Resilience for Whom? A Climate Mobility Framework for Evaluating Equity Outcomes in Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract:

With a population of 2.7 million people and an estimated $400 billion in total value of assets exposed to flooding (Cox and Cox, 2016), Miami-Dade County (MDC) is exceptionally vulnerable to SLR. In MDC, social and economic disparities amongst various segments of the population may result in the inability of many residents to cope with SLR induced migration outcomes. While recent studies (Hauer, 2017; Hauer et al. 2016) have focused on the macro-economic implications of climate-driven migration, there is a large research gap in our understanding of the multiplicities of climate related movement, or climate mobilities (Boas et al. 2019) within a given locality.

Building from Barth and Rollins (2019), we present a robust climate mobility framework that distinguishes between four typologies of populations within MDC: (1) stable, (2) migrating, (3) displaced, (4) and trapped as a function of their SLR risk and their social and economic vulnerability (SEV). We determine SEV by creating a vulnerability index through a composite based construction (Rygel et al. 2006; Bolter 2014) of relevant socio-economic indicators obtained from the 2018 U.S. Census American Community Survey. We apply Monte Carlo techniques to assess uncertainty in the SEV index development and to assess variability within SLR risk assessment using three measures: (1) the MDC 2018 5ft grid Digital Elevation Model (2) First Street Foundation Flood IQ data and (3) FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps. We examine the interaction between SEV and SLR risk to group property parcels and census units into the typologies.

Preliminary analyses indicate that most of MDC’s Black population are located in the Displaced (51.2%) or Trapped typology (36.2%), while the majority of MDC’s White population are located in the Migrating (46.4%) typology. Only 8.4% of MDC’s total population are categorized in the Stable typology. Identifying typologies of potential migration outcomes is a necessary pre-condition for understanding equity outcomes as related to a suite of climate adaptation decisions, including affordable housing programs and climate resilience strategies. Local dynamics of climate adaptation policy will increasingly occur across coastal areas at risk of SLR, and therefore carry global relevance for addressing the governance challenges of adaptation.