Faced with permafrost melt and erosion, and after many years of discussion and planning, ethnically Yup’ik people of Newtok, Alaska, have begun to relocate. The process of settling in a new village, Mertarvik, is underway. Final judgment of the process and outcomes lies with Newtok’s citizens.
PHOTO: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
Climate-induced relocation. Managed retreat. Facilitated migration. Climate-related displacement. These terms describe aspects of what may be beyond words to millions of people whose homes, communities, and cultures are, or could soon be, profoundly threatened by climate change. These people must decide whether, where, when, and how to move, and to thrive, out of harm’s way. Communities facing an influx of uprooted people are no less challenged. Although no single term has been legally defined and universally accepted to describe people on the move as a result of environmental drivers, the global community has made commitments to support them.
This special issue examines how research can engage with and support communities and governments navigating this uncertain landscape. Researchers are interweaving science and governance for community decision-making, improving integration of global and local analyses of human habitability, estimating the largely unmeasured costs of human displacement, mapping policy pathways toward retreat from rising seas, preparing destination regions to be migrant friendly, incorporating design and decision support into retreat planning, and more.
The direction, quality, legitimacy, and impact of such research may depend not only on the creativity of its formulation and the rigor of its execution but also on its assumptions about who makes decisions. This is because many groups whose lives will be disproportionately disrupted by climate change have also historically experienced hardships under decisions imposed upon their communities by outsiders. Thus, we must consider not only what science can do but also how science is done, and by whom.
