MANAGED RETREATGrowing Interest in, Planning for, Managed Retreat from High-Risk Areas
Strategically moving communities away from environmentally high-risk areas, such as vulnerable coasts, has been referred to as “managed retreat.” Of all the ways humans respond to climate-related disasters, managed retreat has been one of the most controversial due to the difficulty inherent in identifying how, when, where, and by whom such movement should take place.
“Managed retreat” describes the coordinated, purposeful movement of people and buildings away from areas of risks, typically flood plains and low-lying coastal areas. This managed retreat from a growing risk may involve infrastructure such as building or road, or entire communities.
Politicians, insurers, emergency planners, and residents have shown a growing interest in managed retreat from low-lying coastal areas or flood plains near rivers, as the frequency and intensity of climate change-driven floods have increased.
The National Academy of Sciences has conducted a workshop on the topic of managed retreat. Here is Preface of the workshop proceedings:
Strategically moving communities away from environmentally high-risk areas, such as vulnerable coasts, has been referred to as “managed retreat.”(1) Of all the ways humans respond to climate-related disasters, managed retreat has been one of the most controversial due to the difficulty inherent in identifying how, when, where, and by whom such movement should take place.
Managed retreat is a complex and controversial concept that has proven difficult to assess or implement as a collective response to environmental change. The phrase conjures disparate ideas: a well-organized top-down relocation strategy on the one hand, and a desperate defeat by “retreating” communities, on the other. Communities considering relocation feel this dissonance, leading many to search for alternate ways of discussing the possibility, including not using the term “managed retreat” at all. Another difficulty in discussing managed retreat is the variability of its definition. In some contexts, it describes passive retreat measures, such as creating barriers to continued growth by changing zoning laws or providing disincentives (e.g., actuarially fair insurance rates).(2) In other cases, it describes active measures, such as moving physical structures.(3) One result of these difficulties is that other solutions to mitigating climate impacts on residential areas—like erecting floodwalls or raising structures—are considered and often implemented before discussing relocation as an adaptive strategy. Additionally, many areas requiring a retreat are of significant socio-economic disadvantage,(4) raising questions of how the nation’s historical and ongoing social and economic inequities(5) might be considered in the context of managed retreat.
Population growth, coupled with the rapid onset of climate change over the last century, means that a retreat could potentially involve coordinating the relocation of major cities, as well as smaller communities. In both cases, relocation would take enormous resources over the course of many years, making it an unenviable prospect for politicians and policy makers. However, given the increasing prevalence and severity of climate-related impacts on many coastal communities, consideration of managed retreat as an option for communities to reduce their exposure is a timely challenge. The drivers of climate displacement and relocation are well documented (e.g., floods). However, less understood are the financial, policy, and decisionmaking mechanisms that facilitate or occlude relocation, on the one hand, and the perspectives of frontline communities that must navigate these mechanisms when faced with the reality of relocation, on the other. Advancing this discussion by including the voices of communities faced with the difficult consideration of managed retreat as an adaptive strategy to coastal change may support equitable and effective decision making.
1. Spidalieri, K., and Bennett, A. (n.d.). Georgetown Climate Center’s Managed Retreat Toolkit. Available at:
https://www.georgetownclimate.org/adaptation/toolkits/managed-retreat-toolkit/introduction.html.
2. Cheong, S.-M. (2010). Policy solutions in the U.S. Climatic Change, 106(1), 57–70.
3. Pinter, N. (2021). True stories of managed retreat from rising waters. Issues in Science and Technology, 37(4),
64–73.
4. Martinich, J., Neumann, J., Ludwig, L., and Jantarasami, L. (2013). Risks of sea level rise to disadvantaged
communities in the United States. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 18(2), 169–185.
5. Siders, A.R., and Ajibade, I. (2021). Introduction: Managed retreat and environmental justice in a changing
climate. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 11(3), 287–293.
