Coastal challengesManaged Retreat Conference

The Columbia Climate School and its Earth Institute, will hold a virtual conference 22-25 June 20201 on the subject of managed retreat.

Following the successful 2019 conference on Managed Retreat, the 2021 conference will address a range of scientific, social, policy, and governance issues around managed retreat (also known as strategic realignment and planned relocation).

Key topics that will be addressed include:

·  Built environment (e.g. design and architecture; land use planning; infrastructure; infrastructure interdependencies; urban planning)

·  Buyouts and property acquisition

·  Climate and social science for managed retreat (e.g. exposure, vulnerability, risk)

·  Communication strategies (e.g. storytelling; teaching about managed retreat; arts)

·  Community resilience (e.g. community organizing; vulnerable populations; psychology; mental health; residents perspectives)

·  Ecosystem conservation and migration

·  Environmental justice and equity

·  Finance and economics

·  Governance, policy and planning (e.g. decision-making; international frameworks; federal management; state programs; local planning; multi-level policy coordination)

·  Infrastructure interdependencies (e.g. public health, energy, transportation)

·  International perspectives

·  Legal issues and tools (e.g. climate migrants/refugees)

·  Migration as adaptation (e.g. assisted relocation; voluntary movement; connecting retreat and the climate migration discourse)

·  Non-coastal retreat (e.g. flood and riverine areas; drought and dryland expansion; temperature extremes; wildfire in the urban-wildland interface)

·  Private sector perspectives (e.g. insurance, real estate)

·  Receiving communities (e.g. within countries; internationally; policy instruments)

The event will bring together stakeholders from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, together with academics, scientists, and community representatives, to help develop a common understanding of this complex issue, and move the needle toward equitable solutions. The organizers say that a major emphasis will be on issues of environmental justice, in recognition that the people most impacted by decisions around retreat have a key role in these conversations.

The organizers say that the conference’s goals are to:

·  Advance the research agenda around managed retreat in an interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented way

•  Convene scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders to advance an interdisciplinary dialogue on a topic that has not been explored in-depth

·  Facilitate networking and discussion among many types of stakeholders, and bridge the information gap between academics, practitioners, and affected communities

·  Weigh the costs and benefits of managed retreat from the coastline versus resilience building and/or reinforcement of coastal defenses for communities in a range of contexts ranging from urban to rural, with varying risk levels

·  Develop concrete solutions and best practices around a complex climate adaptation issue

·  Identify best practices and likely policy options for managing coastal retreat in these different contexts, borrowing from best practices globally

Video recordings of individual sessions are available on the Earth Institute’s Youtube channel. 

To register for the Managed Retreat Conference, see here.