Risk vs. risk: planning and risk management in disaster-induced displacement and relocation

Balachandran, Balakrishnan

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115449 Copy

Description

Title

Risk vs. risk: planning and risk management in disaster-induced displacement and relocation

Author(s)

Balachandran, Balakrishnan

Issue Date

2022-04-15

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Olshansky, Robert B

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Olshansky, Robert B

Committee Member(s)

• Miraftab, Faranak
• Johnson, Laurie A
• Billiot, Shanondora
• Jenkins, Pamela

Department of Study

Urban & Regional Planning

Discipline

Regional Planning

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Disaster-induced relocation
• risk tradeoff
• urban and regional planning
• disaster risk reduction
• resilience
• adaptation
• community
• coastal Louisiana
• case study
• displacement

Abstract

Urban and regional planners endeavor in many ways to reduce the risk that natural hazards pose to communities. Both before and after disasters, they propose hazard mitigation infrastructure and frame land-use plans and regulations to promote development in safer locations and using safer design and construction. One of the ways in which planners try to reduce losses in future disasters is by moving people out of harm’s way—relocation—either preemptively or when a disaster displaces people. The prevailing paradigm focuses on hazard risk and assumes that reducing exposure to it is the first, most important—and sometimes unfortunately the only—intervention required. However, displacement disrupts life socially, economically, culturally and in terms of general wellbeing. Therefore, relocation is complex and controversial. Planning theory and practice recognize the complexity but struggle with methodologies to address disaster-induced displacement and relocation. My research argues that hazard risk is one of many risks that people in at-risk communities deal with; that people make tradeoffs between hazard risks and numerous other risks, and the policy environment influences these tradeoffs. My research also shows that it is possible to systematically analyze risk tradeoffs and frame policies to manage them effectively. Global climate change is rapidly increasing the exposure of communities to natural hazards. There were 22 climate-related billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. in 2020 (Smith, 2020). In 2019, climate and weather events accounted for 99% of the 24.9 million people displaced by natural hazards worldwide, with nearly a million people displaced in just the U.S. (IDMC & NRC, 2020). This picture will worsen, which means that planners will be doing much work related to disaster-induced displacement and relocation. They need better approaches, methodologies, and tools to address the issue. My doctoral research seeks to address this need. I took the first step in this direction by mapping the literature on disaster-induced relocation planning and then conducting a qualitative review of 53 relocation cases worldwide. The study explains the dynamics of relocation planning using a conceptual framework consisting of five interrelated elements: the natural science; the risk decision; the community's relationship to place; the relocation process; and historical, social and political context (B. Balachandran et al., 2021). The review pointed to two areas of inquiry—reframing displacement in a nuanced manner and exploring risk tradeoffs is disaster-induced displacement and relocation. Policies that address disaster-induced displacement and relocation view displacement only in the narrow definition of losing a home or other property to a hazard event, temporarily or permanently, whereas people experience displacement in multiple ways. Further, while plans and policies tend to focus on hazard risk alone, in people’s lived experience, they are forced to negotiate tradeoffs between hazard risks and numerous other risks such as losing livelihood, increasing cost of living, and declining health, which are often far more pressing issues. Based on the review of literature and the qualitative review of cases of disaster-induced relocation, I framed the following research questions: 1. In a scenario of disaster-induced displacement and relocation: a. How do people negotiate the tradeoff between hazard risk and other risks? b. How do planning and policy influence risk tradeoffs? 2. How can planners engage with risk tradeoffs and improve the effectiveness of plans and policies for risk reduction? My research questions are exploratory and explanatory and required in-depth investigation of risk tradeoff to develop a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. Further, my study is interdisciplinary and as a practitioner, I am on the lookout for good and bad planning practices. Therefore, I chose to undertake case study research using qualitative methods. I selected the coastal communities of South Louisiana as the context for my case study research. Coastal Louisiana is a bellwether for the impacts of climate change on at-risk communities in deltaic regions. Because of land subsidence caused by decades of levee and canal building, and aggravated by frequent hurricanes, storm surges, flooding and erosion, the coastal communities here are effectively experiencing sea level rise ahead of other similar places. Rapid environmental change is severely impacting the most socially and economically vulnerable groups of people here, forcing them to make numerous tradeoffs between hazard risks and other risks. Environmental scientists, social scientists and planners are researching the changes happening in Louisiana and responding to it with interventions like the Coastal Master Plan, LA SAFE and the Isle de Jean Charles resettlement project to build resilience and adapt. These three factors—the rapid environmental change, its impact on vulnerable groups and the ongoing resilience and adaptation efforts—made the coastal communities of Louisiana a critical case for me to undertake research on risk tradeoffs, a case that is both an extreme one and representative of a larger set of cases (Yin, 2017). My doctoral research started in December 2017 with my first visit to New Orleans and my last interview was conducted online in July 2021. During the intervening period, I conducted semi-structured interviews; engaged in participant observation in community meetings; and carried out non-participant observation by attending meetings, having informal interactions, and spending time in the communities relevant to my research. I also reviewed and analyzed plans, policies, programs, and projects relevant to the experience of disaster-induced displacement and relocation in the coastal communities of Louisiana. I carried out thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews iteratively with the policy analysis. Participant and non-participant observations enriched the analytical process by deepening and adding new meaning to insights gleaned from the analysis of interviews. The key outcomes of my research are (1) reframing displacement by recognizing attritional displacement, a process of erratic and episodic erosion of people-place relationships in a cloud of complex risks, (2) identifying risk tradeoffs that people make and those implied in plans and policies, (3) explaining how plans and policies impact attritional displacement and risk tradeoffs and (4) exploring the application of Risk Tradeoff Analysis to planning and policymaking. Risk is complex: People in the coastal communities of south Louisiana deal with an interconnected cloud of risks: hurricanes, storm surges, floods, land subsidence, salinity ingress, and environmental pollution, causing destruction of homes, loss of livelihoods, deterioration of health, and erosion of wealth. Their communities shrink as homes and businesses move out. Their cost-of-living increases and property values decrease. Displacement is attritional: The bayous are changing faster than its residents can adapt. In this interconnected cloud of complex risks, some people make distress moves out of the bayous, into a new set of uncertainties. Even for those who stay, the place has changed so much that they are, in effect, displaced. Each risk that impacts them hacks away at their rootedness in place. Attritional displacement is the term I use for this erratic, episodic erosion of people-place relationships. Risk tradeoffs are inevitable: At each stage in this process of attritional displacement, vulnerable people are forced to make tradeoffs between multiple risks because of their life situations (including health, livelihood, finances, social networks, etc.). People with strong place attachments make tradeoffs in favor of staying until they can no longer do so. The policy environment shapes the risk landscape: Policy interventions—plans, policies, programs, and projects—change the configuration of risk for stakeholders in the geographical and functional space in which the policy operates. Examples abound—a safe harbor for fishing boats reduces livelihood risk, a levee system protects some people and leaves out others, higher premiums make flood insurance unaffordable for low-income families, etc. These changes in the risk landscape also influence the tradeoffs that people make. My findings helped me deepen the five-part conceptual framework on disaster-induced relocation that I mentioned earlier. In the first element, natural science, my review of the Coastal Master Plan shows the need for scientific analysis of risk to transparently acknowledge implicit risk tradeoffs. My research shows that the second element, risk decision, is essentially a tradeoff decision, whether it is taken by an individual, family, community, or government. When individuals and families make risk tradeoffs, they are being rational within their context, and we could refer to this as lived rationality. The third element, relationship to place is central to understanding coastal communities in Louisiana. Many of the risk tradeoffs that arise in the context of relocation are closely related to multi-dimensional place attachment. In ongoing resettlement projects in coastal Louisiana, people negotiate tradeoffs between hazard risk and a host of transactional, logistical, and financial risks for the household, such as establishing title and dealing with new expenses like mortgage and insurance. These form part of the fourth element, relocation process. The last element—historical, social, and political context—is a cross-cutting element and influences all other elements. The context influences how people negotiate risk tradeoffs. Context also influences how policymakers and planners make tradeoffs, consciously or unconsciously. Of all the contemporary conversations in planning theory that my research on risk tradeoffs speaks to, the most important is the one on planning and climate justice. Many scholars of planning and related social sciences have, in recent years, been critically examining the role of planning and policy in the space of climate justice, uncovering issues of justice and equity in disaster recovery, displacement, relocation, housing, managed retreat, adaptation and resilience (Anguelovski et al., 2016, 2019; B. Balachandran et al., 2021; S. Billiot & Parfait, 2019a; Hanna et al., 2021; Olshansky, 2018; Shi et al., 2016; Shokry et al., 2021; Siders, 2019; J. R. Z. Simms et al., 2021; Walelign & Lujala, 2022; Yarina et al., 2019; Zavar & Fischer, 2021). My contribution to this literature has three parts to it. First, I point out that people in the coastal communities of Louisiana are exposed to a multitude of risks that keep changing, forcing them to make tradeoffs all the time. I refer to this situation as complex risk. Second, I present the insight that this cloud of risks impacts place attachment. There is an erratic, episodic erosion in people-place relationships that I refer to as attritional displacement. The physical move away from home is a significant part of this attritional displacement but is not necessarily the beginning or the end. Third, I show that people’s risk tradeoffs are influenced by the policy environment and discuss how planners and policymakers can shape the risk landscape more consciously and conscientiously using methods like Risk Tradeoff Analysis. Finally, I am a practitioner, and my research speaks to planning practice. It is not new for planners to account for the externalities of plans, policies, programs, and projects. Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) and Social Impact Analysis (SIA) have been used for decades by planners and policymakers to assess and address environmental and social outcomes (Burdge, 1990; Daniels, 2009). However, in the case of planning for disaster risk reduction, planners have hitherto assumed that the severity of hazard risk makes it the preeminent issue to address; and everything else is secondary. My research challenges this notion by applying the lens of risk tradeoffs; and shows that in a people-centric approach to planning, risk reduction must be holistic. People in at-risk communities in places like coastal Louisiana are always trading off hazard risk against other risks in their daily lives and these tradeoffs are heavily influenced by the policy environment. I have shown that these tradeoffs can be systematically analyzed and understood using tools like Risk Tradeoff Analysis (RTA). Planners have a responsibility to investigate the risk tradeoffs that people encounter, and those implicit in policy; then design risk-superior policies that help people improve their wellbeing.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Balakrishnan Balachandran

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