The Uncertainty Contagion: Revealing the Interrelated, Cascading Uncertainties of Managed Retreat

Abstract

Managed retreat presents a dilemma for at-risk communities, and the planning practitioners and decisionmakers working to address natural hazard and climate change risks. The dilemma boils down to the countervailing imperatives of moving out of harm’s way versus retaining ties to community and place. While there are growing calls for its use, managed retreat remains challenging in practice—across diverse settings. The approach has been tested with varied success in a number of countries, but significant uncertainties remain, such as regarding who ‘manages’ it, when and how it should occur, at whose cost, and to where? Drawing upon a case study of managed retreat in New Zealand, this research uncovers intersecting and compounding arenas of uncertainty regarding the approach, responsibilities, legality, funding, politics and logistics of managed retreat. Where uncertainty is present in one domain, it spreads into others creating a cascading series of political, personal and professional risks that impact trust in science and authority and affect people’s lives and risk exposure. In revealing these mutually dependent dimensions of uncertainty, we argue there is merit in refocusing attention away from policy deficits, barrier approaches or technical assessments as a means to provide ‘certainty’, to instead focus on the relations between forms of knowledge and coordinating interactions between the diverse arenas: scientific, governance, financial, political and socio-cultural; otherwise uncertainty can spread like a contagion, making inaction more likely.

What drives relocation policies in the Maldives?

“…Adaptation practitioners should therefore increasingly work toward the goal of developing comprehensive national adaptation plans in the Maldives that account for the complex institutional and political drivers of relocations that we point out. This also points toward the area of tension between the policy goal of moving people out of harm's way and the ties of vulnerable communities to their place (Hanna et al 2020). Including these tensions into adaptation decision-making is pivotal for successful adaptation planning.…”

“…Managed retreat may, however, also be proactively implemented in the face of rising sea levels, albeit this is often politically difficult because coastal communities are usually reluctant to move and decision-makers that support this response face high political risks. For example, Hanna et al (2018) investigated barriers and enablers of managed retreat in New Zealand and find that a key barrier to implementing managed retreat is a lack of national policy guidance. Hence, government action on retreat has often followed extreme events or when habitability-thresholds have already been reached (Hino et al 2017;Mortreux et al 2018).…”

A comparative analysis of hazard-prone housing acquisition programs in US and New Zealand communities

“…Past research has shown that successful buyout efforts often rely on shared governance-based strategies to bolster local capacity (Perry and Lindell 1997;Patton and Chakos 2009), to include the role of political leadership at varied levels of government (Hanna et al 2018;Sipe and Vella 2014;Smith et al 2018). Researchers have also shown that the ability of subnational actors to adopt risk reduction efforts and deliver capacity-building programs that support local governments and individuals is highly variable (Burby and May 1997;Smith et al 2013Smith et al , 2017Smith and Vila 2020).…”

“…In the USA, the capacity to apply for FEMA grants that fund buyouts is particularly challenging in low wealth and smaller communities (Straub et al 2020;Mach et al 2019;Ross and Clay 2018;Smith and Vila 2020). In New Zealand, the capacity to implement buyouts is constrained by the lack of national support to build the local capacity required to implement housing acquisition projects (Hanna et al 2018;Saunders and Smith 2020). Hanna et al (2020) found that buyouts in New Zealand can be professionally, politically, financially, culturally, and socially challenging, as the necessary intergovernmental frameworks and resources are seldom in place to support effective, equitable, responsive, and robust decision-making.…”

Continuity and change in national riskscapes: a New Zealand perspective on the challenges for climate governance theory and practice

“…This literature holds synergies with relational perspectives that recognise complexity and the subjective way material, technical and discursive elements come together at particular points in time and space, disperse and potentially take on new forms in the future (Blok, 2016;Neisser, 2014). A further stream acknowledges the links to decision making, such as how uncertainty can spread like a contagion between technical and political worlds (Hanna et al, 2020), the layers of potential in the ways intellectual traditions of natural and human sciences interpret riskscapes (Zahnen, 2013), or how administrative traditions influence risk management outcomes (Van Buuren et al, 2018). These all tend to highlight the importance of understanding not just what is at risk, but how risks are perceived and addressed.…”