Assessing the full costs of floodplain buyouts

Curran-Groome, William; Haygood, Hallee; Hino, Miyuki; BenDor, Todd K.; Salvesen, David

doi:10.1007/s10584-021-03178-x

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Other costs including planning, communication, cleanup of infrastructure and decontamination are also important considerations. A systematic review of floodplain buyouts carried out in the US found that transaction costs typically make up about 80% of the total project costs, although consistent budgetary data is lacking (Curran-Groome et al, 2021). Nevertheless, even if the cost of managed retreat doubled, it is still less than estimates for Options 3 and 4 that are currently being promoted by the City of Abbotsford (City of Abbotsford, 2023) (Table 1).…”

Section: Recovery Scenario Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming the Xhotsa: climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration via the return of Sumas Lake

Finn,

Ned - Kwilosintun,

Ballantyne

et al. 2024

Front. Conserv. Sci.

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Sumas Lake (Xhotsa), located in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada, was the heart of Semá:th Nation Territory and the epicenter of a complex Indigenous food system. For the Semá:th people, the lake represented life and livelihood. In 1924, the lake was stolen and drained in an instance of land theft that occurred during a nationwide campaign of land dispossession and genocide, decimating an ecology that supported a rich and diverse Indigenous food system and replacing it with a settler food system. A century later, in November 2021 climate change induced flooding caused the lake to return, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of people and causing millions in damages to homes and infrastructure. Since the flood, the response has been a continuation of the status quo to protect settler agricultural lands via increased investment in hard structures that control the flow of water based on assumptions of the predictability of future flow conditions. We offer a missing narrative by bringing together an analysis of Indigenous laws and oral tradition with an assessment of the economic costs of “managed retreat”, defined as the purposeful relocation of people and infrastructure out of harm’s way. We find that the cost of buying out properties in the lakebed and allowing the lake to return is close to half the cost ($1 billion) of maintaining the status quo ($2.4 billion), while facilitating climate adaptation, and restoration of a floodplain ecosystem that supported thriving populations of people, salmon, sturgeon, ducks, and food and medicinal plants– including many species which are now endangered. Returning Sumas Lake by centering ‘Water Back’ as a climate resiliency solution, enacts both food systems and ecological reconciliation, addressing the harms caused by the loss of the lake to the Semá:th People that is still felt to this day. In a time when climate change induced flooding is predicted to increase, this study demonstrates how the inclusion of Indigenous laws and knowledges are critical to the development of solutions toward a more sustainable and just future.

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Section: Recovery Scenario Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming the Xhotsa: climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration via the return of Sumas Lake

Finn,

Ned - Kwilosintun,

Ballantyne

et al. 2024

Front. Conserv. Sci.

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“…Moreover, while the federal government provides 75% of the buyout funding, local tax rolls may be permanently reduced when valuable real estate is removed from the city's building stock (BenDor et al 2020). Total project costs add a further 25% over property buyout costs, which local governments must shoulder (Curran-Groome et al 2021).…”

Section: Fema Buyouts and Their Inequitable Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equitable buyouts? Learning from state, county, and local floodplain management programs

et al. 2022

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Climate change-exacerbated flooding has renewed interest in property buyouts as a pillar of managed retreat from coastal zones and floodplains in the United States. However, federal buyout programs are widely critiqued for being inaccessible and inequitable. To learn whether and how subnational buyout programs overcome these limitations, we examined five leading US state, county, and local buyout programs to see what they teach us about redesigning future federal policies. Our mixed-methods research used interviews and document analysis to develop case studies, juxtaposed subnational strategies against a review of critiques of federal buyouts, and focus group discussions with subnational buyout managers and experts to identify limitations of their programs. We find that subnational programs can be more inclusive and better respond to resident needs as compared to existing federal programs due to their access to dedicated, non-federal funding and their standing institutional status, which allows them to learn and evolve over time. Nevertheless, these programs lack coordination with and control over agencies that permit development and produce affordable housing. This gives buyout programs limited power in shaping the overall equity of who lives in floodplains and who has access to affordable, resilient housing after a buyout. Their experiences suggest federal programs can support managed retreat nationwide by increasing support for institutional and staff capacity at state and county levels, encouraging efforts to bridge institutional silos at subnational levels, and holistically mainstream climate considerations into regional floodplain development, affordable housing production, and flood risk mitigation.

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“…The vast majority explore these factors at the state scale via localized/regional case study examples. This trend is reflected across a range of geographies, including the United States [57,58,[69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]; South America [79,80]; Canada [81,82]; Western European countries including France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden [83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]; the United Kingdom and Ireland [56,94,95]; and the South Asia and Asia-Pacific region [20,21,52,82,85,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107]. Almost all of these papers are concerned with understanding retreat from coastal or lowlying areas, with the exception of some o...…”

Section: (B) Governance Policy and Institutional Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Phillips et al [137] note that the economic loss spans loss of tourism as well as loss of assets and residential properties, most of the returned papers on managed retreat examine compensation through a residential property loss lens. A significant proportion of reviewed papers explored the concept of 'buyout', and then, mainly from the United States geography and neoliberal perspective [70,71,111,[138][139][140][141] but also a New Zealand perspective [100]. The concept of buyout is where the state has provided compensation or compulsorily acquired vulnerable coastal land for the purposes of activating managed retreat.…”

Section: (C) Property Rights Neoliberalism and Social Justice Conside...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Managed retreat and planned retreat: a systematic literature review

O’Donnell

2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Vulnerable locations, such as coastlines, are at a high risk of loss and damage. Such places will suffer deleterious impacts as climate change impacts are increasingly realized. As societies try to adapt to these impacts, managed or planned retreat—aimed at moving people and assets away from vulnerable locations—is gaining increased attention. Despite this increased attention, systematic literature reviews of the retreat literature remain scarce. This paper undertakes such review and uncovers a marked increase in retreat scholarly research papers in the past 5 years. An analysis of 135 managed and planned retreat journal articles is completed. Findings include a strong emphasis on regional or local case studies exploring governance, policy or institutional settings and levers across a range of geographies. Property rights and market interventions, such as compensation schemes, evidence the prevalence of neoliberal predilections. This emphasizes the importance of renewed engagement with political economy scholarship vis-à-vis climate change adaptation, also supported by the sharp increase in the evidenced social and environmental justice impacts. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Nurturing resilient marine ecosystems’.

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Assessing the full costs of floodplain buyouts

Cited by 9 publications

References 24 publications

Reclaiming the Xhotsa: climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration via the return of Sumas Lake

Reclaiming the Xhotsa: climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration via the return of Sumas Lake

Equitable buyouts? Learning from state, county, and local floodplain management programs

Managed retreat and planned retreat: a systematic literature review

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