![]() |
While managed retreat tools and strategies will vary based on local context, one crosscutting element is critical: these decisions must be community-based, -driven, and -supported. It will be important for state and local governments everywhere to design and implement equitable community engagement and adaptation approaches. This will be particularly relevant for the development of laws and policies affecting frontline communities in both coastal and “receiving” areas. Frontline communities include people who are both more exposed to climate risks (because of the places where they live and the projected changes expected to occur in those places) and have fewer resources or safety nets to respond to and recover from those risks (e.g., individuals who may lack financial resources).See footnote 1 Frontline communities living and working on the coast are being disproportionately impacted by sea-level rise, flooding, erosion, and other coastal hazards like extreme storms.See footnote 2 While some people a part of frontline communities may choose to live on the coast or in floodplains for economic, historical, cultural, or personal reasons (e.g., fishermen, watermen, shrimpers, and those working in the shipping and port industries), others have been forced to live or resettle there due to systemically racist and discriminatory government policies and decisions.See footnote 3 Those living on the coast — even if initially forced or displaced — have built lives there and have ties to these places that will make it difficult to move away from their homes and property, despite present and future climate threats.
![]() |
Additionally, people living and working in higher ground “receiving” areas will also be affected by managed retreat. In many places, “climate gentrification” is an emerging trend whereby traditionally low-income and communities of color are now being displaced from inland or higher elevation neighborhoods that are generally less vulnerable to climate impacts including sea-level rise and flooding. Black and other people of color who were historically shut out from more desirable areas within different regions because of economic limitations and discriminatory redlining policies now face displacement due to climate change.See footnote 4 Redlining, a practice — where banks restricted mortgage lending to black people in specified, and typically undesirable areas — reinforced racial segregation in residential housing and education and contributed to social and economic disparities in access to jobs and essential services that remain today.See footnote 5 In some instances, these policies ultimately forced communities of color to find housing in undesirable areas, for example, at the extreme reaches of the coast in Louisiana and further inland in South Florida.See footnote 6 While the official policies were discontinued in the 1960s, the effects of redlining, which include a lack of neighborhood investment that reinforced social and economic disparities, remain for many black communities and other low-income communities of color.See footnote 7 Climate gentrification now threatens to disproportionately displace the same communities of color that were subject to segregation and redlining policies. Specifically, many of the individuals and communities of color that contributed to the neighborhoods, businesses, and cultural hallmarks and traditions that emerged despite the burden of housing discrimination now face housing vulnerability and potential evictions as real estate values and rents increase in areas that are being valued for their resiliency. For cities like Miami, as sea levels rise, developers and homeowners are looking to higher ground in the Liberty City, Little Haiti, and West Coconut Grove neighborhoods to shift development away from the coast.See footnote 8 Prevented from living on the coast, people in these Miami communities are being displaced from their homes and businesses in areas that are considered receiving or less climate vulnerable locations where new development is intensifying.See footnote 9
Managed retreat should be viewed comprehensively and implemented in ways that can help alleviate or mitigate some of the physical climate and coastal hazard impacts and present inequities facing communities. Moreover, if retreat is “managed” in a proactive, pre-disaster context, it can also help minimize the economic, environmental, and social costs of sudden displacements and more haphazard post-disaster or “unmanaged” responses.See footnote 10 Managed retreat may even create new opportunities for policymakers to better support people who choose to move from riskier coastal areas to safer receiving communities. This section provides some case studies and practice tips compiled from current and emerging examples where community engagement and equitable considerations were or are successfully being integrated into decisionmaking processes around managed retreat.
State and local governments can start engaging communities by equitably fostering discussions about managed retreat at the outset of climate adaptation and resilience discussions. While managed retreat will not always be the best or a preferred adaptation strategy in every location, governments should encourage proactive discussions about it to avoid precluding the consideration and potential implementation of viable and less costly or disruptive adaptation alternatives. As climate change intensifies and sea levels continue to rise, short-term and short-sighted decisionmaking could exacerbate the physical, fiscal, and economic risks already facing many communities and governments. Before convening these discussions, however, governments must work with communities to build trust where it may not already exist. Additionally, governments should work with community members and community-based organizations — especially in economically- and resource-disadvantaged communities — to identify and provide them with tools and information (e.g., data, mapping, and metrics) that are prompting decisionmakers to take action and include the community as a partner in the process. The work to build local capacity and educate residents should be viewed as a sustained goal — and not a one-off project — so that people can actively participate in and contribute to legal and policymaking processes over the long term. Specifically, state and local governments need to engage people in both vulnerable coastal areas and receiving communities throughout the entirety of these processes from the early planning stages to legal, policy, and project implementation. Further, governments have to design and structure these processes in authentic and meaningful ways beyond merely “checking a box.” Notably, policymakers must recognize and be open to actively listen to the history, needs, and values of community members themselves and evaluate these processes to ensure that all sides feel heard and empowered. This will require that governments — and public-private partnerships — dedicate the funding and staffing resources necessary to support and sustain them.
![]() |
While there are resources available on community engagement and equitable adaptation,See footnote 11 there is a general recognition among state and local policymakers and community-based and grassroots organizations that more tools, resources, and innovation are needed to support more effective dialogues on this specific subject. This is underscored by the unique and encompassing challenges associated with managed retreat that include legitimate and deeply felt concerns about leaving one’s home, the loss of a sense of place, severing cultural and historical ties, and fears and mistrust of the government and its encroachment on private property rights, among others. Some organizations, like the Climigration Network run by the nonprofit Consensus Building Institute,See footnote 12 are actively working in this space to help support community-led processes around managed retreat by providing funding for small projects on the ground;See footnote 13 however, much more support and engagement are needed given the scale of the challenge. Regardless, it is necessary to highlight that all examples, takeaways, and lessons learned will have to be adapted to the local context, including the relevant legal and policy considerations.
![]() |
While the focus of this section is on incorporating equity into community engagement, it is crucial to note the connection between these processes and the implementation of managed retreat strategies on the ground. For those who choose to move away from the coast, state and local governments must build on community engagement efforts to craft managed retreat laws and policies that do not exacerbate historical and systemic discrimination and inequalities. While this will be important for the consideration and implementation of all legal and policy tools, it will be especially magnified in the context of buyouts and other acquisition tools, like land swaps, where people decide to physically relocate away from their homes.See footnote 14 Notably, studies have shown that many buyout programs have disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color and that people participating in buyouts will not always be made whole.See footnote 15 Here, policymakers need to be mindful of supporting equitable transitions that help people move somewhere safer (e.g., outside of vulnerable floodplains) where they can, at a minimum, attain comparable housing, infrastructure, and services. State and local governments can play important roles in facilitating transitions for residents that can help minimize some of the economic, social, and psychological impacts of buyouts. For example, the New Jersey Blue Acres Buyout Program and City of Austin, Texas provide buyout participants with individual case workers to guide them through the process and navigate questions about how to find new, comparable homes or rental units. One municipality participating in the New Jersey Blue Acres Program, Woodbridge Township, worked with Catholic Charities to help people find rental housing in buyouts post-Hurricane Sandy.
In addition to helping to facilitate more equitable transitions, governments must address the implications of managed retreat on anticipated receiving communities. By prioritizing the need to assess and mitigate the impacts of managed retreat on a receiving community, governments can ease transitions for people moving into these areas, and also alleviate the potential resource burdens on those already living there. By factoring the needs of the receiving communities into decisionmaking, governments will be able to proactively invest in affordable housing, infrastructure, and critical services. These investments should support and sustain relocated residents, while simultaneously reflecting — and not displacing — the needs, priorities, and historic and cultural character of current residents and neighborhoods. This is a tall order, especially in resource-strapped and already densely populated communities.
Given the crosscutting purpose of this section, in-depth recommendations for how state and local policymakers can equitably design and implement each tool are provided in individual tool sections of this toolkit.
Meaningful community engagement can be safeguarded through carefully designed processes. State and local governments can consider applying the following practice tips to actualize and center community engagement processes in equity:
Endnotes:
1. Georgetown Climate Ctr., Adaptation Equity Portal: Glossary, Adaptation Clearinghouse (last visited June 9, 2020). Back to contentBack to content
2. See, e.g., Thomas Frank, Flooding Disproportionately Harms Black Neighborhoods, E&E News (June 2, 2020), View Source (the results of this study were based on federal flood insurance payments); Zack Colman & Daniel C. Cusick, 2 Towns, 2 Storms and America’s Imperiled Poor, E&E News (Oct. 1, 2018), View Source (this article discusses the first-hand accounts of and challenges facing public housing residents in North Carolina displaced by Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018) and historical studies that show how wealthier people are generally situated on higher ground, which is more expensive than land located in vulnerable floodplains); A.R. Siders, Social Justice Implications of US Managed Retreat Buyout Programs, 152 Climatic Change 259 (2019) (after completing a review of eight U.S. buyout programs, the author of this article suggests that buyout decisions “often involve political motivations and rely on cost-benefit logic that may promote disproportionate retreat in low-income or minority communities, continuing historic patterns of social inequity”). | Back to contentBack to content
3. E.g., The Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the “Trail of Tears,” is one example of the forced displacement of Native American tribes. These early nineteenth-century policies are often cited as a well-known and tragic example of forced relocations in U.S. history. In addition, many Alaskan Native Tribes were forced to abandon nomadic lifestyles to establish permanent settlements in coastal locations now vulnerable to sea-level rise, erosion, and permafrost melt due to white nationalist policies to “civilize” native peoples (See, e.g., Craig Welch, Climate Change has Finally Caught Up to This Alaska Village, Nat’l Geographic (Oct. 23, 2019), View Source. This article highlights one example of how Bureau of Indian Affairs policies to establish permanent tribal schools has had historical implications for the Alaska village of Newtok currently relocating to a new site, Mertarvik: “For thousands of years, until the early 20th century, the Yup'ik were seasonally nomadic hunters who moved between camps as they hunted . . . residents were forced in 1949 to settle in Newtok after the Bureau of Indian Affairs chose the site for a school without first seeking residents' input.”). This toolkit does not attempt to provide an exhaustive list or description of the forced relocation, displacement, or resettlement of people of color, Native Americans, Alaskan Native Tribes, and other tribal and First Nation peoples in the U.S. This authors of this toolkit are aiming, at a minimum, to draw attention to the significant, ongoing issues posed by these historic forced relocations and resettlements; and emphasize that policymakers must appropriately factor them into managed retreat and other decisionmaking processes to adequately and appropriately address the issues and concerns raised by affected peoples. | Back to contentBack to content
4. Redlining, Equal Justice Initiative (Dec. 19, 2019), View Source; Laura Raim, Florida’s Flooded Future: ‘Retreat While There’s Still Time,’ The Nation (June 9, 2020), View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
5. See previous note. Back to contentBack to content
6. See n.5. Back to contentBack to content
8. Laura Raim, Florida’s Flooded Future: ‘Retreat While There’s Still Time,’ The Nation (June 9, 2020), available at View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
10. E.g., In the month after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, several nearby urban centers, including Houston, served as a receiving area that took in large numbers of residents displaced from Louisiana. Houston was the largest receiving point outside of the State of Louisiana with approximately 240,000 persons. The impact of this sudden population increase tested the capacity of Houston’s schools, hospitals, social welfare organizations, and communications and local infrastructure systems. Sean P. Varano et al., A Tale of Three Cities: Crime and Displacement After Hurricane Katrina, 38 J. of Crim. Justice 42, 43, available at View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
11. See Georgetown Climate Center’s Equitable Adaptation Legal and Policy Toolkit. | Back to contentBack to content
12. Consensus Building Institute, View Source (last visited June 9, 2020). | Back to contentBack to content
13. The Climigration Network is a community of practice that aims to provide different types of expert and practitioner support for communities considering managed retreat on the ground. Notably, in 2018, the network awarded seed or “mini-grants” to five organizations and communities from across the country tackling different questions about managed retreat. These takeaways and lessons learned from awarded projects can support additional peer-learning for others nationwide. 2018 Seed Grants for Community-led Managed Retreat Projects, Climigration: Should We Stay or Should We Go?, View Source (last visited June 9, 2020). | Back to contentBack to content
14. As stated elsewhere throughout this toolkit, the use of eminent domain for managed retreat — compared to voluntary acquisition policies — is not discussed or promoted herein. Back to contentBack to content
15. See, e.g., A.R. Siders, Social Justice Implications of US Managed Retreat Buyout Programs, 152 Climatic Change 259 (2019) (after completing a review of eight U.S. buyout programs, the author of this article suggests that buyout decisions “often involve political motivations and rely on cost-benefit logic that may promote disproportionate retreat in low-income or minority communities, continuing historic patterns of social inequity”); Sherri Brokopp Binder, John P. Barile, Charlene K. Baker, & Bethann Kulp, Home Buyouts and Household Recovery: Neighborhood Differences Three Years After Hurricane Sandy, 18 Envtl. Hazards 127 (2019) (This paper looks at how three different neighborhoods recovered after Hurricane Sandy by examining one that was rebuilt in place, one that participated in a buyout and relocated, and one located immediately adjacent to the buyout zone. The authors of the paper found that: “Three years post-disaster, buyout participants [were] faring worse in terms [the factors measured,] place attachment and social capital[,] compared to residents in the other two neighborhoods, while the neighborhood adjacent to the buyout zone is also showing signs of decline. These findings suggest that the social costs of buyouts extend well into the recovery period and that the place-based ties and social networks that would typically help individuals cope with disaster impacts and persevere through adversity may be diminished for buyout participants, ultimately hindering their recovery.”). Back to contentBack to content
Read Previous Section Read Next Section
Back to top