Communities on the front lines of climate risk should be planning well ahead for their day of displacement, warns a new report that points to land suitability analyses as a critical instrument in the relocation toolkit.
Whether they are threatened by sea level rise, storms, or wildfires, communities facing disaster displacement must prepare for the eventuality, as must the policy-makers and communities who will need to house them, writes the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).
The 500-page report on community-driven relocation in the United States Gulf Coast region says policy-makers at all levels have failed to address “the question of whether and how to relocate people and assets out of harm’s way.”
“Frequently termed ‘managed retreat,’ the topic of relocation receives scant attention in post-disaster recovery when building back is prioritized, even less attention in pre-disaster mitigation planning, and almost no attention from regional planning organizations,” say the authors.
In the U.S. Gulf Coast states, this myopia persists in the face of “extraordinary and escalating human and capital impacts,” with nearly 11,000 dead and an average cost of US$1 billion per disaster each year since 1980.
The policy failure is “not surprising, as the nation currently lacks consistent policy or programmatic guidance to enable communities and their governing bodies to tackle the uncomfortable issue of retreating from the coasts,” the authors add.
While the report focuses on coastal communities like Galveston, Texas, their recommendations also apply to communities forced to flee other disasters, like wildfire.
Mari Tye, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Route 50 that some communities in the western United States “are facing such severe wildfire risks they are leaning into planned relocation.”
To plan ahead, those communities will need land suitability analyses: investigations that ensure the place being contemplated to house a new community can support all the infrastructure they’ll need: water and sewer systems, roads and bridges, and schools and hospitals.
“Infrastructure tends to have a design life of 75 years, so if you’re putting something in the ground, you want to make sure you’ve designed it in a way that you don’t have to dig it up again in 10 to 15 years,” Tye said.
Suitability surveys will also help ensure that new communities do not end up worse off, for example, by moving into former industrial parks with high levels of toxicity in the soil.
Looking ahead in this way will also help communities to consolidate services and avoid soaring costs.
The report also reveals how “policy-makers can use insights from the land suitability analysis to enhance receiving communities by installing more green spaces and designing urban environments to be more walkable,” Route 50 says.
