David Champagne is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Columbia and a Vanier Graduate Scholarship of Canada recipient. His areas of expertise include urban renewal, political economy, governance, sustainability policy, climate change adaptation and climate disasters. 

His work investigates the effects of climate adaption efforts on climate disasters and their related injustices. His current research explores the social construction of climate hazards in privileged and vulnerable urban and rural communities on the West Coast of North America. His research was featured in Theory & Society, Current Sociology, and in a forthcoming Elgar Handbook on Risk and Inequality.

David has held visiting positions at the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo), Paris, and at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (JFKI) at Freie Universität, Berlin. 

Research Interests

My research focuses on the injustices implicated in climate adaptation efforts in North America in the context of climate disasters.

Equitable access to hazard-free environments is an urgent challenge of the 21st century. Because of climate change, many cities and regions face recurrent mass water shortages, forest fires, floods, and rising sea levels. Yet climate adaptation policies do not always foster social equality, especially equal access to housing, income, and a clean environment. Many suggest that these policies create cities that are more sustainable, but not more equitable. This critical problem is not only striking in developing countries but in developed countries as well, such as Canada and the US. In light of this gap, my research asks the following question: as Western cities and regions adapt to climate change, how do climate policies create more equal conditions for inhabitants? 

Essential to this transformation, sustainable city policies attempt to implement equitable practices that would allow communities to answer their own needs without compromising future generations. These practices involve water, energy and food access, waste management, pollution reduction and the prevention of climate hazards. While these policies developed several equity measures in collaboration with grassroots organizations, evidence suggests that equality has been a failed objective overall. Yet, in the context of competing claims about climate policies, little research shows precisely how climate adaptation policies affect social equality. My research responds to this gap via a comparative study of sustainability and climate adaptation plans in the North American context through the 1970-2021 period.