The Complications and Consequences of a Managed Retreat Law

Managed retreat, the relocation of households out of harm’s way, was tried in New Zealand on an unusually large scale after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, shifting almost 20,000 people in a well-compensated program of managed retreat. This presentation will focus on the empirical evidence about the economic and mental-health effects of this managed retreat on the relocated population. It will then explore the implications of these effects for the design of a Managed Retreat Law in New Zealand in the context of increasing risk because of climate change.