Sea level rise adaptation planning in Miami-Dade County is predicated in
identifying objective facts and hazards about sea level rise rates and projections as well as knowledge about the hydrogeology of where water will flow, and how this will interact with the built environment. Bocking (2004) argues that regions focus on physical aspects and scientific assessments of risks and hazards in order to wrap decisions in the authority of science and avoid choices that would be deemed arbitrary and capricious. While identifying sea level rise risks, including anticipated projections and measurements is fundamental to planning, Carlo Jaeger et al. (2001, p. 24) summarize a common view of measuring risk, “Approaches for objectively quantifying risk, actuarial analysis,
probabilistic risk assessment, and epidemiology/toxicology all assume that risks can be assigned a value of harmfulness independent of the social, economic, political, or cultural context.” Bocking (2004) elaborates on this drawing out common assumptions of risk in environmental planning. First, that risks are an objective property of the physical world and therefore freely amenable to measurement. Second, that people everywhere perceive hazards the same way, and third, that this can be revealed by science which override historical and cultural differences (Bocking 2004). Like the work of Bocking (2004), and other scholars who challenge these assumptions (e.g. Perrow 1984; Liftin 1994; Jasanoff and Long Martello 2004), the process of determining sea level rise hazards in Miami- Dade County is shaped by political, social, and economic contexts. While actors within Miami-Dade County are driven towards identifying a sea level rise projection that represents “objective truth,” given uncertainties around climate change and sea level rise projections these same actors recognize the complexity and challenges of identifying
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those risks. The presence of deliberative, science and policy panels to determine what sea level rise projections to adopt for the region demonstrates the recognition of this
complexity, as does the decision to officially include three projections (Figure 4.2). At the same time, however, this case study shows how political processes shaped what sea level rise projection knowledge was accepted and what knowledge was discarded, demonstrating how sea level rise rates and projections are shaped by political debates surrounding relevant science and processes, which are enrolled to justify minimizing risks at the local scale (summarized on Figure 5.7).
Figure 5.8 Construction of risk knowledge in sea level rise adaptation planning in Miami-Dade County, Florida
To this point, Gross’s (2010) theory on the link between nonknowledge and new- knowledge, as well as negative knowledge (or avoided and ignored knowledge), can be used to explain path dependencies around risk knowledge practices in Miami-Dade County (summarized on Table 5.1). For example, interviewees shared that there are disagreements as to how ice melt acceleration factors into sea level rise rates and how water moves through physical geographies. On the surface, these disagreements appear to be about relevant science, yet findings from this case study show how debates around science are enrolled to control and shape risk knowledge is to protect the regional economy. The focus on the economy (and by proxy infrastructure that supports that
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economy), continues to put pressure on identifying additional and more detailed risk measurements. For example, the emphasis placed on high-resolution elevation and LiDAR data to understand where risks will be at a finer resolution. Within each of the type of risk knowledge there is a cadre of actors and institutional structures that prioritize some risk knowledge over others. While this process is expected, it also leaves out other potential risks (expressed as negative risk knowledge), and instead can build a path dependency around nonknowledge, new knowledge, and feeding back into new
ignorance. Many scholars discuss the importance of paying attention to the agglomeration of uncertainties when climate models are compiled. Those uncertainties are often only expressed in scientific terms of findings and associated uncertainties and without consideration of how the process of framing those uncertainties can exclude some risks from the planning process. But we also need to pay attention to the way in which those uncertainties are socially determined.
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Table 5.1 Risk construction summary table. The findings examine what knowledge uncertainties are prioritized for further exploration and what knowledge uncertainties are ignored.
Dimension of Risk
Construction
Description Explored Knowledge Uncertainties and New Knowledge
Ignored Knowledge Uncertainties Rates &
Projections
Regional SLR models incorporate downscaled global climate data with regional and localized processes affecting sea-level, as well as regional and local data points. Agreement for which projections to use came out of collaborative effort with external Federal precedence. Adoption of more conservative projections are shaped by scientific and political uncertainty and climate change denialism.
Impacts of global processes (e.g. ice melt acceleration);
measuring errors and uncertainty
Technological advancements for measurements
Rates that
incorporate ice melt acceleration and higher emissions scenarios
Physical Landscape
Bathtub models assume uniform landscape and static
environmental processes. Government institutions address uncertainties via data gathering and modeling around
groundwater-surface water interactions. Yet this knowledge is restricted in use, as is other knowledge regarding the physical landscape that impacts how SLR will affect the region.
Limitations of bathtub approach (i.e. groundwater surface water interactions; changes to precipitation) Additional monitoring instruments for hydrologic shifts in aquifer, groundwater and surface water interaction
Water flow for canal drainage; stormwater management; wastewater and water supply; storm surge; low-elevation coastal neighborhoods
Enviro impacts from sewer overflow and deep well injection; health impacts of stormwater; community baselines of acceptability; salinization on agriculture lands; impacts to areas outside of low- elevation areas Vulnerability & Capacity
While understandings of the physical landscape reinforce the focus of risks along coastal affluent parts of the county, the economic focus to protect tax- base and insurance costs also emerge out of how vulnerability and adaptive capacity is understood. Other concerns around how SLR will affect communities, including
displacement and extreme events, exist on the planning periphery.
Incomplete knowledge of the hazards, potential for infrastructure failures
Parcel level information for elevation
assessments
Impacts to insurance and populated coastal regions
How people interact with infrastructure in their daily life, infrastructure needs in less populated regions
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The self-fulfilling process of scientific inquiry to identify and address risks shaped through a system that prioritizes economic, technological, and political factors, itself prevents adaptation planners from addressing social inequities and risks that could be addressed. This echoes Gross’s (2010) argument that the lack of acknowledgement and addressing the different forms of ignorance in knowledge practices, creates a system where knowledge production favors narrowly defined uncertainties while either
intentionally or unintentionally ignoring areas that some groups shared need further exploration. Such knowledge practices are reinforced by institutional positionality (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983), how organizations identify and measure risks (Haas 1992), and the emphasis on preparing for the future rather than dealing with things now (Barnett 2001). In sea level rise adaptation planning in Miami-Dade County, the way that risks are understood, broken down into their most basic components, is connected to prioritizations and adaptation planning outcomes.
Within climate adaptation planning in Miami, there is a push to capture more information at hyper-localized scales to better map climate risks. Being hyper-focused on addressing nonknowledge creates knowledge practices that address scientific
uncertainties around rates, projections, and biophysical components the planning process. At the same time, this emphasis within Miami can serve to limit the integration of diverse risk constructions that exist on the periphery as negative knowledge around risk (Barnett and Cambell 2010). While hazards identified are often considered neutral and apolitical, they form the basis for how risks are determined on the landscape and can affect planning dynamics and processes (Wisner et al. 2014). This can create what Hajer (1995) calls “problem closure,” in which solutions are born out of well-developed but often
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unquestioned problem framings (Hajer 1995). Within Miami-Dade County, problem closure around sea level rise risks being focused on where water goes and how it intersects with infrastructure and property values and ignores other ways in which sea level rise can impact the broader landscape and community functioning that it supports. In Miami-Dade County, the way in which risks are constructed support sea level rise problem framing as a technical issue in which more information about these physical and economic systems are needed to make technical engineered solutions. These problem closures are related to Stirling’s notion of technological commitments, in which the way the problem is appraised can “close down” the range of different technologies and approaches to solving the problem (Stirling 2009).
The process of constructing risks and prioritizing certain risk knowledge in the planning arena, can limit policy options and the space for democratic debate over adaptation strategies, or opening-up ignorance to include more unrecognized risk knowledge and more integrative risk knowledge prioritized in the planning arena (Hajer 1995). Within Miami, climate risks that exist outside of the dominant way in which the problem is framed are left on the margins, rather than integrated into assessments,
projections, and adaptation strategies themselves. Barnett and Cambell (2010) extend this idea to scientific models of climate change which they argue are mechanisms of
“problem closure” and one approach to a “well-defined problem” that, “Have the effect of rendering climate change as an environmental fact against which actors can do little but suffer. They deny the agency of people at risk: to define the problem in their own terms; to apply their own systems of knowledge; to implement the solutions that are appropriate to their needs and values and which accommodate uncertainty; and to make
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knowledge claims of equal value to those of science.” (2010, p. 2) Through this idea of problem closure, based on the way in which hazards and risks are understood, some communities have more attention and access to adaptation planning decisions than others (Barnett and Cambell 2010).
While incorporating multiple knowledge frames into integrated risk assessments can be beneficial (Warren et al. 1995; MA 2003; Pahl-Wostl 2003), these efforts remain limited by risk constructions that favor biophysical and economic dimensions. As in other cases, this case study in Miami-Dade County demonstrates that knowledge around sea level rise adaptation risks favor credentialed experts that use formal scientific procedures (Brugnch and Ingram 2012) and the subsequent technical solution—like many climate adaptation strategies—are often unproblematized and considered objective, rational, scientific, and engineered solutions (Winner 1989; Jasanoff 2006). In Miami-Dade County, technical rationality—or the idea that risk decisions are made based on empirical evidence, gathered and evaluated by experts and expressed in universal, quantitative terms (Bocking 2004)—is favored over other forms of rationality, including
communicative or cultural rationality. Communicative and cultural forms of rationality suggests that people do not calculate risks the way experts do, that is, by evaluating the expected consequences of a course of action and by multiplying them by the probability of their occurrence. Instead, they proceed more intuitively by recognizing patterns, classifying alternatives in terms of clusters of values, applying rules of thumb (Fischer 2000). In doing so, they take a broader view of environmental hazards, a view that encompasses aspects of the hazards themselves and how they are encountered (Fischer 2000).
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Conflicts are common outcomes when governments or companies apply a narrow technical perspective to risks, ignoring broader concerns, including awareness that this perspective itself incorporates tacit political and moral assumptions (Bocking 2004). Within Miami-Dade County, there are both conflicts that happen during public meetings, and conflicts that were discussed during interviews. Rational and technical approaches to constructing knowledge around risk differ from other knowledge constructions. For example, when determining climate change projections at the global scale, the process can be highly contentious and shaped by competing economic and political discourses (Hulme 2009). Adopting rates and projections at the local level is also politicized as local governments may be unwilling to recognize sea level rise as a problem because they would have to act or are concerned about devaluing property (Hulme 2009). While scientists may determine risks with quantified data and models, community activists may use knowledge of place-based experiences, linking outcomes from previous climatic events within their communities to a changing climate as well as social, economic and political histories (Fischer 2000). As such, people may think of risk from climate change in terms of impacts and changes to their daily lives and worry about housing, future employment, health, and asserting their rights (Fischer 2000; Jasanoff and Long Martello 2004). These different forms of rationality rooted in discourse are further explored in Chapter 6 where I focus more explicitly on sea level rise adaptation governance and emerging discourse storylines among different institutions coming together to address the risk of sea level rise.
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