THE CASE FOR RETREAT AS A FORM OF DISASTER
RISK REDUCTION
Ajit Chaudhuri – 9th October 2019
“Retreat, Hell! We just got here!”
The term ‘retreat’
originates from military strategy and has negative connotations (as can be
discerned from the quote above) – it is usually a prelude to defeat and a likely
subsequent massacre. However, when undertaken in a strategic or planned manner,
retreat can be used to serve positive objectives as well. Records suggest that
retreat was first used as an offensive strategy by the Mongol armies of the 13th
century (who were masters at feigning disarray and inviting cavalry charges
that drew enemies into locations of their, i.e. the Mongols’, choice), and most
famously by the Tsarist army during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812
(letting the French reach the outskirts of Moscow before pouncing – of the
500,000 strong invading force that crossed into Russia in June, only 27,000
crossed back in December).
Thinking on disaster
risk reduction (DRR), too, has a negative lens on retreat (or the resettlement
of communities to pre-identified locations); it is seen as a last resort, as a
one-time emergency action, and/or as a failure to adapt – often undertaken in
an abrupt, ad hoc and inequitable manner that involves some level of human
rights abuse and is unfair to renters and low-income house owners. DRR prefers
to focus upon building resilience of vulnerable communities where they already
are, so that they have the ability to withstand the hazards that come their
way.
And yet, retreat has
always been an adaptation option – there is little point in building resilience
of communities in areas that are prone to avalanches or landslides, for example,
because no amount of resilience is sufficient protection in the face of certain
hazards. And people in hazard prone areas usually look to move themselves and
their assets out of harm’s way, more so nowadays with global warming, rising
sea levels, and climate related extremes. Those with fewer resources have fewer
options to address such risks; they are unable to return, or to rebuild more
resiliently; some may feel forced into retreating; conversely, some may be
unable to afford to move, and feel therefore trapped in a hazardous location.
People staying in contexts of informal settings or insecure land tenures can be
particularly affected.
Due to some of these
reasons, retreat is often undertaken after an unfortunate event, and usually in
some distress. The author happened to pass Malpa in 2014 (a Himalayan village
along the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra that lost 221 people and its entire housing
stock in a landslide in 1998), an eerie ghost village whose surviving residents
had resettled in safer locations. While hindsight is always 20/20, the case for
retreat was blindingly obvious given the steep, almost vertical, slopes of rock
above the location, the proximity of the rock mass to major (and unstable)
tectonic plates, and the heavy rainfall that ensured water seepage into the
porous rock.
Retreat as a form of
adaptation has attracted little research, and there is therefore limited guidance
for administrators and DRR practitioners on using it for more than the physical
removal of people and infrastructure. There is also limited focus on the social,
cultural, psychological and long-term economic consequences for those
retreating, those remaining, and those receiving the retreating communities.
It is therefore
refreshing to find a recent academic paper that re-conceptualizes retreat
as a positive DRR option enabling achievement of societal goals and letting communities
choose actions most likely to help them thrive. It recognizes that retreat is
hard to do (and even harder to do well) due to issues such as place attachment,
a preference for status quo, imperfect risk perceptions, inter alia, and
suggests that a strategic, managed retreat could be an efficient and equitable
adaptation option.
On the strategic front,
the paper suggests that a retreat should not be a goal but a means of
contributing to a societal goal (such as economic development, environmental conservation,
etc.), and should be larger than a group of individual households relocating
for their own benefit in that it is coordinated across jurisdictions, involves
multiple stakeholders, addresses multiple hazards and risks at both origin and
destination sites, and integrates into planning for economic, social and
environmental goals. It should also be forward looking and responsive to
economic opportunities, market forces and demographic changes. Policy makers
need to identify why a retreat should occur and influence the ‘when’ and
‘where’ of it.
Management of a retreat
addresses how it is executed. To enable it to be equitable and efficient, there
is a need to a) understand and address barriers – especially those in the form
of institutional silos within government agencies and financial constraints, b)
develop tools to identify residents who want to retreat and require assistance,
and c) have communication strategies that engage reluctant residents.
There are several
issues that complicate retreat and incentivize living in risky locales –
fishing communities on India’s eastern coast, for example, are constantly
battered by cyclones, but any attempt to move them to safer locales inland has
to counter the suspicion that the administration is acting at the behest of the
tourism and prawn cultivation lobbies that are always looking to occupy sea
front areas. There is therefore a need to develop and disseminate high quality
hazard maps that enable market prices to capture risk and help communities make
informed choices.
There is much to be
done before retreat is re-positioned as a positive DRR option, despite the limitations
of ‘build back better’ and other strategies that look to win against nature. Evaluation of retreat
outcomes, and recommendations for suitable and context specific policies and
practices, are scarce. Key research gaps need to be addressed, and deployments
in practice require testing and refinement. But first steps have been taken,
and there is growing recognition that sometimes retreating from nature instead
of fighting it can open new opportunities for communities.
