MANAGED RETREATAdapt or Retreat? Conference Will Explore Questions of Habitability in a Changing World
As sea levels rise, fires rage, and temperatures continue to increase around the globe, it is understood that certain areas may no longer be habitable in the not-so-distant future, and that people now living in these area will have to retreat to more accommodating areas — in what is called “managed retreat.” But what does it mean to be habitable? And who gets to decide what happens to these areas under threat?
As sea levels rise, fires rage, and temperatures continue to skyrocket around the globe, it is generally understood that certain areas may no longer be habitable in the not-so-distant future. But what does it mean to be habitable? And who gets to decide what happens to these areas under threat?
These questions and more will be a major focus at the upcoming Managed Retreat conference, hosted by the Columbia Climate School. The conference will discuss some of the complex concerns that fall under the umbrella term of managed retreat—the purposeful movement of homes, communities, and planned development away from hazardous areas—including habitability and mobility, as well as their shifting roles in response to climate change.
Held from June 20 to June 23, the conference—now in its third iteration—will bring together representatives from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors alongside academics, scientists, and community members from around the world to address this increasingly important topic, while keeping questions of equity at the forefront. The full agenda can be found here.
What Is Habitability?
The concept of habitability is not exactly new, said Alex de Sherbinin, a senior research scientist and the deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network within the Columbia Climate School. He explained that the term has been tied back to—now largely discredited—notions of “carrying capacity,” where ecologists talked about animal populations and how much livestock could be supported on a given area of land, and then extrapolated this idea to humans. “Those are potentially legitimate questions, but the idea of carrying capacity is overly mechanistic since human interactions in the environment are much more complex than for other species,” he added.
Similarly, in the context of a changing global climate, there has been a recent increase in efforts to “map areas of the world that will either experience really extreme heat, prolonged droughts, sea level rise, glacial melting—the list goes on,” de Sherbinin said.
