Perceptions of sea-level rise and managed retreat: an exploratory survey

[摘要] 1. SUMMARYThere is mounting evidence that Australian coastal communities will be seriously threatened by sea‐level rise before the end of the century. Depending on their circumstances, coastal communities will respond to the risk of inundation in different ways. Likely response options are to build defences to restrain the sea, adapt to occasional inundation, retreat from advancing seas, or some combination of these. Choice of strategy, and the details of thedesign, will have significant and widespread implications for the value and security of private property, the ecological values of coastal areas, the safety and resilience of settlements, and the cohesiveness of communities.We present results from a survey of people's attitudes to issues likely to influence their views on policies for adapting to sea‐level rise, including attitudes to sea‐level rise and coastal environments, the role of government, and property rights. We aimed to learn about the issues that will emerge if managed retreat schemes are seriously considered. To do this we asked questions about a specific, but hypothetical, retreat policy we called a Conditional Occupancy Rights scheme.We draw some tentative conclusions from this survey about how community perceptions may influence the support for, and effectiveness of, policies that involve retreat from rising seas.Care should be taken in drawing specific policy implications from this survey, due to the general and exploratory nature of the survey questions and particularly because of the self-selected, hence non‐representative sample. We addressed the problem of self‐ selection by classifying the 522 respondents into three groups according to their perceptions of the threats from sea‐level rise, and comparing the responses of the groups to survey questions. Members of groups:• were concerned about the threat of sea‐level rise;• were unsure whether rising seas pose a threat; or• rejected the notion that sea levels will rise and pose a threat.It is not possible to estimate from our self‐selected sample what the actual proportions of the groups are in the coastal population, but except for a somewhat larger rejecting group, the proportions are consistent with the levels of concern about climatic change in general estimated from three large and recent representative surveys of the Australian population.The key findings and conclusions follow.Polarised views on sea-level rise influence views on policy optionsMany of the respondents who rejected the notion that coastal communities are at risk from rising seas strongly objected to public discussion of sea‐level rise policy options. A number ofthese participants also rejected the legitimacy of a publicly administered attitudinal survey on this topic. Unwillingness to consider the possibility of the sea‐level rise scenario may havemade it difficult for these individuals to respond to a number of the survey questions.There is disagreement about the legitimacy of government interventions to protect coastal communities and ecosystems.• The majority of participants concerned or unsure about the risks of rising seas agreed that governments should spend money to help communities prepare for sea‐level rise. The majority of respondents who rejected sea‐level rise risks disagreed with thegovernment spending money to help communities prepare for sea‐level rise.• The majority (71%) of participants concerned about the risks of rising seas agreed or strongly agreed that governments should protect coastal wetlands, dunes and beaches under conditions of rising sea levels; 51% of the participants who were unsure aboutsea‐level rise risks agreed or strongly agreed that a government priority is ecological maintenance. Only 11% of participants who reject the risk of rising seas strongly agreed or agreed with the government maintaining ecosystems in the face of sea‐levelrise.Some commonly held beliefs may be a major barrier to implementing amanaged re...

[发布日期] 2012-02-01 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)