11. Sea Level Rise and Social Justice: The Social Construction of Climate Change Driven Migrations

One outcome of climate change will be sea level rise. Sea level rise, and subsequent flooding, may cause displacement of certain people and communities. Social science research has argued that disaster outcomes, such as displacement by flooding, are socially constructed—that is, they are the outcomes of decisions made about where to develop, who the state protects, and how communities recover following an environmental hazard. This chapter addresses the idea that sea level rise is intimately linked to questions of social justice using three case studies. First the chapter investigates vulnerability as an outcome of colonization practices in Alaska. Next, the chapter addresses the impacts of cost-benefit analysis for beach nourishment on coastal populations. Finally, the chapter will look at the Isle de Jean Charles example from Louisiana to understand how cost-benefit analysis impacts levee protection decisions. Ultimately the chapter will argue that the suffering caused by sea level rise is a social construct, as well as an outcome of ecological shift. Here we see that habitual marginalization and economic and political systems of disenfranchisement render certain populations invisible or “less valuable” to protect, and that this, in turn, perpetuates cycles of vulnerability under climate change regimes.