection and see it as less necessary. As a group of students, we suspect that not only individual characteristics and factors such as unfair cost distribution play a role here, but also spatially unevenly distributed climate protection projects within a city. In our project, we are therefore using Hamburg as an example to reconstruct where climate protection projects take place and whether the distribution is systematically linked to the social structure of Hamburg's neighbourhoods. Our findings can help to make Hamburg's climate policy more socially just and thus promote acceptance of climate protection.

Overall, climate change is perceived by a large majority as a clear threat. In a recent Eurobarometer survey, 93% of all Europeans stated that climate change is a ‘very serious’ to ‘fairly serious’ problem for the world [1, p. 23]. More than half (58%) believe that the transition to a green economy should be accelerated [1, p. 23].

Despite this broad recognition of the danger, there are noticeable differences depending on the socio-economic status of the respondents. It is noticeable, for example, that the more highly educated and wealthier a person is and the higher they classify themselves socially, the more likely they are to categorise climate change as the main problem, while, conversely, hunger and poverty as well as the economic situation are identified as the main problems [1, p. 14, 22]. The same pattern can be seen in private climate protection measures, such as more recycling, less meat consumption and also in attitudes towards institutional climate protection measures. The lower the social status, the less initiative is taken to combat climate change and the lower the acceptance and perceived necessity of a large number of measures, particularly with regard to the energy transition [1].

In our research project, we address this relationship between climate protection projects and the participation, acceptance and perceived necessity of climate protection, depending on socio-economic status. We hypothesise that social differences in support for climate action can be exacerbated not only by individual characteristics [5], unequal cost distribution and the (perceived) burden of different actors [2], but also by local differences in the implementation of climate action projects within a city. Our assumption is that socially disadvantaged people support climate protection less on average because they may not come into contact with it sufficiently in their immediate environment. Initial research findings point to a positive correlation between the acceptance of climate protection measures and the actual implementation of these measures locally, as well as to ‘spatial diffusion processes’ between neighbouring districts [3, p. 20]. If it can also be assumed that the participation, acceptance and perceived necessity of climate protection at an individual level depends on a person's socio-economic status [1, p. 14, 22], then it can also be concluded at a contextual level that climate protection projects are distributed unequally at a local level, recognisable by the fact that people with a low social status support climate protection less on average. This can presumably have an even stronger effect if, as in Hamburg, socially deprived areas are concentrated in areas with a very high social status [4, p. 18].

Our research project aims to analyse how climate protection differs between Hamburg's districts and whether the distribution of climate protection projects correlates with the social structure of the districts. To this end, we are pursuing the following research questions:

• Where are climate protection projects carried out in Hamburg?
• To what extent do climate protection projects of the various actors (city/civil society) differ in their spatial location?
• How is the social structure of a neighbourhood related to the climate protection projects implemented locally?
• What are the implications of the (in)equal distribution of climate protection projects?

At the end of the project, the results will be visualised in an interactive map. The aim is to show potential clusters and differences between neighbourhoods, actors and possibly different types of climate protection projects at a glance.

And here is a short video presentation of the project:

Literature: 

[1] Europäische Kommission (2023): Climate Change, Special Eurobarometer 538, Report. DOI: 10.2834/653431 
[2] Holzmann, Sara und Wolf, Ingo (2023): Klimapolitik und soziale Gerechtigkeit. Wie die deutsche Bevölkerung Zielkonflikte in der Transformation wahrnimmt, Bertelsmann Stiftung (Hrsg.): Gütersloh. DOI:10.11586/2023094 
[3] Levi, Sebastian, Wolf, Ingo und Sommer, Stephan (2023): Geographische und zeitliche Unterschiede in der Zustimmung zu Klimaschutzpolitik in Deutschland im Zeitverlauf, Kopernikus-Projekt Ariadne (Hrsg.): Potsdam. DOI: 10.48485/pik.2023.003 
[4] Maaß, Fabian und Huang, Zhiyuan (2023): Sozialmonitoring Integrierte Stadtteilentwicklung – Bericht 2023, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg (Hrsg.): Hamburg.  
[5] Droste, Luigi und Wendt, Björn (2021): Who cares? Eine ländervergleichende Analyse klimawandelbezogener Besorgnis in Europa, Soziologie und Nachhaltigkeit, 7(1), 1-42.