Relocation or dislocation?
Too often, the response to climate-related disasters is to relocate local inhabitants. The answer instead lies in managing urban growth, new research suggests.
Floods, heatwaves, cyclones, landslides. Densely populated urban areas are exposed to a multitude of climate-related hazards.
As a result, many governments are resettling people who live in these high-risk areas. However, while resettling and relocation may reduce a region’s climate-related disaster risk, it can have a negative impact on its people, according to research carried out by The Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit (DPU).
“We argue that resettlement should be the last resort,” says Dr Cassidy Johnson, Senior Lecturer at the DPU, “because a lot can be done to mitigate the risk in the first place”.
The research project, which is funded by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, seeks to understand the political, economic and institutional contexts in which resettlement takes place. It also looks at the costs and benefits of resettlement, from both the government’s and individual’s perspectives, and how resettlement impacts people’s wellbeing and resilience over different time frames. Research has been undertaken in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha in India, Kampala in Uganda, as well cities in Peru, Mexico and Columbia, among others.
“In a lot of cities, people are being moved either after disasters or pre-emptively,” says Dr Johnson. “Our premise has been to challenge this practice by looking at the social and economic impacts on the people who are moved and the net impact on the city. What’s the real impact on the people and the larger area?”
Climate change means a lot of risks are getting worse, too. “In Iquitos, Peru, on the plains of the Amazon basin, they expect the whole course of the Amazon river to change,” adds Dr Johnson. “Clearly, that affects a lot of people: some want to move; others don’t.”
The new research shows is that it’s crucial how government makes its case about why relocation is necessary and how this multi-stakeholder consultation takes place. “The whole engagement between government and people to be settled is really important for the result of the place. It can’t be rushed. Resettlement and relocation should be the last resort because our findings show that most of the time it’s so unsuccessful.”
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