Climate Adaptation — Do I Stay or do I Go? Part #2
Climate Adaptation for Property — What are the Options?
Most people won’t act on climate change until the water is lapping at their front doors.
I’ve maintained for many years that the vast majority of people won’t act on the scientific realities of climate change until the science gets physical and people’s own homes rare impacted, by which time it’s too late for most people to recover their investment.
If you’re not already starting to wonder how safe you and your home are from climate change, then you should be.
Here in Australia, located at the end of what some call ‘disaster alley’ [Dunlop, I. & Spratt, D. 2017] we’ve had almost three years of watching families lose their homes to bushfires and floods, and it still continues.
There are fundamentally two options for climate adaptation .
You either stay in place and adapt, or you move somewhere else.
Full disclosure: I’m partly motivated to write this for Australians, given that our recently released ‘National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy (2021)’ fails to even mention the spectre of forced retreat. And whilst I’m an advocate of ‘adapt in place’ the fact is that there are communities where retreat is the only survivable option (think sea level rise, extreme heat) — and to omit this from our national discourse is a potentially fatal omission.
The decision about whether you stay or go can be incredibly complex and I’m not going to unpack that here (yet). What I will do is lay out the generally accepted approaches to climate adaptation in the built environment and provide some critical analysis of what you might think about as a resident or building owner.
We’ll use sea lever rise (SLR) as the example of climate change impacts, but keep in mind the raft of other acute and chronic climate impacts such as extreme heat, heat events, droughts, bushfires / wildfires, intense storms, and food shortages.
Stay and Do Nothing
It’s a legitimate option and means that you’re recognising that adaptation is unfeasible. You’re ‘writing off’ the asset and don’t expect to get any of your money back from your original investment.
This approach is a very different prospect for a homeowner compared to a hotel owner for example.
For a homeowner it’s simple: you lose your investment and can no longer use your equity in that investment to leverage another property purchase.
For a commercial asset owner this approach can introduce a range of additional risks, such as the earlier-than-predicted flight of staff, customers, or investors, and potential litigations from investors or shareholders. [The Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures will play a key role here]
Stay and Resist
This adaptation involves establishing defences against the climate impact.
For SLR think of sea walls and nature-based defences like mangroves. It requires considerable investment of public money. For bushfires it might involved land clearing and better land management, cultural burning, and evolved emergency infrastructure.
I wrote about an example of this approach some time ago, when my own hometown had embarked on a new sea wall (which has since caused significant beach erosion). ‘Stay and resist’ can generate great outcomes or perverse outcomes — it requires the right minds at the table.
For this option there are two critical considerations:
- What timeline is being planned for? For example are you planning for SLR of around 1.3m by 2100, and if so will there still even be a beach? [SLR > beach erosion > no beach > no tourists > no more local tourism businesses > real estate depreciation]. Are you planning even further into our future — for example for city planning where SLR may reach much higher?
- Who will pay? Typically the cost burden for public infrastructure falls to government, but in a future where there are multiple adaptation needs (not just SLR defences) how will the allocation of capital be prioritised? How will governments decide which towns to invest in and which ones to leave? This entrains a raft of social and political pitfalls.
Stay and Adapt
For the majority of communities this option will remain the only one for the foreseeable future, perhaps with the exception of extreme SLR (think Dutch and dykes).
Whilst the early movers or the more affluent homeowners may afford to sell up and relocate to safer ground, or where governments sponsor the early relocation of some residents, the vast majority of people won’t have this option.
Whether it’s because they’ve left their climate move too late and can’t sell their home
…or they don’t have the funds to move
…or there is nothing to move TO
…or simply because ‘home is home’.
Most people will be opting to adapt in place.
Adaptations are many, including raising structures out of harm’s way, re-roofing and retrofits to fend off extreme heat, or installing resilient water systems to ride out droughts.
There are many considerations with this option, and I’ll only touch on a selection here:
- What timeline are you adapting for? And does your timeline align with that of your neighbours and wider community? For example, if you’re adapting your own home to address predicted (and predictable) climate impacts in the year 2100 but your neighbour is either not making any plans or is only planning to 2050, are you at risk of having a derelict home next to you in the future? Will this impact your home’s value or your quality of life? [one of the reasons why local government must take a leading and coordinating role in this space]
- Can you afford to adapt at all? If not, who can invest for you? (there is no shortage of cash, it just needs to be allocated to your home)
- Do the optimum adaptations comply with local planning regulations? (in my experience there are many that won’t, for example re-roofing to maximise solar energy generation and minimise heat gain will often not meet local planning rules relating to roof design)
- Are your adaptations achievable? We’ve already experienced what supply chain disruption feels like during Covid-19. What will disruptions look like when thousands of homeowners are trying to make similar adaptations at the same time? (you either pay more, wait longer, or miss out, all of which carry their own risks).
Retreat, or ‘Managed Realignment’
Think of this as the option of last resort, and it’s an option with incredible complexities and challenges.
At home I’m seeing at least one State government funding the relocation of individual home owners following devastating floods. Whilst this might seem a good short-term solution, we’ll soon see that it’s the start of death by a thousand cuts for those communities… there’ll be a tipping point beyond which no degree of adaptation will save that community.
My point being that ‘managed relocation’ may be a more apt term — if it’s evident that a particular community can’t remain in place then better to invest in a managed, strategic relocation that offers that community the best chance to prosper after the relocation effort.
Managed relocation is a particularly complex area and one that I’ll not attempt to delve into here, but I will leave you with some of the key considerations:
- Where are people moving TO? Typically if there is a subsidised buy-out or write-off of a neighbourhood the amount of cash given to home owners will not cover the cost of a new build. How is this to be solved, who pays the gap?
- What role does local government play in relocation? They may not have any jurisdiction in the new location, so might they simply (and sadly) become nothing more than a marshal making sure everyone gets out safely?
- Will local government even survive? Much of their income is derived from resident ratepayer. If they’re losing rate payers can they still function or survive? This can go both ways — some local governments may save money by avoiding large investments in adaptive infrastructure.
- Will the community remain intact or simply disperse? Does the community want to stay together (think of the generational knowledge, wisdom, and joy that many small communities might hold), or will people just go their own way?
- If the community wants to remain intact, HOW is that managed?
The most likely adaptation scenario for most communities — other than those that simply can’t be rescued from sea level rise, will be the stay in place and adapt option, which will require some combination of ‘resist’ — local government investing in adaptive infrastructure (e.g. to protect the neighbourhood from flooding), and ‘adapt in place’ — building owners investing in site-specific adaptations (e.g. to protect against bushfire).
For a capture of some good strategic thinking from a local government, have a quick read of the Lismore News (a town in NSW, Australia) where the local Council is asking all the right questions, and rightly involving the community in the process.
If you want to dive into the science and the significantly more detailed discourse on adaptation, the IPCC’s WGII AR6 report is a good starting point. This link is for the Summary for Policymakers (34 pages).
References
Dunlop, I., Spratt, D. Disaster Alley: Climate Change Conflict & Risk. Breakthrough — National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, Australia (2017)
Hauer, M.E., Fussell, E., Mueller, V. et al. Sea-level rise and human migration. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1, 28–39 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-019-0002-9
MacKenzie, B. ABC North Coast (2022). After two devastating floods in five years, what’s next for Lismore? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-20/when-and-how-should-flood-prone-lismore-rebuild/100921400. Accessed 18/3/2023.
