The planned relocation of entire communities to less hazard-exposed destinations is an increasingly salient climate change adaptation strategy, yet often results in maladaptive livelihood outcomes. Drawing on data from fourteen completed flood-related relocation cases, we assessed planning decisions (community engagement, site distance, scale, speed, and transfer dynamics) and outcomes in terms of changes to relocated people’s access to physical, economic, natural, human, social, and cultural assets. Through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, we investigated how such decisions, alone and taken together, contributed to sustainable livelihood outcomes. We find that relocation processes initiated and driven by community members had better outcomes than government driven processes. Speed and transfer dynamics were also critical, although varied for small and large communities. As a result, multiple pathways of planning decisions can lead to improved outcomes, highlighting potential entry points for policy to promote more sustainable and people-centered planned relocation.
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Bower et al. (2022) studied this question.