Solutions
Planned Relocation
In some cases, whole communities may need to relocate to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
The villagers built a seawall to fend off the surging tides. Then, as the seawall began to disappear below the water, they built another. They moved houses back from their receding coastline, then back again, and some a third time, further still. But it was futile. The coast kept eroding, and saltwater intrusion was ruining their cultivation of coconut, breadfruit and banana trees. So, in 2014, the whole community of about 150 people moved their island village of Vunidogoloa in Fiji about two kilometres uphill.
Sometimes, no amount of adaptation, disaster risk reduction measures or resilience will keep a place safe from the consequences of the changing climate.
A planned relocation (or managed retreat) can be an opportunity for people to move permanently out of harm’s way and reduce the likelihood of future displacement. It can also be a way for people to move to a safer location after they have been displaced. As people around the world encounter the risk of displacement – by a disastrous storm, by the rising seas, by soil salination, flood, drought, food insecurity or other consequences of climate change – communities and governments are increasingly considering relocation as
an option.
The [Vunidogoloa] move is considered by many to be a success, although it was expensive, complex and not without problems, as noted by Craig Reucassel from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Foreign Correspondent program, who reported from the village nine years after the relocation. The new houses were infamously built without kitchens, a sure sign that not everyone’s perspectives or needs were properly included in the planning process.
Vunidogoloa resident Sailosi Ramatu recalled that when they packed their belongings onto a truck and abandoned home for the new village, ‘all the people were crying because it was their last day’. But the community already owned the land they moved to, meaning that issues about customary land tenure or land ownership that arise in some relocations were not an issue. There was solar power. And, observed Reucassel, the villagers ‘now have the convenience of flushing toilets and piped water, and a road into town to shops, schools and health services’.
Watch the full April 2023 report.
‘We have found a new place knowing that the current elders, and our children, will be living peacefully without being worried about the flooding.’
- Vunidogoloa chief Simione Botu
In Fiji, a cyclone-prone country comprised of hundreds of islands, Vunidogoloa was among the first of many communities to face the prospect of a planned relocation. More than 800 communities have been identified by the government as at risk from climate change, and 48 villages have been deemed to require partial or full relocation on account of climate impacts. At least seven Fijian communities already have been relocated; the last of these was in November 2020, when Fiji’s Prime Minister officially welcomed seven families to storm-resilient houses in their newly relocated village of Narikoso, on higher ground.
Pacific nations have been at the forefront of thinking about planned relocation.
In 2018, Fiji adopted guidelines explaining what’s required to manage national relocation needs; in 2023, it developed comprehensive Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Relocations to support their implementation. Crafted as ‘living’ documents that will be updated from experience as needed, these instruments aim to ensure that Fiji’s planned relocations are undertaken through an informed, consensual process. In 2019, Fiji also established a Climate Relocation and Displaced Peoples Trust Fund for Communities and Infrastructure, which the government described as ‘the world’s first national trust fund to be linked to a government legislated, community-driven process for the planned relocation of communities, settlements, and groups as a means of proactive retreat from the impacts of climate change when “in-situ” adaptation efforts fail’.
Vanuatu’s 2018 National Policy on Climate Change and Disaster-Induced Displacement addresses planned relocation, and the Solomon Islands has also released guidelines. The low-lying Micronesian atoll nation of Kiribati bought land in Fiji in 2014 as a means of food security, announcing in 2021 that it would be commercially farmed with funding assistance from China.
A global phenomenon
Planned relocations are not confined to the Pacific, however. More than 400 planned relocations worldwide have been documented since 1970, with moves identified on every inhabited continent.
Image: Platform on Disaster Displacement
Image: Platform on Disaster Displacement
Compiling the first global dataset of planned relocations, Kaldor Centre affiliates Erica Bower and Sanjula Weerasinghe uncovered cases from 60 countries and territories in their study, Leaving Place, Restoring Home. The highest number of cases identified were across the United States, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Fiji, Japan and Colombia. About half of the cases were in Asia. All cases involved groups of people moving permanently from one area to another within the same country.
The study, co-produced by the Kaldor Centre and the Platform on Disaster Displacement, noted that planned relocation is initiated most often because of floods, but also because of tsunamis, storms, erosion, earthquakes and landslides. Drought and sea-level rise were also factors in some cases.
Planned relocation can be both a reactive response to such hazards, or it can be a pre-emptive measure to avoid future displacement. Often, though, it is the combination of multiple hazards, occurring alongside or after one another, that result in a decision to relocate. Social, political, economic, cultural and demographic considerations necessarily also come into play.
Planned relocation is not defined in international law. ‘The term “planned relocation” became prominent when it was included alongside displacement and migration in the 2010 Cancun Adaptation Framework,’ notes the Platform on Disaster Displacement, a State-led initiative that was launched in 2016 to prevent and prepare for displacement across borders in the context of disasters and climate change. ‘However, there is no universal definition of planned relocation and there are different views on which key elements are included in the concept.’
It is generally described as a planned process in which people move away from their homes or places of temporary residence; are settled in a new location; and are provided with the conditions for rebuilding their lives. Sometimes called managed retreat, managed relocation or resettlement, planned relocation is often described as a ‘last resort’.
In contrast to the Pacific, policies on planned relocation are lagging in most places.
‘With many States around the world looking to develop similar policies, it is important to learn from early adopters like Fiji to see what should be replicated and the issues that need addressing,’ writes University of Wollongong researcher Liam Moore. ‘While relocations are framed as an option of last resort, the process of identifying at-risk communities and engaging with them can be an important part of mitigating risk factors, allowing communities to stay where they are for longer, or to find more durable solutions after they move.’
Professor Elizabeth Ferris and Erica Bower write that relocations will need to be tailored to the specific context of a given population, place and time. ‘In some cases, such as Newtok, Alaska or Gardi Sugdub, Panama, communities themselves will decide it’s time to relocate; in other cases, such as Vietnam or the Maldives, the government will decide that planned relocation is necessary. These differences have critical implications for policy-making and practice. There is no one single universal archetype of a planned relocation, and therefore, there is also no single political, policy and practical approach to support,’ they note.
Planned relocations do vary. In Grantham, Australia, 90 families moved to higher ground after the 2011 floods, in a process that took about a year and cost the federal and state governments AUD18 million. In the US, coastal erosion has diminished Isle de Jean Charles to the point where ‘in 2016, Louisiana was awarded [US]$48.3 million … to work with residents of Isle de Jean Charles to develop and implement a structured and voluntary retreat from the island into safer communities. This includes developing The New Isle, a planned community about 40 miles north of Isle de Jean Charles that will include more than 500 homes, walking trails, a community center, commercial and retail space and other amenities designed in conjunction with island residents,’ according to the Louisiana Division of Administration.
Yet, politically, planned relocation is a ‘minefield’ for authorities, Ferris and Bower point out. ‘Most people don’t want to move, and they often question the decision by authorities that a community has to relocate. In cases where people don’t trust the government, a decision to relocate a community may be viewed with suspicion. Municipal authorities, in particular, may worry about the loss of their tax base – or their own positions – if a community moves.’
Moving across a border
In most cases, planned relocations will occur within countries rather than across international borders. However, there are at least three historical cases of communities being relocated across international borders, and another three mooted but never carried out, as documented by the Director of UNSW’s Kaldor Centre, Professor Jane McAdam. All occurred in the Pacific in the mid-20th century. They include the relocation of the Banaban community from present-day Kiribati to Fiji in 1945; the partial relocation of the Vaitupuans from present-day Tuvalu to Fiji in 1947; and the relocation of Gilbertese to the Solomon Islands between 1955 and 1964.
These historical examples show that planned relocation is often a very fraught, complex and sensitive process. Participation and consent are key if a sense of long-term, intergenerational injustice is to be avoided. For instance, McAdam describes the Banaban case as ‘a complex story about loss of homeland, deprivation of resources and the destruction of identity. The three are intertwined: while people feel a visceral and spiritual connection to their original island, Banaba Island – even though most have never been there – the loss of home is not just about loss of place and personality.’
These issues remain just as pertinent today: the right to self-determination, self-governance, the preservation (and politicisation) of identity and culture, and the right to control resources. They also highlight issues of consent, authority and participation. They reveal important lessons for any future relocations that might be contemplated.
‘If group relocations become a serious option, then the rights of those affected (both in the sending and receiving countries) must be protected, and the legal status and organisational structures of the relocated group in the new country must be planned meticulously’, writes McAdam. Even though the Banaban case provides ‘an example of innovative governance and citizenship arrangements constructed to protect a group’s rights in their old and new countries of residence’, without full participation and consent, many Banabans still feel a strong sense of injustice today.
An opportunity with costs
Deciding to relocate is no simple thing.
When a community relocates, it is not simply about moving to a new place. Relocation may rupture ties to home, land, sea and sky, to customary land and ancestral burial grounds. Planned relocations can undermine prosperity, culture and well-being.
That is why all community members must be properly informed and have a say in the decision-making process, with up-to-date data and – ideally – opportunities to visit the proposed new site.
As Fiji’s ambassador to the UN, Satyendra Prasad, told The Guardian in 2022 about the logistical financial, political, and even spiritual challenges of relocation:
“‘We keep on trying to explain this ... It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple.’ He rattled off a list of the things that need to be moved along with homes: schools, health centres, roads, electricity, water, infrastructure, the village church. ‘And in case even that you were able to achieve, you have to relocate people’s burial grounds. Try doing that.’“
The chief of the Fijian village Vunidogoloa, Simione Botu, has acknowledged those spiritual connections, which are such a profound part of Pacific culture. The Great Melt: Accounts from the Frontline of Climate Change, a book released in 2021, describes Botu standing near the rotted foundations of his childhood home and saying: ‘Our heart is here. Our forefathers were here.’
Moving was traumatic, he told the ABC, but at least it gave them a future: ‘We have found a new place knowing that the current elders, and our children, will be living peacefully without being worried about the flooding.’
An excerpt from Jane McAdam’s ‘Lessons from planned relocation and resettlement in the past’, (2015) 49 Forced Migration Review 30.
A little-known relocation plan from history
At the 1927 World Population Conference, population growth was posited as the most important problem confronting the world. In 1937, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation brought together 150 scholars at its Peaceful Change conference to examine the idea of ‘international de-crowding’. In February 1938, the International Labour Office (ILO) held a conference on the ‘Organisation of Migration for Settlement’.
At the infamous Evian refugee conference of July 1938, US President Roosevelt sought not only immediate solutions for those already displaced in Europe but also long-term plans to address future overcrowding. He argued that land was needed for new settlements of 50,000 to 100,000 people, and for some 10 to 20 million people altogether. In 1942 Roosevelt created a covert research initiative, the ‘M Project’ (‘M’ for migration), appointing a small team of experts to study possible resettlement sites across the world. At the project’s conclusion in November 1945, they had compiled over 660 land studies, spanning 96 volumes. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Australia’s Northern Territory, Canada and Manchuria were identified as the best prospects for settlement.
But not everyone shared the President’s zeal for resettlement. Even if land could be found, resettlement would be neither an easy nor a rapid process. Population experts noted impediments, such as its high costs, incompatible skill sets (merchants and professionals moving to rural areas, for instance), inadequate transportation facilities, concerns about adaptability to tropical climates, questions about disease, and states’ disinclination to accept groups large enough to resist absorption. Attention also had to be given to legal requirements for admission and stay, local attitudes towards the newcomers, and the adaptability of the settlers themselves (including their willingness to accept, for a time, standards of living below those of the home country).
These factors help to explain why – despite powerful political champions and elaborate theoretical proposals – the reality of large-scale cross-border resettlement was far more limited than the visions. Proposed resettlement schemes in Alaska, the Philippines, Africa and Latin America either failed to materialise or in the end involved only very small numbers. In addition, political brinkmanship between Britain and the US meant that both seemed enthusiastic when the projected resettlement area was in the sphere of the other nation, but were reluctant to commit resources or amend domestic immigration law to translate ideas into concrete plans.
Explore more solutions
Built with Shorthand