Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Urban Informality and Climate Change: Precarity, Governance, and Pathways to Resilience
2026-09-01
Climate change is worsening long-standing inequalities for people living and working in cities’ informal systems, where exposure to heat, flooding, and other hazards intersects with insecure land rights, weak infrastructure, and unstable livelihoods. Using an informality-first approach, this review considers informal housing, economies, and governance not as leftover categories but as essential modes of urbanization and citizenship that define who is protected from climate risk. We review recent research on climate impacts, daily and community-based adaptation, and nature-based solutions in informal settings and combine this with long-standing debates on informality, marginality, and urban governance. The evidence shows that climate change acts as a threat multiplier: It adds stress to informal systems due to climate-induced migration to cities; worsens structural insecurity; and can turn well-meaning adaptation into maladaptation through eviction, green-led displacement, and shifting adaptation burdens onto already overburdened residents. The review suggests that resilience in informal settlements relies less on technical fixes and more on governance structures that recognize informal systems, share authority, and institutionalize coproduction across local, regional, and national levels. Middle-out governance and multilevel governance are crucial for aligning top-down resources with bottom-up knowledge and claims to the city. Ultimately, climate adaptation will either reinforce or challenge urban inequality, depending on whether it treats informality as a core, rather than a peripheral, part of modern urban life.