Ethical Dilemmas in Coastal Relocation as Climate Adaptation

Prof. AR Siders

University of Delaware, https://www.sidersadapts.com/

Relocation is one of the most controversial climate change adaptation strategies in part because it poses ethical dilemmas where practitioners must choose between two competing ethical norms. Relocation policy provides very little guidance, or provides guidance that is too high level to resolve dilemmas on the ground, and environmental justice theories struggle to assist decision-makers in prioritizing the distribution of resources, distributing programs that cause both harms and benefits (like relocation but also other transformative adaptations), weighing uncertain harms and benefits or outcomes whose results change over time, identify ‘community’ and resolving conflicts in participatory processes, and redressing historic injustices. Proposals to improve coastal adaptation justice that do not address one or more of the practical dilemmas faced by adaptation practitioners or decision-makers on the ground are unlikely to advance justice. Even though the most ‘just’ course of action is uncertain, decision-makers must make decisions. Many choose based on unconscious heuristics such as their beliefs about the role of government and the nature of disaster aid and adaptation resources. In the best case scenario, this could result in context-specific tailoring; in the worst case, it leads to inconsistent policy and program administration in which communities who are morally indistinguishable experience different processes and outcomes.  This talk provides an overview of how relocation has happened in the United States context, identify some of the key ethical and policy dilemmas in government-supported relocation, and describe possible pathways for a more transformative and more just approach to coastal relocation.