Coastal Land Loss and the Mitigation?Adaptation Dilemma: Between Scylla and Charybdis

• Author: Blake Hudson
• Position: Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law, Gulfport, Florida. For their comments and insights, I wish to thank Lisa Grow Sun and Brigham Daniels, as well as the other participants in the symposium: John Costonis, Robert Twilley, Peter Byrne, Dave Owen, Ann Powers, Mark Davis, and Michael Pappas. I am grateful to the members...
• Pages: 31-68

Coastal Land Loss and the Mitigation–Adaptation

Dilemma: Between Scylla and Charybdis

Blake Hudson∗

ABSTRACT

Coastal land loss is an inevitable consequence of the confluence

of three primary factors: population growth, vanishing wetlands,

and rising sea levels. Society may either mitigate coastal land loss

by engaging in human engineering projects that create

technological solutions or restore natural processes that protect the

coastal zone, or it may choose to adapt to coastal land loss by

shifting development and other human and economic resources out

of areas especially at risk for coastal land loss. This Article first

details the primary threats to coastal lands. Next, the Article

discusses two primary means of addressing coastal land loss—

mitigation and adaptation—applying those terms slightly differently

than they are used in the broader climate change context in order to

focus more precisely on the coastal land loss phenomena and its

solutions. Finally, the Article makes three normative claims for why

policy-makers should approach coastal land loss mitigation in

particular with caution: (1) uncertainty of mitigation’s effectiveness



scientifically and institutionally; (2) the political expediency of

choosing mitigation over adaptation; and (3) the fact that failure to

adapt past land-use activities in the coastal zone has contributed to

the need to adapt or mitigate today.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction: The Ancient Myth and the Modern Reality .....32

II. The Perfect Storm for Coastal Land Loss: Population

Growth, Vanishing Wetlands, and Rising Seas .....................36

Copyright 2012, by BLAKE HUDSON.

∗ Assistant Professor of Law, Stetso n University College of Law, Gulfport,

Florida. For their comments and insight s, I wish to thank Lisa Grow Sun and

Brigham Daniels, as well as the other participants in the symposium: John Costonis,

Robert Twilley, Peter Byrne, Dave Owen, Ann Powers, Mark Davis, and Michael

Pappas. I am grateful to the members of the Louisiana Law Review for inviting me

to participate in the symposium and for their wo nderful suggestions, edits, and effort.

I dedicate this article to my good friend and renowned wordsmith Jeremy Smith,

whose mastery of epic literature has caused “Charybdis” to hold ever-changing and

enlightening meaning for me through the years.

32 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 73

A. Population Growth ...........................................................36

B. Vanishing Wetlands .........................................................41

C. Rising Seas .......................................................................44

III. Caught in a Double Bind: The Mitigation–Adaptation

Dilemma… .............................................................................48

A. Mitigation: Facing Charybdis, a Louisiana

Case Study .......................................................................49

B. Adaptation: Running on Scylla ........................................53

IV. Choosing to Run on Scylla: Adapting to the

Rising Tide and Approaching Mitigation with Caution ........55

A. Uncertainty of Mitigation’s Effectiveness



Scientifically and Institutionally ......................................55

B. The Political Expediency of Choosing Mitigation

over Adaptation ................................................................63

C. Failure to Adapt Past Land-Use Activities in the

Coastal Zone Has Contributed to the Need to Adapt

or Mitigate Today ............................................................66

V. Conclusion .............................................................................68

I. INTRODUCTION: THE ANCIENT MYTH AND THE MODERN REALITY

He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis.1

Erasmus, Adagia

In Homer’s epic Odyssey, the hero Odysseus faces a tragic

choice. He must guide his men through a narrow strait and either

pass close to Charybdis, a sea monster that spewed forth water

three times per day with disastrous consequence, or pass close to

Scylla, a monster on the coast with six snake-like heads filled with

fangs and encircled with the heads of baying dogs around its

1. The idiom “between Scylla and Charybdis” means “between two

equally perilous alt ernatives, neither o f which can be p assed without

encountering and probably falling victim to the other.” Scylla Definition,

DICTION ARY.COM, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scylla (last visited

Aug. 31, 2012).

2012] THE MITIGATION–ADAPTATION DILEMMA 33

waist.2 Odysseus ultimately chose the latter fate, accepting the loss

of some of his men by crashing into the coast, but calculating that

he would lose far fewer men than if he challenged the raging sea.

U.S. citizens and policy-makers face a similarly costly

choice＿that of either grappling directly with increasingly

menacing and encroaching seas or undergoing the societally and

economically disruptive, but potentially less devastating, transition

to further inland. As the climate continues to change and sea levels

continue to rise, the United States will continue to lose coastal land

due to these “geologic” forces. At the same time, American

citizens continue to flock to the coastal zone at a rate tracking the

already high exponential rate of population growth.3 Along with

that growth comes increased residential, commercial, and

industrial coastal-zone development and associated infrastructure

improvements, resulting in what may be described as “artificial”

coastal land loss, or “runaway land consumption,”4 as land

continues to be appropriated from its natural state by human

activity. Though land development has certainly contributed to

societal, economic, and technological advancement, when land

development becomes wasteful of valuable ecosystem service and

other functions provided by natural habitat, then those attributes of

the land are lost and society is faced with great difficulty (if not

impossibility) in recreating them. Consider the leveeing and

diversion of the Mississippi River or the filling in of coastal

wetlands. As these natural lands became increasingly developed

and subject to human-made engineering projects, their functional

provision of buffer from sea-level rise, protection from hurricane

storm surge and provision of other forms of flood control, water

filtration services, and habitat protection may certainly be

considered a form of land loss.

In later times, Scylla was rationalized as a rocky shoal, an

inescapable threat upon which those seeking to avoid Charybdis

would inevitably crash. Indeed, due to population and development

pressures, the U.S. coastline is becoming increasingly hardened

2. Scylla and Charybdis, BRITANNICA ONLINE ENCYC LOPEDIA, http://www.

britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/530331/Scylla-and-Charybdis (last visited Aug.

31, 2012).

3. KRISTEN M. CROSSETT ET AL., NAT’L OCEANIC & ATMOSPHERIC

ADMIN., POPULATION TRENDS ALONG THE COASTAL UNITED STATES: 1980–

2008 1 (2004), available at http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/programs/mb/pdfs/

coastal_pop_trends_complete.pdf.

4. DANA BEACH, PEW OCEANS COMM’N, COASTAL SPRAWL: THE EFFE CTS

OF URBAN DES IGN ON AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS IN THE UNITED STATES ii (2002),

available at http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/

Protecting_ocean_life/env_pew_oceans_sprawl.pdf.