At the Water's Edge: Coastal Settlement, Transformative Adaptation, and Well-Being in an Era of Dynamic Climate Risk

Abstract

With accelerating climate change, US coastal communities are experiencing increased flood risk intensity, resulting from accelerated sea level rise and stronger storms. These conditions place pressure on municipalities and local residents to consider a range of new disaster risk reduction programs, climate resilience initiatives, and in some cases transformative adaptation strategies (e.g., managed retreat and relocation from highly vulnerable, low-elevation locations). Researchers have increasingly understood that these climate risks and adaptation actions have significant impacts on the quality of life, well-being, and mental health of urban coastal residents. We explore these relationships and define conditions under which adaptation practices will affect communities and residents. Specifically, we assess climate and environmental stressors, community change, and well-being by utilizing the growing climate change literature and the parallel social science literature on risk and hazards, environmental psychology, and urban geography work, heretofore not widely integrated into work on climate adaptation.