The climate crisis has become a reality that no longer affects only the countries of the so-called Global South but equally the centers of capitalism. As a result, resilience has become a highly popular concept in science and policy, being a key goal in the UNFCCC COP21 Paris Agreement or the Habitat III Urban Agenda. Recently, the UNFCCC (2021) has called for a ‘race for resilience’ with a specific focus on urban, rural, and coastal regions worldwide.

A closer look at the discursive space that has been spanned by the notion of climate resilience reveals that techno-managerial solutions clearly dominate the debate.

A central criticism is that there is a shift from the mitigation of climate change via socio-ecological transformation to a depoliticized technical management of the status quo. Many critical researchers e.g. from the field of political ecology, therefore, reject the concept. However, there is a danger that this rejection will leave the concept of resilience to technocrats and their measures (Brantz & Sharma 2020; Nightingale et al. 2020).

Against this backdrop, this special issue explores how the concept of climate resilience can be detached from its ahistorical and technical framing and re-politicized by linking it to critical perspectives of social sciences (e.g. political ecology, feminism, post-/decolonial studies, etc.) on power relations, social inequalities and socio-ecological transformation on different spatial scales.

For this special issue, we welcome analytical papers and empirical studies that elaborate on the question of how to think climate resilience from a critical point of view. This call is open to scholars from all fields of geography and neighboring disciplines who share the conviction that the dominant discourse on climate resilience is in urgent need of realignment.

Tentative schedule:

Call for Papers: starts in March 2023

Deadline for abstracts:  April 30, 2023

Submission of full paper draft versions: September 1, 2023

Authors Workshop: in September, 2023 at the “Deutsche Kongress für Geographie” in Frankfurt (Main)

Review process: From November 15, 2023 onwards

Publication: Volume 2/3 in 2024