Rethinking Disaster Resilience: A Call for Strategic Relocation

Gavin Smith, PhD, FAICP, a professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at the NC State College of Design, advocated for a mix of diverse resilience strategies, including new building codes and elevating homes, while also acknowledging the complex financial, political and social hurdles of implementing these measures. 

The interview transcript below is from his conversation with Nadia Mitsopoulos of ABC Perth for WA Mornings.

**Transcript adapted for clarity. Original production by ABC Radio Perth. 

­Nadia Mitsopoulos: (questions bolded, below)

At the Perth Convention Center for the AFAC Conference, 4,500 people are here for the next few days, sharing information and new developments about the best way to respond to natural disasters, bushfires, floods, cyclones — you name it, it’s all on the table here. I want to start by looking at something that is fast becoming a reality for some communities in flood-prone areas, and that is relocation. Now I have with me Professor Gavin Smith from North Carolina State University. He’s been talking about this at the AFAC conference, and his work involves studying and advising on programs for disaster buyouts and rebuilding and planning to make communities more resilient. It’s lovely to meet you, Professor. How is climate change impacting where we live now?

Gavin Smith:

You know, one of the big challenges I think that we’re facing is, in many ways, we’ve designed our communities to reflect the climate of the past, and so the way we design and very simply where and how we build has often been predicated on our understanding of hazards. And the way we understand hazards is by typically looking at what has happened in the past. But now, in the era of climate change, these events are becoming more severe, more common, and yet we still have these human settlements that were designed in a way that was meant to reflect that past climate, and now, as we move into a new climate era, we’ve got to adapt. We’ve got to change, and one of the ways to do that is through the difficult choices surrounding community-led relocation.

So, what should we be thinking about when we plan and design houses and where they go?

Well, I think one of the most important things we need to think about from the beginning is that we need to do better planning. And I could speak to the issues in the United States where we haven’t done a very good job of planning. In fact, we have policies and programs that have encouraged people to live on our barrier islands, to live in flood-prone areas, to live in that wildland-urban interface. And so, it’s not surprising that it happened, and now we have to figure out how to grapple with the choices we’ve made with very large-scale investments. For us, moving communities — the number of people in harm’s way is pretty staggering. But then, when you think about the issues that we all think about, is the deep attachment to place — so many people don’t want to leave until after disaster strikes.

Is a recent example the LA fires? People were surrounded by bushland, one road in, one road out. There was always an issue with accessing water, for instance.

Well, there are a couple of examples. One is the Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii, in the sense that prior to colonial settlement, those lands were forested with meandering streams and heavily vegetated. Then we came in, clear-cut that and put in sugar cane. When that played out, then they put in non-native grasses to feed cattle, which was highly flammable, and when it caught fire, the high winds associated with a hurricane led to the grasslands becoming a conflagration that blew into this community. So thinking about not only where and how we build, but also how we’ve modified our environment, and all of those things combined are really causing almost a perfect storm of disaster risk.

Do you feel there’s an attitude, and sometimes I sense it here in Australia, that we sort of kick that can down the road? Look, we don’t need to worry about this for another 20, 30, 40 years? I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

It is certainly a major problem, especially in the era of climate change. And one of the things we find in the US is sometimes our election cycles are, let’s say, three to five years, and so the mayor or the town council may not want to make the tough choice. They’ll let the next person do it.

So, the same issue is happening, and certainly not making light of the fact is that this is one of our issues that we all need to think about: elected officials and others need to make tough political decisions now, recognizing that their actions could very well save lives.

So, relocating communities, but also saying there are no-go zones, no more building here?

That’s right. And so that’s another issue: we often think of resilience. The idea of the phrase resilience is ubiquitous. In many ways, the roots of resilience are tied to ecology, and the strength of an ecosystem is the diversity of that ecosystem. And what I’m getting at is that it may not be just buybacks, it may be new building codes. It may be elevating homes in flood-prone areas, or it may be not building there in the first place.

So not just relying on one measure, like in New Orleans, where we were over-relying on a levee system. When the levee system failed, we had massive, catastrophic losses. In fact, we’re at the 20th anniversary of Katrina, and so now New Orleans is thinking about the levee. Some homes are being bought out. Some homes are being elevated. They’re trying to improve stormwater management. So doing a series of actions — multiple lines of defense, if you will — to deal with these threats.

What else do we have to think about? Because you’re also talking about people who are very attached to their homes and where they live, and so not everyone’s going to be on board if there comes a point where they say, “You need to leave”?

That’s right. I think it’s important for all of us, whether we’re technical experts or elected officials or whoever,  to realize that very fact. To be able to try to 1) convey risk, but do it in an empathetic way, in a way that recognizes that we’re all deeply tied to our home place, to where we live, and trying to convey that, and 2) encourage some people, in some cases, we are going to need to move.

Because you’ve helped communities move?

That’s right. We’ve done large-scale buybacks for about 5,000 homes. And because it’s a voluntary program in the US, sometimes we find it in a buyback [referred to buyouts in the US] program, some people agree to move and others don’t. Let’s say 28 of the 30 people leave, but two remain. So, what do you do? And so, we’ve torn apart the fabric of the community; two people, two families remain. That’s not a good solution, either, but that’s their right. And that is one of the great challenges: how are we going to think about doing this, ideally through good planning and by thinking about this well before the storm, well before the flood, the cyclone, the bushfire. Think about those issues, confront them, and try to come up with a solution that meets the needs and concerns of everyone.

We have quite considerable erosion problems in some areas along the WA coast, and we’re seeing jetties falling. We’ve had buildings that are getting very, very close to the water’s edge, and at what point does the council say, “you have to retreat,” “you have to relocate,” but at what cost? Because there’s a financial burden here, too.

There are big questions, and we’re facing this in my home state of North Carolina, where we’re having oceanfront homes literally fall into the ocean. Trying to think about how we should be more proactive. We know these areas that are at risk, and so how can we confront this issue more proactively? I think it is really important.

We see it happen here all the time. People rebuild in the same area after a natural disaster. At some point, will that have to stop where a government or a council says, “That’s it? No, you cannot rebuild your home”?

Yeah, and this is needed in the US. One of the interesting challenges we face is that we are a very wealthy nation, and we tend to spend a lot of money on post-disaster recovery, but we’re often not addressing the root problems like risk or inequity or bad planning decisions, and so we infuse large amounts of post-disaster aid, and much of it is used to rebuild communities back to their pre-event conditions, setting themselves up for the next disaster.

And that’s even happening in areas where they’ve had volcanoes erupt. Is that right?

Well, we have. The eruption of Kilauea in Hawaii — there have been people who want to move back and actually want to move back to their homes on top of the lava flow. So, to me, that’s a powerful example of deep place attachment. I will say, in the Hawaii case, they have been doing buybacks in that area. And so, this is what communities are often struggling with – this deep place attachment, wanting to come back, versus thinking thoughtfully, “how do we move people?” And so, in Hawaii, they are spending substantial amounts of money to move people. But not everyone wants to go.

Herb has called in, and he has a question for you.

Herb: Good morning, Professor. The issue that I have is that we need to do relocation and protecting community with this idea in mind that we need to care for country. And if you take people out of the country altogether, then you have urbanized people more, and you get a bigger disconnect between country and people. And the environment is just expected to take care of itself, whereas when people are in the environment, they can have planning laws and building regulation designs to help make it possible for people to stay in the country and contribute to its care and maintenance.

Gavin: Thank you. I think Herb, it’s a really important point, and I should be really clear when I was alluding to, you know, the idea of relocation. That is one tool in the toolkit. I was alluding to the idea of resilience, the idea that the strength of an ecosystem is the diversity of the ecosystem.

And the analogy is that we should think of a series of tools that we could use. It could be the use of less flammable building materials. It could be not building in certain areas to begin with, and protecting natural systems in the bushfire areas. All of these things taken together improve resilience. So, I should be clear, it’s not just that we should be moving people, but rather, what are the best solutions that fit the needs and culture and issues surrounding that particular place?

Well, on that point, then: How do you disaster-proof a home? Can you truly disaster-proof a home?

Well, I guess it depends on who you ask. And so, there are certain design standards that could be used for cyclones or bushfires in the US, tornadoes and others. One of the challenges is cost, but there are tried and true methods to make communities and homes less vulnerable to the impact of natural hazards. We know what we need to do. It’s sometimes that we don’t choose to do it.

Flooding, for instance, I don’t see a lot of homes that are elevated in WA.

Well, that’s right. And in the US, we have that same issue. A lot of homes were built before, for example, we created our National Flood Insurance Program, which requires people to build in accordance with the flood risk, and that area is mapped. The problem is, like most natural hazards, these are dynamic systems. They change. And so, when we predicate our building codes and standards on maps that might be outdated due to more intense rainfall or more intense development in those surrounding watersheds, the people who live there and built [their homes] in accordance with the laws [that were in place] when they built those homes — now they may not be adequate.

So, to me, that’s one of the big challenges: how do we realize that the climate is changing? Now we’re going to have to retrofit thousands and thousands, if not millions of homes, and move others. It’s very expensive. And it goes back to the question, who pays? Should the homeowner pay? If they’re poor, maybe they can’t afford it. Should the state pay? Can the state afford it? Should the national government pay for it?

And so, these are big, big issues that we’re facing in the United States. In fact, the policy issues and the programs that we’ve had in place for the last 50 years are now basically being gutted in the United States — risk reduction programs, grant programs to elevate homes and do buybacks — those programs are actually going away under the current administration, and so now they’re expecting the states to do more.

Does that worry you?

It worries me a lot, because we’re doing it almost immediately, without a long-term, gradual transition. And so, [there is] the expectation that states can take on this role. Some might, but many can’t. And so, if you happen to live in a state that’s perhaps poor or doesn’t make this a priority, then you’re on the short end of the stick.

And so the easiest thing right now would be to have no-go zones and say, “That is it, no more building in this area”?

There could be. I hesitate to say that with certainty; this is very contextualized. So, for example, I was using an example in my presentation at the conference. We have a community in North Carolina — Princeville, North Carolina, the oldest African American community in America, settled by formerly enslaved people. The idea of moving them to higher ground is an issue we’re talking about, but think about the deep place attachment there. And so, we’re moving part of the town, but we’re moving it adjacent to the city limits. So this goes back to the caller’s question earlier: when we think about moving, we may not have to move people 30 miles from where they live. We might be able to move them onto the outskirts of town, but then try to keep that sense of coherence, but it really does depend on the local conditions.

There is a lot to consider, and judging by what you’re saying, this should be a high priority for any government around the world, in any country.

That’s right, absolutely.

I hope you’re enjoying your stay here, and it was lovely to meet you. Thank you for giving me some of your time. 

This post was originally published in College of Design Blog.