Fragile against what? Imagining climate change resilience by unmasking governance fragility.
- 1Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, and Centre for Global Child Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Canada.
- 2Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital, and Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity, Canada.
Abstract
Since the 1990s, fragility has been used to describe low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with limited ability to respond to external threats in ways that ensure citizen safety, security, and welfare. Fragility challenges us to engage with governance, including why and how many institutions (including those in high-income countries) fail to protect citizens during climate change. We ask the question: how can state fragility be applied, critiqued, and expanded when considering climate change, including anthropogenic drivers, extreme weather events, mitigation, and adaptation? We present a globally applicable framework of governance fragility and emphasise the role of institutional-level gaps in motivation/willingness to act, evidence uptake, and implementation in creating fragilities that inhibit climate resilience. Using the United States as a case study, we apply the framework to identify the political ideologies that inform institutional-level motivations, shape evidence uptake, and moderate implementation capacity. This expanded notion of governance fragility (beyond conflict-affected LMICs) offers a globally-relevant lens to imagine possible solutions, including a research-to-practice agenda that contends both with ideology/willingness to act and decentralised forms of climate governance in the face of national-level fragilities.
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BibTeX
@article{vahedi2026fragile,
title = {{Fragile against what? Imagining climate change resilience by unmasking governance fragility.}},
author = {Luissa Vahedi and Carmen Logie},
journal = {Disasters},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1111/disa.70072},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42898043},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Fragile against what? Imagining climate change resilience by unmasking governance fragility.
AU - Luissa Vahedi
AU - Carmen Logie
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
JO - Disasters
DO - 10.1111/disa.70072
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42898043
AB - Since the 1990s, fragility has been used to describe low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with limited ability to respond to external threats in ways that ensure citizen safety, security, and welfare. Fragility challenges us to engage with governance, including why and how many institutions (including those in high-income countries) fail to protect citizens during climate change. We ask the question: how can state fragility be applied, critiqued, and expanded when considering climate change, including anthropogenic drivers, extreme weather events, mitigation, and adaptation? We present a globally applicable framework of governance fragility and emphasise the role of institutional-level gaps in motivation/willingness to act, evidence uptake, and implementation in creating fragilities that inhibit climate resilience. Using the United States as a case study, we apply the framework to identify the political ideologies that inform institutional-level motivations, shape evidence uptake, and moderate implementation capacity. This expanded notion of governance fragility (beyond conflict-affected LMICs) offers a globally-relevant lens to imagine possible solutions, including a research-to-practice agenda that contends both with ideology/willingness to act and decentralised forms of climate governance in the face of national-level fragilities.
SN - 0361-3666
SN - 1467-7717
ER -