Displacement Induced by Climate Change Adaptation: The Case of ‘Climate Buffer’ Infrastructure

Abstract

Climate buffer infrastructure is on the rise as a promising ‘green’ climate adaptation strategy. More often than not, such infrastructure building is legitimized as an urgent technical intervention—while less attention is paid to the distribution of costs and benefits among the affected population. However, as this article shows, adaptation interventions may directly or indirectly result in the relocation or even eviction of households or communities, thereby increasing vulnerabilities for some while intending to reduce long-term climate vulnerabilities for all. We argue that this raises serious, if underappreciated, ethical issues that need to be more explicitly addressed in adaptation policy making. We illustrate our conceptual argument with the help of three examples of infrastructural ‘climate buffers’: Space for the River projects in the Netherlands, the Diamer–Bhasha dam in Pakistan and the coastal protection plan in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Entangled Future Im/mobilities

“…Like the M'Daz dam, hundreds of dams, including hydroelectric dams, are being built around the world with the justification of climate adaptation or mitigation (Walicki, Ioannides, and Tilt 2017). Warner and Wiegel (2021) point out the ethical issues that arise from such "climate buffer infrastructure" aiming to decrease climate vulnerability of intended beneficiaries, at the cost of increasing climate vulnerability of the populations displaced by such projects. In the second case, people's mobilities helped transfer the planned adaptation ideas of the government and transformed them into autonomous adaptation by farmers.…”

Accumulation by adaptation

“…However, the dam is expected to displace over 30,000 people across 32 villages, and those protesting the government's scant compensation have encountered extreme violence at the hands of riot police (Warner & Wiegel, 2021).…”

“…One illustrative example is the 250‐m‐tall Diamer‐Bhasha Dam in Pakistan, which engineers claim will reduce vulnerability to climate change by tempering seasonal fluctuations in water supply. However, the dam is expected to displace over 30,000 people across 32 villages, and those protesting the government's scant compensation have encountered extreme violence at the hands of riot police (Warner & Wiegel, 2021). Similar patterns of displacement in the name of adaptation, and state repression of opposition to them, have been documented in Eritrea, Burundi, Myanmar, and Cambodia (Franco & Borras, 2019; Hunsberger et al., 2018; McDowell, 2013).…”

The Good Life and Climate Adaptation

“…However, these measures also raise ethical questions. Think for instance of the people that need to be dislocated, or that are confronted with new projects like dams or storm surge barriers, or think about those people that have to pay for such adaptation measures [2,3]. In all of these cases, certain people are disadvantaged by these measures and projects, which are issues that inevitably raise questions about the justice and fairness of the distribution between benefits and advantages [4].…”