The Impact of Disasters and Climate Change on People’s Relational Values

This study examines how relational and constitutive values—the ways people find meaning, belonging, and identity through relationships with nature and community—are formed and transformed over the life course. Relational values express the qualities of care, responsibility, and reciprocity that connect people to the natural world, while constitutive values highlight how these relationships shape who people are. Focusing on Minamisanriku, a coastal town in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, the research explores how disasters and climate change have reconfigured people’s lived relations with nature and the practices that sustain them.

Interviews were conducted with residents in two contrasting districts, the urban area of Shizugawa and the fishing community of Togura. During childhood, participants developed familiarity and affection for the local environment through collective play, such as swimming in the sea and catching shellfish and fish. In adolescence, these connections temporarily weakened as attention shifted to school activities and social relationships. Later in life, relational ties to nature were renewed through engagement in fisheries, community events, and family activities, or indirectly through media and social networks.

However, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami brought profound environmental and social changes. The relocation of residential areas to higher ground, large-scale land reclamation, and the construction of seawalls and embankments increased the physical and symbolic distance between people and the sea. These infrastructural changes, compounded by climate-driven shifts in fish species and catch volumes, disrupted the everyday interactions that had long constituted people’s sense of place, livelihood, and belonging. As opportunities for direct engagement with the sea decline, people’s relationships with nature—and the cultural meanings and identities they form—are also being reshaped.

The findings suggest that relational values are sustained through embodied and social practices that connect people with the sea, while constitutive values emerge as these relationships become integral to people’s sense of identity and culture. When those practices are altered by disaster recovery or climate change, they not only weaken the relational bonds that link people to nature but also transform the constitutive dimension of value, reshaping how communities understand themselves and the meanings they attach to the sea.