Staying Afloat: Planning and Managing Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Risk in Florida’s Coastal Counties

Abstract

Climate change and sea level rise present significant risks to coastal governments’ fiscal and service solvency. Current lack of focus on climate change by the U.S. federal and some state governments pressures coastal governments to develop tractable solutions to manage localized risks. This research integrates adaptive governance and capital planning literatures to develop an adaptive risk management framework. Heeding the call for research of coastal county actions to plan for and respond to climate change, we conduct content analysis of planning documents, financial reports, meeting minutes, media reports, and other documentation of all coastal counties in Florida to quantify government efforts to address climate change. Risk management practices are hierarchically categorized by focus area, risk type, and tactic and placed within the adaptive risk management process framework. A well-functioning adaptive risk management process can redefine vague climate change risks into knowable, tractable problems to address.

Treading Water: Planning for Sea Level Rise in the Southeastern United States

“…However, the same cannot be said for many counties of east of New Orleans until the more populated Tampa Bay Metropolitan area on the Gulf Coast of Florida. In the Tampa Bay area, local governments have been pressured to catch-up to their counterparts in South Florida (Hines et al, 2022). Moving up the Atlantic coast, there is an eclectic mix of progress.…”

“…In sum, studies of metropolitan areas provide depth and offer valuable frameworks for planning. However, fewer studies have been conducted beyond metropolitan areas featuring numerous local governments, especially ones that take detailed inventories of adaptive management practices (Butler et al, 2021; Hines et al, 2022; Hino et al, 2017; Siders & Keenan, 2020). Our current study adds to this literature by examining 85 coastal counties in the southeastern United States, stretching from North Carolina to Louisiana.…”

“…Our adaptive risk management framework intertwines concepts from adaptive governance (Ford & King, 2015; Moser & Ekstrom, 2010) and capital planning (Srithongrung et al, 2019). The rationale for blending these literatures is to combine their strengths and avoid the limitations of using either in isolation (Hines et al, 2022). Specifically, adaptive governance best illustrates the politics of climate change and SLR, evaluation of climate risks, and barriers to adaptation.…”

“…To conduct our analysis, we use an adaptive risk management framework recently applied to Floridian coastal counties (Hines et al, 2022). The framework outlines a normative planning process with several stages, beginning with recognition of SLR as a general risk (See Figure 1).…”