Managed retreat is recommended as a response to rising sea levels confronting coastal communities, cities and major ports. We already have climate migrants in coastal Louisiana and like places, and the idea is to manage this out-migration more systematically.
What’s missing are assessments of the track records in the various managed retreat strategies already out there. The management of moving capitols, for example, has not been without its problems. Relocation of large numbers of people is even more difficult in humanitarian work.
What then might this mean in practice? One place I suggest to start thinking about managed retreat on the West Coast where I live and have done my research is the following:
Every time I visit South Sudan, the angels’ response to my criticisms never varies. “What would you have us do?” asked one exasperated aid worker as we sat drinking cold beers one night by the bank of the Nile. “If we leave, people will die.” He was right. A decade of government withdrawal from the provision of services, enabled by the humanitarian presence, and campaigns of government violence, partly paid for from humanitarian resources, had created a situation in which some people in the camps in Maban would probably starve if it were not for the aid agencies. The only solution the humanitarians can envision is to continue with this dystopic system.
Joshua Craze (2023). “The Angel’s Dilemma” (accessed online at https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-angels-dilemma-craze)
Imagine, that is, not a historic retreat and resettlement of peoples from the coastline but rather masses of people who stay behind having nowhere else to go practically and who need indefinite humanitarian aid in order to survive.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 