Building Too Close to the Water. It’s Ridiculous!

By Tayanah O'Donnell 24 October, 2022

Reeling from climate disasters, it's time for managed retreats & buyouts in Australia. O'Donnell, Honorary Associate Professor at ANU, expands

This article is republished from The Conversation (under a Creative Commons license). Read the original article, “‘Building too close to the water. It’s ridiculous!’ Talk of buyouts after floods shows need to get serious about climate adaptation” published on 25 July 2022 here.

Australians are reeling from climate change impacts including more frequent and severe disasters – floods, droughts, searing heat and fires. These complex disasters are fuelling calls for managed retreats and debates about buying out at-risk properties.

Buyouts involve governments paying compensation or compulsorily acquiring land to manage a retreat from high-risk areas. Moving people and assets permanently out of harm’s way is considered a final step in a long line of options for climate adaptation.

Retreat from high-risk areas is something we have to grapple with now…

…for example, New South Wales was flooded 4x in 18 months…

It had often been thought of as something for future generations to grapple with, but my global review of the research literature shows a surge in studies of this issue in the past five years. Retreat is something we have to grapple with now.

Some parts of New South Wales have been flooded four times in 18 months. Retreat and relocation from properties in high-risk areas must now be central to climate adaptation. My research provides lessons for Australia from around the world in how to manage this difficult task.

History repeats

At the height of the Western Sydney floods in March 2021, I wrote about the complexities of managed retreat. The same area has just had yet more catastrophic floods.

And in Lismore, NSW, which has repeatedly flooded over the years, the record floods of 2022 have brought such questions to a head.

Coastal areas are also at risk from sea-level rise. Here, too, we are hearing calls for retreat and buy-outs of vulnerable properties.

… but managed retreat is far from simple

Managed retreat is far from simple. It requires us to assess complex, systemic risks. However, we now face pressing questions about vulnerability, insurability and rising insurance costs, and trade-offs involving value judgments about what to protect, when and at what cost.

My recent review, published by the Royal Society, sought to understand trends and gaps in global research concerned with managed retreat (after a catastrophic event) and planned retreat (before such an event). The aim was to learn how prepared we are for delivering successful retreats from areas at risk. This has lessons for what Australia – and the rest of the world – should be doing.

What did the research find?

I examined published scientific literature in the decade to 2022 containing the keywords “managed retreat” and “planned retreat”.

In the past five years, 135 scientific papers containing these terms were published – a dramatic increase from seven papers in the five years prior. Common themes from these papers included:

• the challenges of property rights and compensation
• the need for governance and institutional mechanisms to enable an orderly and managed retreat
• an increase in negative impacts on vulnerable communities as a result of relocations or retreats that were not orderly or well managed.

In my review, co-ordination across different levels of government emerged as a key barrier to managed retreat. This was no surprise.

Co-ordination across diff levels of govt emerged as a key barrier

Nor was it a shock to find that people’s perceptions of risk are framed in financial terms. Many are reluctant to face falls in the value of at-risk property. This is understandable given the attachments we have to “home” even when the risks are high. As one person told me about people building in dangerous places: “[…] but this is the history of Australia, people building too close to the water. It’s ridiculous!”

A preoccupation with property values can lead to neglect of other losses associated with managed retreat, such as loss of tourism, infrastructure and other state-owned assets.

Australia is not new to managed retreat. Grantham in Queensland is often held up as a successful example. Even so, people struggled with the enormity of the loss and the complexity of the process of retreat.

Relocated communities overseas, including Oakwood Beach in New York, have gone through similar struggles.

Graham was a successful example of managed retreat…

…but people still struggled with the enormity of loss & the complexity of its process

No papers examined retreat from areas of increasing fire risk, though researchers have identified the need. Given recent catastrophic fires around the world, including Australia, the United States and Europe, there’s a significant gap in the research on managed retreat.

All climate change impacts, including heat, fire and drought, may demand some type of retreat at some time and in a wide range of places.

Lessons from around the world

A recent analysis examined three voluntary buyout programs in the United States. It found those programs could be improved by ensuring the policies supporting buyouts – including which aspects of government were responsible for what – minimised barriers to being assessed for compensation.

Programs also needed to be flexible enough to work in a range of circumstances or places.

A focus on property owners can also lead to neglect of people who are renting or who who do not have a readymade place to relocate to. Australia’s crisis of housing affordability (and availability) crisis means this is a major concern.

Buyout programs should have supporting policies & be flexible

Thoughtful and repeated community engagement is essential throughout the process of designing and implementing managed retreat to ensure community acceptance. A study of seven Californian localities identified where managed retreat had been attempted but implementation had failed. Failure was largely due to two reasons:

1. a failure of communication and inadequate community consultation
2. “baggage” associated with the term managed retreat, especially in terms of what it means for property ownership.

As noted in other parts of the world, successful managed retreat has several elements:

• barriers to implementation must first be identified and understood
• those managing the process must learn from historical events – for example, how government and community worked together in Grantham
• policy approaches must be consistent across states or countries, to ensure compensation is distributed fairly.

Climate impacts demand that we start work now

Australia urgently needs a climate adaptation agenda to minimise harm and maximise opportunities as we learn to live with climate change.

As politically perilous as policies of managed retreat may be, climate impacts demand that we start work now on actively and sensibly resolving the risks we face.

Further Reading

• Climate Change On Flood Risk Assessment & Adaptation Approach – Climate change is adding great uncertainty to traditional flood risk assessment. Should modelled data be trusted? How should govts adapt to it? Oxford scholar Natalie Chung Sum Yue shares her insights
• Sponge City Is Transforming Urban Flood Management – Sponge city was launched to combat urban flood risks yet public has doubts over its effectiveness. What does the Chinese govt do to promote the policy? What role does social media play? Dr. Faith Chan, Dr. Dimple Thadani & Lei Li break it down
• More From Less: Building Water Resilience – Water and climate are really two sides of the same coin so what are the holistic solutions that can build resilience? Bluetech’s Paul O’Callaghan sat down with Ecolab & Aquatech experts to explore these and more
• A Wave of Change: Companies’ role in building a water-secure world – Despite the pandemic, companies disclosing to CDP are up 20%. CDP’s Laureen Missaire shares the latest trends from their 2020 global water report and stories of transformations to capitalise on the $711bn of water related opportunities
• Designing Resilience – 2 Architectural Students’ Take on Coastal Threats – Shocked by HK’s coastal threat, HKU’s Fergal Tse & Oscar Wong became CWR’s interns to re-design Victoria Harbour. We sit down with them to understand what local youths think about climate change and & their projects with CWR changed their perspective

More on latest 

• Rivers are Running Dry Today – Rivers are our lifelines; they support cities, food & economies for centuries. This summer they were tested with severe drought/floods – will they fail? CWR’s Tan & Lam dive into challenges facing 5 major river basins that are the industrial/agricultural heartlands for China, Pakistan, US and Europe.
• Companies: It’s Survival of the Fittest in A Changing Climate – Riskier and costlier water and climate-related water risks are drastically reshaping the operating environment, even for leading companies. See what companies need to do to survive with CWR’s McGregor
• China’s Growing Water Risk Factor – China is especially vulnerable to water-related climate risks but that also means increasing capacity for adaptation for which it has big ambitions. Moore, Director of China Programs & Strategic Initiatives at UoP, expands
• A Climate-Ready Northern Metropolis – Seizing the opportunity, Loh, Chief Development Strategist at HKUST, launched the ‘Sustainable Northern Metropolis’ project. We sit down with Loh to talk about the project’s vision, risks, opportunities for HK to climateproof with Shenzhen & more
• Heat Waves Hit the Poor Hardest – Heatwaves are among the deadliest disasters and poorer countries will be 2-5x more exposed to them by 2060, which risks $ billions. Sadegh, Abatzoglou & Alizadeh share more key findings from their research