People or Property: Legal Contradictions, Climate Resettlement, and the View from Shifting Ground [Paperback]

This open access book explores the intersection of property law, relocation, and resettlement processes in the United States and among communities that grapple with migration as an adaptation strategy. As communities face the prospect of relocating because of rising seas, policy makers, disaster specialists, and community leaders are scrambling to understand what adaptation pathways are legally possible. While in its ideal application, law functions blindly and without variation, the authors find that legal contradictions come to bear on resettlement processes and place certain communities further in harms way. This book will unearth these contradictions in order to understand why successful community-based resettlement has presented such a challenge to communities that are experiencing increasing land deterioration as a result of climate change.

Part I: Conceptualizing Property and Its Contradictions: A Challenge for Climate Justice.- Chapter 1: Pulling at the Thread.- Chapter 2: Property Law and Its Contradictions.- Part II: Proof of Harm.- Chapter 3: Market Orientation as an Environmental Hazard for Resettling Communities.- Chapter 4: Flood Buyout Relocations and Community Action.- Chapter 5: Displacing a Right to Act Communally within Community Relocation.- Chapter 6: Precarious Possessors and the Right to (rebuilding) the City.- Chapter 7: Interrogating Just Compensation and Flexibility: Details on the Inadequacy (and Importance) of Voluntary Buyouts for Relocation in Alaska.- Part III: The Legal Framework.- Chapter 8: A Primer of Laws, Legal Concepts, and Tools that Structure Relocation.- Chapter 9: Discretion and the Roles People Play in Interpreting and Applying the Law.- Chapter 10: Concluding Thoughts.

Alessandra Jerolleman is Associate Professor of Emergency Management, Jacksonvilllƒ!