Retreat, or relocating people and unbuilding land in places vulnerable to flooding and sea level rise, remains on the fringes of conversations about climate change adaptation. Yet already people throughout the world are moving away from the water en masse. Many more want to move but lack the resources to do so. Residents working to organize their own retreat are engaged in a struggle for recognition and support from, paradoxically, the very governments and institutions responsible for planning, implementing, and managing retreat once it becomes necessary. In this article, I contrast dominant official representations of retreat as marginal, unpopular, and infeasible with existing cases of collective movement away from rising waters that demonstrate just the opposite. I argue that the word retreat is a valuable and necessary addition to the language of climate change adaptation, serving to distinguish community-organized relocation from forced relocation and climate-induced displacement. Understanding community-organized relocation efforts as forms of retreat unifies this emerging practice with other social movements and political projects that seek more sustainable ways of settling on earth.

中文翻译：

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撤退的理由

撤退，或在易受洪水和海平面上升影响的地方重新安置人员和拆毁土地，仍然处于有关气候变化适应的讨论的边缘。然而，世界各地的人们已经开始集体远离水。还有更多的人想要搬家，但缺乏这样做的资源。组织自己的务虚会的居民在争取认可和支持的斗争中，矛盾的是，一旦有必要，负责规划、实施和管理务虚会的政府和机构。在本文中，我将占主导地位的官方对撤退的描述与现有的集体运动远离上升水域的案例进行了对比，这些案例恰恰相反，它们是边缘的、不受欢迎的和不可行的。我认为，撤退一词是对气候变化适应语言的宝贵且必要的补充，有助于区分社区组织的搬迁与被迫搬迁和气候引起的搬迁。将社区组织的搬迁工作理解为撤退的形式，将这种新兴实践与其他寻求更可持续的地球定居方式的社会运动和政治项目相结合。