Many coastal US cities are contending with increasingly frequent and severe tidal flooding as sea levels rise. Some are considering building seawalls, but this strategy is not simple or cheap.
Managed retreat doesn’t always mean leaving. It’s about preserving the essential while redesigning communities to be better for everyone. Here’s what that can look like.
Climate migrants don’t fit neatly into the legal definitions of refugee or migrant, and that can leave them in limbo. The Biden administration is debating how to identify and help them.
If emissions continue at their current pace, Antarctica will cross a threshold into runaway sea rise when today’s kids are raising families. Pulling CO2 out of the air later won’t stop the ice loss.
Catherine Iorns, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand is replacing its once groundbreaking environmental legislation with new laws, one of which focuses on climate change adaptation and will include a fund to enable managed retreat.
As sea levels rise along the Atlantic coast, saltwater is intruding inland, killing trees and turning coastal forests into marshes. Should scientists try to slow the process, or work with it?
This is not an imaginary future dystopia. It’s a scientific projection of Australia under 3°C of global warming – a future we must both strenuously try to avoid, but also prepare for.
Putting affected people and communities at the centre of difficult relocation decisions must be a priority under laws that replace the old Resource Management Act.
Climate change is a true existential threat for small island nations, but the US has done little to help the Marshall Islands, which it administered for decades.
Birds found along the Gulf Coast have evolved to ride out hurricanes and tropical storms. But with development degrading the marshes where they live, it’s getting harder for them to bounce back.