No one likes ‘managed retreat.’ So it’s getting rebranded
[...]
“There’s never been a concept that has really been dragged through the mud so much as managed retreat,” said Sekich-Quinn, the coastal preservation manager at the Surfrider Foundation. “And so it became frustrating for me to try to advocate for this, because it’s got this looming black cloud as a name.”
So a few years ago she started using a different term: “resilient relocation.” She hopes it conveys the need to “do things in a proactive way,” versus nail-biting relocations that could come at the whim of storms, collapsing cliffs or inundated homes.
[...]
“My reading of the research and the history of retreat from environmental harm is that what matters are the facts on the ground,” said Jon Christensen, one of the founders of the school’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies. Those include whether it involves public or private property, or if there’s government funding for relocation.
“Whether it’s retreat from flooding on the Mississippi River, or retreat from sea-level rise and hurricane damage on Staten Island in New York … when people see that there’s an alternative that is a viable way out, that is publicly funded, they can embrace that.”
[...]