2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

The effects of global climate change will not be equally distributed. Nor will our adaptation response. Limited federal resources require decisions to be made about which communities to protect and which to relocate or to leave to their own efforts. If not designed with equity in mind, adaptation decisions may overlook vulnerable minority and low-income communities. Even seemingly objective measures such as benefit cost analyses may de-prioritize areas with low property values. Managed retreat, the purposeful relocation of vulnerable communities, has been growing in popularity as a long-term strategy for reducing exposure to sea level rise and coastal hazards. However, retreat has significant short-term financial and social costs, through reduction of local tax base and disruption of communities, and programs must be designed with equity principles in mind. In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has funded retreat through acquisition of vulnerable properities in floodplains (programs called buyouts). Over the last 20 years, FEMA has funded programs in over 1,100 communities in 44 states -- and yet, it is not clear whether these efforts have effectively reduced community risk and federal insurance costs or whether risk has merely been displaced to neighboring floodplains. Nor is it clear that the people relocated have been affected: whether they are safer than they were before the buyout, whether buyouts have changed community demographics, and whether these changes have disproportionately affected low-income and minority communities. Questions also abound about how local governments decided where to retreat. How were decisions made about which homes should be purchased? What are the potential social equity ramifications of these decisions? And how can we improve these criteria? This study reviewed documented case studies of managed retreat and federally-funded buyout programs across the United States to understand how local governemtns are making these decisions. Results suggest that decisions appear mathematic and objective, relying on cost-benefit analyses and multi-criteria decision tools, but this objectivity masks a significant degree of subjectivity in the process -- subjectivity that often leads to social inequity in the buyout outcomes. The presentation describes cases of retreat and makes recommendations for how future communities considering retreat could build social equity into their decision processes.