Antinomies of risk reduction: climate change and the contradictions of coastal restoration

Abstract

This paper engages sociological research on the political economy of the environment to decipher the contradictions and crisis tendencies associated with coastal restoration, using a case study of southern Louisiana. The paper explores the antinomies or contradictions of risk reduction measures (e.g., coastal restoration) in an extractive economy dominated by oil and gas production. Drawing on long-term ethnographic field observations and content analysis of planning documents and government reports, the paper highlights the socially constructed dimensions of risk ‘reduction’ and hurricane ‘protection’, the political–economic dynamics of climate change risk, and the challenges of risk governance. My basic finding is that the coastal restoration process is intensifying rather than alleviating risks associated with coastal erosion and climate change-driven sea level rise. As I point out, coastal restoration takes place on an aggressively contested institutional and ecological landscape in which newly emergent risk reduction measures are interacting conflictually with inherited regulatory arrangements and social–ecological patterns to increasingly expose communities to climate change risks.