Humanities

• Big environmental changes mean ever more Australians will confront the tough choice of whether to move home or risk staying put.
• Communities in the tropical north are losing residents as these regions become hotter and more humid.
• Others face rising bushfire risks that force them to weigh up the difficult decision to move home.

We’ve been slow to adapt to increasing impacts

• It is increasing the frequency and intensity of disasters and extreme weather events such as heatwaves, fires, storms and floods.
• It is also accelerating environmental changes such as soil erosion, salinisation of waterways, loss of biodiversity, and land and water degradation.
• Both sudden disruptions and gradual pervasive decline have impacts on the places where we live, work and play.

What factors affect the decision to stay or go?

• Systemic inequalities mean some people are more at risk from environmental change and have less capacity to respond than others.
• This makes it more likely to be owned or rented by people with fewer financial resources, compounding their disadvantage.
• For First Nations peoples and communities, connections to and responsibilities for places (Country) are intimately intertwined with identity.
• For them, the impacts of climate change, colonisation and resettlement interact, further complicating the question of relocation.

So who stays and who leaves?

• They nominated bushland, beaches, fauna and flora, and the climate/weather as characteristics they valued and feared changing or losing as climate change progressed.
• One study participant wrote:
  It would be hotter and much more unpleasant in summer.
• I would miss being able to cycle or walk to the local lakes to connect to nature and feel peaceful.
• We also found place attachment was associated with people acting to protect that place, such as protesting environmentally destructive policies.

Proper planning for adaptation is long overdue

• It causes significant economic and non-economic losses for both individuals and communities.
• A changing climate and inappropriately built or located housing interact to create conditions where some people can or should no longer stay.
• We need co-ordinated, well-governed, long-term planning for people to move in the face of environmental change to ensure equitable and positive transitions for individuals and communities.

Justine Dandy received funding for this work from the Centre for People, Place and Planet, Edith Cowan University. Zoe Leviston received funding for this work from the College of Health and Medicine, Australian National University