Global Views on Climate Relocation and Social Justice

Navigating Retreat

Idowu Jola Ajibade, A.R. Siders, Idowu Jola Ajibade, A.R. Siders

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000476378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Warming & Climate Change
• Index: Biological Sciences

This edited volume advances our understanding of climate relocation (or planned retreat), an emerging topic in the fields of climate adaptation and hazard risk, and provides a platform for alternative voices and views on the subject.

As the effects of climate change become more severe and widespread, there is a growing conversation about when, where and how people will move. Climate relocation is a controversial adaptation strategy, yet the process can also offer opportunity and hope. This collection grapples with the environmental and social justice dimensions from multiple perspectives, with cases drawn from Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, South America, and North America. The contributions throughout present unique perspectives, including community organizations, adaptation practitioners, geographers, lawyers, and landscape architects, reflecting on the potential harms and opportunities of climate-induced relocation. Works of art, photos, and quotes from flood survivors are also included, placed between sections to remind the reader of the human element in the adaptation debate. Blending art – photography, poetry, sculpture – with practical reflections and scholarly analyses, this volume provides new insights on a debate that touches us all: how we will live in the future and where?

Challenging readers' pre-conceptions about planned retreat by juxtaposing different disciplines, lenses and media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental migration and displacement, and environmental justice and equity.

The Open Access version of chapter 1, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003141457, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1 Introduction: Climate change and planned retreat

Idowu Jola Ajibade and A.R. Siders

DOI: 10.4324/9781003141457-1

Climate change is already redefining the landscapes of risk across the globe: from rising seas and shoreline erosion in small island states to heat waves and massive flooding in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and expanding wildfires and heatdome in the American West. These events are intensifying patterns of displacement, migration, and relocation within and between countries. In the last two decades, over 480 million people were displaced globally by climate-related disasters (IDMC, 2018; UNDRR, 2020). From 2000 to 2019, over 7,000 climate-related disasters killed an estimated 1.23 million people and caused 2.97 trillion (USD) in economic losses (UNDRR, 2020). During this time, an average of 24 million people were displaced per year globally (IDMC, 2018). These displacements are not experienced in isolation but as part of the complex intersecting economic, social, political, and environmental crises that puts severe strain on individual and community well-being across the world. By 2050, as many as one billion people could be displaced by a combination of climate change impacts, extreme events, and environmental degradation (IEP, n.d.), and thus raising critical concerns about finding appropriate climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies.

To date, climate adaptation efforts have primarily focused on enabling people to remain in their homes – to adapt in situ (Jamero et al., 2019). However, in light of relatively unambitious climate change mitigation by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and with increasing but widespread disasters, some adaptation practitioners, policy makers, and communities have begun to consider planned retreat – that is, proactive and coordinated efforts to relocate people, infrastructure, and assets from hazardous areas and resettling them in relatively safer locations (Greiving et al., 2018; Hino et al., 2017; King et al., 2014). Around the world, governments and communities have retreated, are in the process of doing so, or are planning for a future when retreat may be inevitable. While some planned retreat programs empower and benefit individuals and communities, others ignore people’s rights, entrench inequities, and perpetuate risk, vulnerability, and harm on already marginalized communities and groups. This lack of attention to equity and justice can undermine the potential of planned retreat as a viable adaptation strategy.

This volume contributes to an emerging body of literature on planned retreat and socioenvironmental justice. It aims to help researchers, policy makers, practitioners, students, affected communities, and the public to explore climate-induced relocations from a multidimensional justice perspective. Using justice-based approaches as a framework and an analytical lens has a potential to advance a deeper understanding of how retreat might support the rights, self-determination, livelihoods, physical health, and sociocultural needs of individuals and communities facing the most severe impacts of climate change. We argue that such approaches must be rooted in an understanding of communities’ past experiences, current challenges and needs, and their visions for the future.

1.1 Planned retreat: Why is it important?

Planned retreat (also called planned relocations, managed retreat, planned resettlement, or assisted migration) is not new. Communities across the globe have relocated throughout history in response to climatic drivers (McLeman & Smit, 2006; Warner et al., 2013). If we consider just the 20th century, there are numerous examples from every corner of the globe. The Banaban community relocated from present-day Kiribati to Fiji and the Vaitupuans moved from Tuvalu to Fiji (McAdam, 2014). In the 21st century, towns in Australia and the United States relocated to avoid repetitive and/or coastal flooding (Forsyth & Peiser, 2021; Pinter & Rees, 2021; Sipe & Vella, 2014). Communities in Canada, China, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mozambique, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam also relocated due to floods, storms, erosion, and other climatic hazards (Arnall, 2019; Greiving et al., 2018; Marter-Kenyon, 2020; Reisinger et al., 2014). These forms of relocations differ from climate migration in the degree of planning, government intervention, funding, legal protection, and claims to property rights (Ajibade et al., 2020; Miller, 2020).

There is no single pattern for how planned retreat or climate relocation occurs. It may be voluntary or forced (Farbotko et al., 2020; King et al., 2014), community or state-led (Albert et al., 2018; Cronin & Guthrie, 2011), and in-country or cross border (McAdam, 2014; McMichael & Katonivualiku, 2020). It is usually implemented through building restrictions (Reisinger et al., 2014), property acquisitions or buyouts (Mach et al., 2019; Siders, 2019a, 2019b; Thaler & Fuchs, 2020), social housing provision (Ajibade, 2019; See & Wilmsen, 2020), farmland swaps (Arnall, 2019; Gebauer, & Doevenspeck, 2015), and construction of new residential areas or towns (Bower & Weerasinghe, 2021; Forsyth & Peiser, 2021). Although, retreat is a universal strategy in response to environmental change, it is most prevalent in the Global North (Bower & Weerasinghe, 2021; Niven & Bardsley, 2013) and expanding in the Global South (Arnall, 2019; Marter-Kenyon, 2020; Piggott-Mckellar et al., 2020).

Depending on how planned retreat occurs, it can have a variety of positive and negative outcomes for the same individuals or for different groups. At its best, relocation can protect lives, avoid costly efforts to remain in place, reduce mental stress, and allow land to be used for community activities and/or nature-based ecosystem restoration (Ferris & Weerasinghe, 2020; Kochnower et al., 2015; Koslov et al., 2021; Zavar et al., 2016). At its worst, it can disconnect people from their livelihoods, exacerbate poverty and food insecurity, disrupt place attachment and identity, and splinter communities (Ajibade, 2019; Connell & Lutkehaus, 2017; Hammond, 2008), and thus perpetuating social inequality and vulnerability (Afifi et al., 2012). For instance, the relocation of a self-sufficient community from a frequently flooded but fertile ecosystem in eastern Uganda to a drier location in the western part of the country, transformed the social reproduction of farmers such that they became wage laborer and experienced livelihood fragility and economic vulnerability (Mafaranga, 2021). Relocations can also affect people emotionally and culturally. Place attachment, for example, can be profound in the case of Indigenous peoples whose identity is tied to the land (Albert et al., 2018; Huang, 2018). Relocation may also contribute to marginalization and disempowerment. For example, when informal settlers are moved from visible places (i.e., riverbanks and popular urban centers) to uninhabited land or rural areas, where the problem of poverty becomes more difficult to see and residents are less likely to receive support (Alvarez & Cardenas, 2019; Hammond, 2008). Wealthy elites may also take over spaces formerly occupied by the poor, thus contributing to wealth disparities and unequal access to social services (Ajibade, 2019). Put differently, some individuals and communities may gain and feel empowered as a result of relocation, but others may lose and feel disempowered. These feelings of loss and gain may also occur simultaneously for some people as they grieve the loss of their former home and embrace the opportunities in a new location (McNamara et al., 2018). Planned retreat therefore presents a number of complex logistical, social, political, ethical, and cultural challenges (Bower & Weerasinghe, 2021; McNamara et al., 2018; Siders and Ajibade, 2021; Thaler & Fuchs, 2020).

Decisions about retreat can be very complex as it typically involves multiple households, government agencies, civic organizations, and the private sector. Group decision-making requires balancing power dynamics among unequal actors and addressing trade-offs among different needs such as economic efficiency, human security, ecological preservation, and cultural heritage. For some communities the decision is whether to move or stay (Seebauer & Winkler, 2020); for some residents, it is when to move, where, and who or what should move (Ajibade, 2019; Linnenluecke et al., 2011); and for others, it is about acquiring the financial resources, technical assistance, and political support needed for relocation (Marino, 2018; McNamara et al., 2018). For example, in this volume Giovanni, Ramos, and the Enseada community in Brazil describe how their village’s historical lack of political power made identifying a relocation site and obtaining relocation support more difficult. Finally, when populations wish to relocate but are unable to access resources, they may become trapped-in-place, leading to feelings of abandonment and continued exposure to multiple risks (Das & Hazra, 2020; Marino, 2018).

1.2 Planned retreat and the justice challenge

The notion of justice exists in different cultures and has developed through the ages as a basis for social institutions, economic relations, religion, politics, environmental protection, and climate stewardship. Justice is a fundamental political element about how people are treated and what claims they can make with respect to freedom, opportunities, resources, and social goods (Barry, 1989; Rawls, 1971; Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). In the context of planned retreat, one might ask: Who is most at risk from which climatic hazards and why? Who has access to resources to adapt in place or to relocate? And who has the political or economic power to determine whether they stay or leave? These questions intersect with different concepts of justice.

Retreat intersects with environmental justice (EJ). EJ goes beyond the equitable distribution of environmental goods (i.e., green amenities and infrastructure) and environmental bads (i.e., pollution, toxic chemicals, and urban heat) to include procedural justice, which involves formal participation of affected communities in decision-making about retreat; and distributive justice, which argues against the uneven distribution of the benefits or harms caused by relocation (Ajibade, 2019; Bullard, 1996; Bullard & Wright, 2009). Social justice is similarly implicated in retreat by focusing on the allocation of resources and a broader set of goods such as affordable housing, access to livelihoods, preservation of culture and heritage, wealth distribution, and power dynamics in the political economy.

Ecological justice is also crucial. It urges consideration of the rights and needs of ecosystems and nonhuman species in decisions and implementation of retreat (Davis et al., 2018; Parks & Roberts, 2006). Without reviving degraded ecosystems through planting trees, cleaning riverbanks, or giving nature space to recover, it may be difficult to achieve other justice goals such as equitable distribution of environmental ...