Is risk-management enough to adapt to future coastal compounding risks? A comparison of coastal port urban areas to understand how adaptation may be mainstream.

 

As climate change intensifies, cities worldwide are reevaluating their approach to coastal risk management in response to emerging storm patterns and rising sea levels, and compounding risks. This study explores how three highly exposed coastal urban areas —Boston (USA), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Le Havre (France)—are reshaping their understanding and governance of coastal risk with distinctly socio-economic and institutional contexts. Coastal urban areas, and particularly port cities, are at the forefront of climate adaptation due to their concentration of vulnerable populations, and critical activities, which also must transition for climate mitigation. Drawing on Kian Goh's concept of "urban ecologies", insights from critical geography and analysis of administrative and policy studies, I investigate how these cities' approaches to coastal risks is recomposing, at the interplay between social, ecological, and infrastructural systems towards the consideration of “compound risks”. While Boston and Rotterdam put adaptation at the very core of their municipality's visions, programs and administrations, Le Havre struggles to translate its comprehensive management of industrial risks into a broader compounding climate risk. In every cases, compounding hazards challenge existing risk-management frameworks, and confront the development and political models of the agglomerations.

The methodology employs a qualitative comparative case study approach, combining in-depth document analysis of municipal strategies with key informant interviews of urban managers (planners, etc.), environmental and infrastructures experts, and community stakeholders in both cities. The qualitative comparative framework seeks to complement existing large-scale studies, such as those by Wannewitz et al. 2024, which highlight the global gap and lack of adaptative, as well as more localized monographs. The research investigates three key questions: 1) How is climate change influencing the conceptualization of compounding risk in these urban contexts? 2) What organizational and policy transformations are being implemented to institutionalize adaptation at the local level? 3) How effective are these transformations in regard of identified compounding risks?

Early results from the ongoing fieldwork suggest that while current rationale, policies, instruments and governance structures provide a foundation for adaptation, they must undergo significant transformations to address the challenges posed by climate change, and incorporate others that are developed in adjacent arenas. These existing frameworks, while useful, also present limitations that may hinder the necessary shifts toward more resilient urban futures.