As mounting destruction by rising seas, hurricanes, and wildfires drives the dangers of climate change deeper into public awareness, more and more US cities are trying to figure out how to strengthen their resilience against climate shocks and stresses. They are using two approaches to protect public infrastructure and private property from climate risks: Armoring—building physical barriers to flooding, for instance—reduces the exposure of physical assets and people to climate hazards. Accommodating—raising roads and building sites, for example—alters physical assets to reduce their vulnerability to climate hazards.

But few cities are using, or even considering, a third approach known as “managed retreat.” This approach uses public policies, including regulations, investments, and incentives to remove existing development—buildings, infrastructure, entire neighborhoods—over time and prevent future development in parts of the city that cannot, should not, or will not be armored or accommodated for potentially devastating climate hazards. (See Appendix for an inventory of tools cities use for managed retreat.)

It’s not hard to understand why managed retreat is overlooked: it is an irrational decision under the current rules of the urban-development game. Cities are their development: housing for residents; stores, offices, factories, and warehouses for businesses; transportation, water, energy, and waste infrastructure for everyone. Existing development provides enormous financial value for owners and businesses and a large portion of a city government’s revenue. New development generates profits for developers, investors, and lenders and boosts the local economy. It signals that the city is attracting people and investment, indicators of urban health.

City leaders can foresee that considering retreat would produce substantial political, financial, and emotional pain locally—an array of immediate and intimidating difficulties with little gain in the short run. Property owners and real estate developers will worry that retreat will reduce the value of their assets; some will accuse the city of trampling on their private property rights, People will refuse to abandon their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods, citing a deep attachment to place and neighbors. Civic leaders will be concerned that retreat will shake public confidence in the city’s future. Renters will fear they will be displaced and left with no affordable housing options. City officials will be uneasy about losing future property tax revenue when private development is eliminated and future development is prohibited. And so on.

The inclination to avoid retreat is strong even in cities that have undergone a destructive climate disaster; the civic reflex of city leaders is almost always to rebuild everything as it was. After Hurricane Sandy pounded New York City in 2012, for instance, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg declared that “we cannot and will not abandon our waterfront. It’s one of our greatest assets. We must protect it, not retreat from it.”[i]

But these calculations are changing.

This report examines the role that managed retreat will increasingly play as more and more cities wrestle with how to deal with the growing risks of destructive climate changes. It is organized around three insights:

1. Many cities will not be able to avoid retreat, but they can choose what kind of retreat to have. Whether or not to retreat is a false choice for cities facing certain climate risks such as rising seas. Politicians don’t want to make decisions about who gets protected from climate risks and who doesn’t, notes David Titley, head of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at the University of Pennsylvania. “We saw this in New York with Mayor Bloomberg. ‘We don’t retreat.’ Well, guess what. The ocean gets a vote.”[ii]The question is which of three kinds of retreat will occur in the city: traumatic post-disaster retreat; chaotic, market-driven retreat; or forward-looking planned retreat. In this light, the alternatives to managed retreat may be “greater evils” that cities will want to avoid.
2. There is an emerging roadmap for generating community acceptance of managed retreat as part of building a city’s climate resilience. The limited experience of cities that have taken on managed retreat suggests that an effective process depends on critical actions that move the community from denial and anger to acceptance. It’s especially important to reframe retreat as not simply a loss of what was, but as part of a larger and inspiring vision for what can be, for the city’s future. Five lessons learned are:

• A city’s community-engagement process for resilience planning should be designed for the emotional and social aspects of considering managed retreat.
• A city’s assessment of its climate risks and vulnerabilities should expose, not hide, the potential implications for retreat.
• Cities should reframe retreat as not just a loss, but as part of a positive and inspiring vision for the city’s long-term development and success.
• A city can help to normalize retreat by starting with the relocation of essential public infrastructure and revising city rules that steer new development.
• Consideration of retreat should include recognition of its potential impacts on economic and social disparities in the city.

3. Until more cities seriously consider using managed retreat, it is unlikely that crucial support from state and federal governments will occur on other than a sporadic, special-case basis. Retreat can involve implementation challenges that cities cannot resolve by themselves, such as legal, regulatory, financial, and planned resettlement concerns. So far, though, state and federal governments mostly treat retreat as a unique episode, usually only responding after a climate disaster. They have not institutionalized policies and resources that cities can rely on for managed retreat—nor has a critical mass of cities pushed for such policy changes.

Download report

[i]Sarah Crean, “Bloomberg: No Retreat From The Coastline,” Gotham Gazette, June 12, 2013, https://www.adaptny.org/2013/06/12/no-retreat-from-the-coastline/.

[ii]Laura Parker, “Who’s Still Fighting Climate Change? The U.S. Military,” National Geographic, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/pentagon-fights-climate-change-sea-level-rise-defense-department-military/.

The post New INC Report: Can It Happen Here? Improving the Prospect of Managed Retreat by US Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

What is the prospect of managed retreat becoming a prevailing practice among US cities that are faced with likely unmanageable future climate impacts? As we continue to study this question, we’ve developed a hypothesis of how this might come about: the potential negative impact of chaotic retreat driven by market dynamics in response to climate risks and disasters is the most likely factor that will lead cities to consider and embrace managed retreat as a viable approach.

We define urban managed retreat as the use of public policies, including regulation and investment, to over time eliminate or prevent development in places at significant risk of recurrent or permanent damage or destruction from climate effects or places needed in a less developed or undeveloped condition in order to protect other development that is at significant climate risk.

We see managed retreat as one of five approaches to climate resilience that cities can use to reduce the potential of physical, environmental, economic, and social damage from climate changes. Cities may use these approaches in various combinations.

But for a number of reasons. managed retreat is the last resort of cities, if it is considered at all. Eliminating existing or future development raises particular issues:

• Displacement. Where will displaced people and businesses relocate and what is the city’s responsibility to facilitate relocation?
• Property Acquisition. How much money will the city have to pay to acquire the right to eliminate privately owned development, which may be legally required?
• Lost Public Revenue. How much will city revenue be reduced when taxable private development is eliminated or prevented in the future?
• Political and Community Opposition. How will people who depend on existing development or count on future development targeted for retreat react to the plans, and how will civic leaders and the public react to a retreat approach?

Our research has turned now to these questions:

1. To what extent do US cities face climate risks that cannot be sufficiently addressed through other approaches?
2. To what extent are and will market dynamics (e.g., unavailability and pricing of insurance) trigger chaotic retreat?
3. In what ways would managed retreat be better for a city’s well-being than chaotic retreat?

You thoughts on these questions–and links to information and studies–would be greatly appreciated.

The post Will Market Forces Prompt Cities to Manage Retreat from Climate Risks? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

For several months John and I have been studying what’s known and done about “managed retreat,” to understand how US cities might be prompted to adopt this ignored strategy for climate adaptation. We’ve developed some initial ideas, a hypothesis, and some framing of the landscape within which decisions about managed retreat are made. And there’s more research and thinking to do. Here’s what we have so far:

The typical dynamics of urban development block most US cities from planning—or even considering—a “managed retreat” strategy to prepare for climate changes that could cause parts of the city to be uninhabitable or unusable in this century. Retreat– removing development and relocating people, businesses, and infrastructure—would produce a great deal of political, financial, and community pain and little tangible gain in the short run. This is true even in cities that have undergone a horrendous climate disaster; their instinct is to rebuild their development/spatial footprint, perhaps protecting it more, but not adjusting its expanse to avoid future risks.

And yet, climate changes are projected to make parts of many cities inhabitable and unusable during this century. Rising sea levels and more frequent and intense rainfall will cause chronic flooding and erosion in coastal and riverside communities. By 2060, more than 270 coastal US communities will be chronically inundated, given moderate sea-level rise, according to a 2017 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. More rapid sea-level rise could chronically inundate nearly 670 coastal communities by 2100, including 50 heavily populated cities, among them: Oakland, Miami, New York City.[1] Prolonged droughts will cause severe water shortages and waves of extreme heat will make it dangerous to be outside. El Paso, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and other cities in the southwest US are located in arid environments that have natural scarcity of water and precipitation and are becoming hotter and drier, a 2017 Arup report noted, adding that the nation’s arid zone is expanding.[2]

Cities that do anticipate these climate risks usually plan to build their way out of the problem: build more barriers to sea and river surges, more capacity for storm water drainage and water delivery, and more electricity-generation capacity to power more air conditioners to cool buildings. They also plan to move out of climate-harm’s way any underground and street-level infrastructure that could be inundated.

Only a few US cities have included managed retreat in their plans, and some of these are hardly examples of best practice. In April 2018, California’s Coastal Commission forced Del Mar, with about 4,100 residents, to include a retreat strategy in its coastal resilience plan or lose local authority over future development.[3] New Orleans started a retreat strategy (property buy outs) after Hurricane Katrina, but then abandoned it. The US Army Corps of Engineers included retreat—“real estate acquisition and/or relocation”—in its October 2017 flood management recommendations for coastal Norfolk, Virginia, along with many structural defenses, but the overall plan’s $1.8 billion price tag is bigger than the city’s annual budget and depends in large part on receiving a special federal appropriation.[4]

In view of this situation, the Innovation Network for Communities is creating a framework to help answer this question: how can managed retreat become a general planning practice of US cities? The framework redefines managed retreat, describes four pathways that can lead cities to choose to retreat, and identifies the city capacities needed to prepare, implement, and defend decisions about which pathway(s) to managed retreat are being taken. It examines an initial hypothesis: that market dynamics are the most likely force that will lead cities to consider and embrace managed retreat. And it proposes several next steps.

Defining Managed Retreat

Most literature and news reports about managed retreat focus on the elimination of existing physical infrastructure and housing and the subsequent relocation of people due to retreat-inducing threats posed by flooding due to rising seas and rivers. For research purposes, we have framed managed retreat more broadly in two ways. Our definition includes the prevention of future development, not just the dismantling of existing development, because relinquishing development is also a consequential retreat from a city’s future land-use footprint. And we have considered the climate risks that, in addition to chronic flooding, may be posed by extreme heat and drought as another potential driver of city retreat.

“Managed retreat” is the use of public policies, including regulation and investment, to over time eliminate or prevent development from areas that are:

• At significant risk of recurrent or permanent damage or destruction from climate effects
• Needed in an undeveloped, natural condition in order to protect other development that is at significant climate risk (e.g., green space designed to absorb flood waters)

When eliminating development also involves relocation of people and businesses, managed retreat may include resettlement and engagement of “receiving communities” where relocation is to occur.

“Development” means physical uses of land, especially the building of physical infrastructure. These uses generate economic, social, and environmental impacts, as well as various risks from disruption, damage, and destruction that are not just due to climate change (e.g., other natural disasters, accidents, economic cycles, warfare).

“Climate risks” that may trigger managed retreat are new, regularly recurring or prolonged—chronic—climate patterns, such as extreme high tides and sustained extreme heat waves or increased aridity, which can overwhelm a city’s resilience and damage or destroy physical, social, economic, and environmental assets.

Essentially, managed retreat changes the use of and development of land and/or water in anticipation of climate hazards the city cannot sufficiently manage or afford through other means or chooses not to pay for. It involves an engineering, financial, social, and political calculation.

Managed retreat is one of four approaches to climate adaptation focused on preparation and prevention, rather than post-disaster emergency response and rebuilding. Cities may plan and use these approaches in various combinations.

Retreat may occur at multiple scales, including:

• Individual properties/parcels, sites
• Public infrastructure (roads, wastewater treatment plants, etc.)
• Sub-districts/neighborhoods of cities
• Entire cities
• Urban metropolitan regions
• Regions of a country (rural and urban areas)

Managed retreat should be differentiated from climate migration, which involves the (largely) unplanned and unrequired movement of individuals and businesses away from areas that are under extreme climatic stress or perceived to be at high risk and to areas of greater safety and viability.

US cities have a critical role to play in determining whether and how to use managed retreat as a part of their climate adaptation plans, because they have substantial control over local land uses and, therefore, over development, and they are the primary locus of retreat’s benefits, burdens, and challenges. However, cities operate in policy contexts set by state and federal governments and in the US legal context, which substantially affect the use of managed retreat.

Although managed retreat may be triggered proactively by analysis that anticipates a city’s climate risks, in most cases to date it has occurred reactively, in the wake of a damaging climatic experience such as a storm surge, which then leads to analysis of future risks and recognition that an unmanageable chronic risk is emerging.

Climate-Risk Drivers that Lead to Consideration of Retreat

In general, it is easier to strengthen a city’s resilience to acute climate shocks and therefore hope to avoid retreat choices, than it is to manage chronic climate shocks. However, acute risks may just be the prelude to chronic risks—what appears to be an episodic and manageable pattern may become an accelerating, intensifying, and unmanageable pattern.

The great majority of serious retreat planning has taken place in response to either riverine flooding or sea-level rise. In delta cities, riverine flooding and sea-level rise may combine to exacerbate risks. Some smaller, low-lying islands are at risk of complete, long-term inundation from sea-level rise. Other types of climate impact that may motivate retreat include:

• Extreme rain events (e.g., “cloudbursts”) pose the risk of chronic flooding of low-lying area infrastructure and buildings.
• Prolonged extreme heat poses the risk of illness and death of vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and people with chronic diseases. At certain levels of heat, it can become unsafe for humans to be out of doors or indoors without effective cooling systems.
• Droughts and increased aridity (dry, barren land) pose the risk of insufficient water for household, agricultural, or industrial use, a potential limit to a city’s carrying capacity.

Potential Benefits of Managed Retreat

Cities can achieve several potential benefits through managed retreat:

• Protect the Safety and Health of People. Retreat can prevent future injuries, loss of life, and health problems.
• Maintain the Usefulness of Physical and Business Assets. Retreat can ensure the continuing usefulness of physical assets (rerouting a coastal highway), prevent disruption of business, or protect other development from climate risks (e.g., removing development from a floodplain so that more of the flooding will be soaked up before it reaches parts of the city).
• Avoid Future Financial Costs. Retreat can prevent the need for spending on emergency responses to climate disasters and on recovery/rebuilding after disasters. It can also reduce/eliminate financial costs that would be needed instead to protect and accommodate development against climate risks.
• Prevent and Reduce Inequities. Retreat can ensure that the city addresses and prioritizes, rather than overlooks or discriminates against, the interests of disadvantaged individuals, households, and neighborhoods, which are often the most vulnerable to damage due to climate events.
• Preserve Community Cohesion. Retreat can allow the relocation of a group of people in a place as an intact community, rather than the piecemeal abandonment of at-risk properties that might otherwise occur.

• Enhance Ecosystem Services. Retreat can allow enhancement of the capacity of local ecosystems (e.g., wetlands) to provide environmental benefits in addition to improvement in climate resilience (e.g., habitat restoration).

Retreat Strategies

Cities can use multiple strategies to eliminate or prevent development from areas where chronic, potentially disastrous climate risks rule out other climate-adaptation approaches.

To eliminate existing development:

• Invest in Property Acquisition. Cities can purchase property in at-risk areas from voluntary sellers and then remove development and prevent additional development.
• Mandate Removal of Development. Cities can use legal and regulatory processes to require relocation from at-risk areas—immediately or over the long term—but they must compensate property owners and may need to facilitate resettlement of individuals, communities of people, and businesses.
• Prohibit Protection and Accommodation Actions. Cities can preclude property owners from taking certain protection or accommodation actions (e.g., building sea walls), which over time may result in the owners voluntarily retreating from the property.

To prevent future development:

• Constrain Future Development and Post-Disaster Rebuilding. Cities can place conditions on future development that could preclude development activities, such as by increasing the cost of development beyond what the market is willing and able to pay, or restricting rebuilding after a disaster in at-risk areas.
• Prohibit Future Development. Cities can regulate land use to prevent new or additional development in at-risk areas—in order to preserve environmental services for climate resilience, support agricultural uses of land to secure food supply, or foster increased densification of the already built city.

To both eliminate and prevent development:

• Limit Support and Services for Development. Cities can limit/reduce/eliminate suport for infrastructure and services in high-risk areas, such as availability of roads, water, and electricity. Some limitations may be due to factors cities cannot control, such as lack of water or electricity generation to support certain levels of population and agricultural or industrial activities in cities in arid areas.

[1] The study defined “chronic inundation” as flooding that occurs 26 times per year (on average, once every other week) or more over at least 10 percent of the land in a community. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/07/when-rising-seas-hit-home-full-report.pdf

[2] https://www.arup.com/publications/research/section/cities-alive-cities-in-arid-environments.

[3] http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/sd-no-managed-retreat-20180417-story.html.

[4] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30102017/norfolk-sea-level-rising-flood-protection-plan-army-corps-engineers-climate-change

The post Can It Happen Here? Managed Retreat for US Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Talking with someone whose country is being destroyed by climate change—people and animals dying, communities swept away, future viability in doubt—is quite different from having a conversation about the challenges of climate adaptation. It’s emotional and visceral, not conceptual and detached. It’s overwhelming, frustrating, and ultimately depressing.

A few weeks ago I posted a short blog seeking information about cities that had considered “managed retreat” strategies to remove or prevent development in areas at high risk of climate disaster. Larry Falkin, head of Cincinnati’s Office of the Environment and Sustainability, suggested that I connect with Dr. Mike Roman, an American with adopted family from Kiribati (pronounced KIRR-i-bas). I had heard that the Republic of Kiribati–a South Pacific Ocean nation of 33 atolls and islands spread across a vast distance, and 110,000 citizens, freed from British colonial rule in 1979–had purchased land elsewhere for relocation of citizens, so I arranged a phone call with the potential source.

Mike Roman has gotten used to telling his story and Kiribati’s, because he organizes and participates in efforts to increase global awareness and response to the country’s existential climate crisis. He arrived in Kiribati in 2000 as a Peace Corps volunteer, left after his two-year stint was over, and returned numerous times while working on his Ph.D. and subsequent family reunions. “I was a volunteer who never really left.”

While there, he says, “I’ve seen climate change impacts. I have lived through king tide surges and cyclone seasons which have become stronger and more unpredictable. I’ve seen entire villages go under the ocean and never come back. I’ve seen drought take away land, crops, and groves of coconut trees. I’ve seen the aftermath of salinized water sources and people suffering from dehydration. Resulting, in worst cases, death.”

Sea level rise is impacting Kiribati, but Mike says it is the changing weather patterns, from prolonged droughts to tropical cyclones, that pose the greatest danger. Because of climate changes, cyclones are starting to bear down on Central Pacific low-elevation islands, delivering high winds and storm surges. “Within hours they demolish everything.” At the same time, Kiribati experiences prolonged droughts which kill the island’s vegetation.

These emerging conditions and forecasts of sea level rise prompted Kiribati’s national government, led in 2014 by then-president Anote Tong, to purchase 20 square kilometers–5,000 acres–of forest land in Fiji, 3,400 kilometers away, to be used initially for agricultural and fish-farming projects to secure Kiribati’s access to food, but perhaps eventually for planned resettlement of people. The strategy was called “Migration with Dignity.” But, Tong’s successor, H.E. Taneti Maamau, has taken a different approach: “We don’t believe that Kiribati will sink like the Titanic ship.” His administration has been developing a 20-year plan to build up Kiribati’s land, promote tourism, and attract foreign investors in eco-friendly resorts–generating money that can pay for climate resilience measures. So far, no one has moved to the land in Fiji.

“Do people want to stay or leave? If you talk to people,” says Roman, “the majority want to stay.” Many have a deep cosmological connection to the land. This connection is built into one’s identity and personhood. “You are born on your family’s land. You live on it. You start your own family on that land, and when you die you return to that land, to join your ancestors who watch over the land and its future inhabitants. Your identity is connected to your land, it is your past, present and future, your everything. There is a spiritual connection between people and the land. The word for land, aba, can also mean people and country. Land, country and people, you take away the land, you take away everything.”

Mike Roman and a team of Kiribati youth have been active in telling Kiribati’s story to the world through social media: “We want to tell our stories from Kiribati before we can’t anymore. We might be the first nation to disappear, but we surely will not be the last. The world is sadly ill prepared for this.” With Kiribati friends, he began a social media campaign to spread the word about Kiribati. “Since 2015,” he says, “Humans of Kiribati has gained attention from international media outlets, local journalists, movie producers, radio talk show hosts, foreign governments, and everyday people from all over the world.” We hope to tell the world about the beautiful nation and people of Kiribati. We hope that the world will feel empathetic towards those living on the frontlines of climate change… and try to help as soon as possible.”

More at www.anotesark.com and https://www.cbsnews.com/video/climate-refugees-nations-under-threat/

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Here’s how that retreat vs. rebuild tension played out in Louisiana and New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter in The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change:

“Owners of damaged properties were eligible to receive $150,000 in assistance but were given the option to rebuild or repair their homes in place or be bought out. Of 128,000 property owners who received assistance, only 10 percent opted to sell. The program did not effectively implement retreat, especially in New Orleans. this was because homeowners opting to be bought out were typically undercompensated and buyouts were not targeted based on a property’s vulnerability to future flooding. Because damage to the city’s housing stock was so widespread, it was also difficult for property owners to find affordable places to relocate. Finally, because the program was voluntary and governments could not resell properties with low vulnerability, the buyout program created a checkerboard of vacant lands interspersed with redeveloped properties. . . . In New Orleans, the public was not adequately involved in early phases of redevelopment planning. one major point of contention was the release of a redevelopment plan for the city that showed some developed areas as future open space. This caused significant political backlash, and, as a result, the mayor backpedaled on implementing a retreat strategy and announced that the city would rebuilt to the pre-Katrina footprint.”

The authors conclude that since retreat after a disaster is hard to pull off, “retreat policies may be easier to implement when they are instituted as part of a pre-emergency plan that is created with significant public involvement.” Maybe, maybe not. We are conducting research to identify the “pathways” that cities follow, or reject, when they do consider managed retreat as a part of a climate adaptation strategy before disaster has already hit. If you read the scores of city adaptation plans that exist, managed retreat is almost never a part of the discussion, much less the decision. Maybe that’s because the anticipated climate risks don’t warrant going through the pain of retreat, but maybe the omission is due to other reasons.

If your city has considered managed retreat as part of its adaptation approach, we’d like to know about it and learn more about what did or didn’t happen as a result. Please contact me at pete@in4c.net.

Watch “How a Community Was Sacrificed” about the Houston-area development that was flooded–according to a 70 year old plan–to protect the downtown.

The post Wanted: Cities Considering “Retreat” in Anticipation of Devastating Climate Risks appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

though widespread recognition of this and serious planning for it are lacking. . . .

The sooner we recognize the truth about nature’s intentions at the shoreline, the better.

Neither time nor tide is in our favor.

—Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change[1]

Managed retreat is widely considered to be a “third rail” of local politics—there is great peril in touching it, even in discussing it. There are good reasons for this: The idea of retreat undercuts the conventional urban narrative of development and growth, and the related public revenues and economic activity that are generated, as the path to urban wellbeing. It also raises the specter of government “taking” of private property. Depending on the actions that local government takes, property owners can suffer significant losses of asset value. Intentional retreat involves long-term changes to city land uses and more advance planning. It has significant equity and fairness implications: how do you decide which places are “worth” saving, which are not, and who should bear the costs? Its value is undercut by perverse incentives in government flood insurance programs and private insurance financial risk management. Finally, authority to enact the practices of retreat—policies, regulations, subsidies, etc.—is fragmented among levels of government and is filled with legal uncertainties as well as subject to scientific uncertainty about potential climate impacts. “Retreat is at present mostly a legal theory,” note J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” for an American Bar Association publication. “Few retreat policies have been implemented on the ground.”[2]

Yet, more and more cities are finding themselves responding to real and crippling natural disasters or anticipating and planning for climate change in their future—and having to decide where and what to permit and build under what conditions. Even inaction is a type of decision with consequences. It’s not hard to recognize that as the emerging urban climate adaptation field of practice matures, it will need to develop practical knowledge about why managed retreat makes sense, what managed retreat involves, and how managed retreat can be enacted by cities

The focus of this project is the “what” of managed retreat. We intend to frame the multiple pathways that cities consider when deciding what they want to do about using managed retreat as a city strategy for addressing climate change risks. We will also identify the city capacities needed to prepare, make, and implement decisions about which pathway(s) to take.

A preliminary, rudimentary look at the practice of managed retreat suggests three general, prevailing pathways:

• Do Nothing About At-Risk Development. Cities let the insurance, financial, and other markets (or another level of government) address the problems of vulnerability and loss.
• Defend/Armor At-Risk Development. Cities invest in increased climate protections that reduce vulnerability of high-risk areas.
• Starve At-Risk Development. Cities buy/relocate development and/or demolish/withdraw support for infrastructure in high-risk areas.

Using this initial framing of pathways, the project will develop a more finely differentiated, nuanced set of pathways that cities are using or could be using. For each pathway the project will identify the city-based capacities needed to make pathway decisions. We will initially frame the capacities along the lines of the 7 capacities identified in INC’s March 2017 “Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation” report:

• Scientific Foundation
• Communications
• Equitable Adaptation
• Inclusive Community Engagement
• Intergovernmental Alignment
• Technical Design
• Financial Resources

Here, too, we expect to produce a more finely grained, nuanced version of capacities for managed retreat. For example, the capacity to manage legal challenges to managed retreat may loom larger than in our more general framing of urban adaptation capacities.

We believe that framing the pathways and capacities in this way will provide two kinds of value. It will help others in the urban climate adaptation field who are developing tools and other knowledge for cities. For instance, we have been developing a collaboration with the Georgetown Climate Center, which is launching a two-year project to produce a best-practices toolkit for state and local governments about managed retreat. As we conduct the project we expect to engage with other organizations, such as the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, C40, 100 Resilient Cities, the American Planning Association, and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, which may contribute to our thinking and find the report’s framing useful for their own work. The project report will also be made available directly to cities, hundreds of which are in various stages of developing and implementing climate adaptation plans.

[1] Orrin H.Pilkey, Kinda Pilkey-Jarvis, and Keith C. Pilkey, Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 164-165.

[2] J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” chapter 9.

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A century-old tribal community of about 60 people will be relocated using federal funds—a first for the United States. In the past 60 years, more than 90 percent of the island’s original land mass has washed away, eroded by channels cut by loggers and oil companies and decades of flood-control efforts. Sea level rise will lead to complete inundation.

As reporters for the New York Times observe, “The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees.”

“The location of the new community has not been chosen. Chiefs of the two tribes present on the island have debated who would be allowed to live there beyond the islanders themselves, and whether some islanders could resettle elsewhere. One of the planners involved in the resettlement suggested a buffer area between the new community and its surrounding neighborhood to reduce tension. Chief Naquin wants a live buffalo on site.”

More here.

The post Community Relocation appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

We’re starting a new project, with support of the Summit Foundation–to look more closely at the challenge of “managed retreat” by cities vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate impacts. Your thoughts and examples welcome.

There is not the slightest doubt that beachfront development will retreat on a massive scale, though widespread recognition of this and serious planning for it are lacking. . . .The sooner we recognize the truth about nature’s intentions at the shoreline, the better. Neither time nor tide is in our favor.

—Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change[1]

 Managed retreat is widely considered to be a “third rail” of local politics—there is great peril in touching it, even in discussing it. There are good reasons for this: The idea of retreat undercuts the conventional urban narrative of development and growth, and the related public revenues and economic activity that are generated, as the path to urban wellbeing. It also raises the specter of government “taking” of private property. Depending on the actions that local government takes, property owners can suffer significant losses of asset value. Intentional retreat involves long-term changes to city land uses and more advance planning. It has significant equity and fairness implications: how do you decide which places are “worth” saving, which are not, and who should bear the costs? Its value is undercut by perverse incentives in government flood insurance programs and private insurance financial risk management. Finally, authority to enact the practices of retreat—policies, regulations, subsidies, etc.—is fragmented among levels of government and is filled with legal uncertainties as well as subject to scientific uncertainty about potential climate impacts. “Retreat is at present mostly a legal theory,” note J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” for an American Bar Association publication. “Few retreat policies have been implemented on the ground.”[2]

Yet, more and more cities are finding themselves responding to real and crippling climate changes or anticipating and planning for these in their future—and having to decide where they will permit what to be built under what conditions. Even not deciding is a type of decision with consequences.

It’s not hard to recognize that as the emerging urban climate adaptation field of practice matures, it will need to develop practical knowledge about why managed retreat makes sense, what managed retreat involves, and how managed retreat can be enacted by cities

The focus of this project is the “what” of managed retreat. We intend to frame the multiple pathways that cities take to deciding what they want to do about using managed retreat as a city strategy for addressing climate change risks. And we will identify the city capacities needed to prepare, make, and implement decisions about which pathway(s) to take.

A preliminary, rudimentary look at the practice of managed retreat suggests three general, prevailing pathways:

• Do Nothing About At-Risk Development. Cities let the insurance, financial, and other markets (or another level of government) address the problems of vulnerability and loss.
• Defend/Armor At-Risk Development. Cities invest in increased climate protections that reduce vulnerability of high-risk areas.
• Starve At-Risk Development. Cities buy and remove existing development and/or eliminate infrastructure support in high-risk areas.

Using this initial framing of pathways, the project will develop a more finely differentiated, nuanced set of pathways that cities are using or could be using. For each pathway the project will identify the city-based capacities needed to make pathway decisions. We will initially frame the capacities along the lines of the 7 capacities identified in INC’s March 2017 “Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation” report:

• Scientific Foundation
• Communications
• Equitable Adaptation
• Inclusive Community Engagement
• Intergovernmental Alignment
• Technical Design
• Financial Resources

Here, too, we expect to produce a more finely grained, nuanced version of capacities for managed retreat. For example, the capacity to manage legal challenges to managed retreat may loom larger than in our more general framing of urban adaptation capacities.

We believe that framing the pathways and capacities in this way will provide two kinds of value. It will help others in the urban climate adaptation field who are developing tools and other knowledge for cities. The project report will also be made available directly to cities, hundreds of which are in various stages of developing and implementing climate adaptation plans.

[1] Orrin H.Pilkey, Kinda Pilkey-Jarvis, and Keith C. Pilkey, Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 164-165.

[2] J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” chapter 9.

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