Abstract
Climate change is exacerbating storms at the same time that humans are increasingly settling in areas most affected by such storms. In theory, post-disaster recovery offers opportunities to rebuild for sustainable development. However, in reality, responses to climate events often result in greater inequality through a process we term resilience gentrification. Three possible resolutions to the coastal resilience dialectic are managed retreat, denial, and structural mitigation. Structural mitigation has become the most popular response in the Anthropocene. This response raises the cost of coastal redevelopment, giving capital greater access and control over development decisions. These changes make coastal areas more expensive and more exclusive. We illustrate this process in the post-disaster recovery of two very different communities: Gowanus, Brooklyn and the Caribbean island of Barbuda. In both cases, attempts to build it back “green”—using selective aspects of “sustainable development” as a guide—come at the cost of exacerbating existing housing inequality. In this way, “resilience” gets equated with wealth, thus reinforcing a cycle of climate injustice. To achieve a “just sustainability,” government responses must consider and address the equity impacts of climate change resilience policies. Managed retreat and degrowth strategies for climate resilience offer greater potential for a just sustainability in the Anthropocene.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Chi Xu, Nanjing University, China Lorien Nesbitt, University of British Columbia, Canada Jessica Quinton, University of British Columbia, Canada Kirsten Wong-Stevens, University of British Columbia, Canada, in collaboration with reviewer
In the United States, two major coastal cities have already experienced major infrastructural collapse resulting from climate-change enhanced hurricanes: New Orleans in 2007, and New York in 2012 (Gotham and Greenberg, 2008; Bullard and Wright, 2009; Greenberg, 2014a)
The impacts of those megastorms were exacerbated by climate change induced rising sea levels, which increased the severity of the storm surges that devastated the levee structures of New Orleans and the subway and highway tunnels of New York
Summary
At the same time that coastal development is facing increasing ecological threats due to climate change, there is a surge in human population in coastal areas. Given the facts that (1) climate change is exacerbating storms and storm surges, and (2) humans are increasingly settling in the areas most affected by such storms, post-disaster recovery processes will become an increasingly regular occurrence This paradox is a microcosm that represents the broader challenges that communities face in resolving the contradictions between the social system and the ecosystem. We argue that the most common path to recovery—namely, rebuilding with structural mitigation—leads to resilience gentrification This parallels the process of green gentrification in terms of its (mostly) unintended effects: greening urban areas, while positive in an environmental sense, has had the consequence of exacerbating environmental inequality (Gould and Lewis, 2017; Anguelovski and Connolly, 2018). Resilience gentrification (especially in the global south) is in some ways a greenwashed version of neo-settler colonialism
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