Exploring Climate Mobility Strategies Through Scenario Planning

When the next big hurricane hits New Orleans —it’s not really an if, unfortunately —residents want to be prepared with a thoughtful, equitable evacuation strategy. Maybe even a plan for permanent relocation, if it comes to that.

The mass evacuation from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was tragic and traumatizing for so many residents; it’s not a process anyone would want to repeat. But low-lying areas of New Orleans—much of which is built on drained marshland that continues to sink—are still very much at risk from flooding and hurricane damage.

“We all were forced to relocate after Hurricane Katrina, some for months, and some for years,” says Beth Butler, executive director of A Community Voice (ACV), a resident-led organization serving New Orleans’ 7th, 8th, and 9th wards. “Then we were able to cobble together our lives back here, and yet, at the same time, as climate change [has intensified], what we’re finding is that for six months every year during hurricane season, we’re under the threat of completely losing everything,” she says.

With newly announced support from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, ACV will partner with the Climigration Network and Buy-In Community Planning over the next year and a half to use exploratory scenario planning to help residents design and think through a range of possible futures related to relocation. That includes deciding if, and how, they would want to move out of harm’s way as climate risk intensifies.

“The reality is that if this event takes place, we will have nowhere to stay. We will not be able to return home,” says ACV chairperson and treasurer Debra Campbell. “And it’s inevitable that this will happen, but we do need to make a plan, because the city is not making a plan for us.”

Exploratory scenario planning is a type of community visioning process in which participants consider a range of possible futures—including the external or driving forces that might create such scenarios, and the actions or responses each might demand of the community.

Campbell has been working with Buy-In Community Planning to survey residents about their past evacuation experiences and what a more intentional relocation process should look like. Among the considerations residents have raised—such as more evacuee bus stops for people with limited mobility, and better mental health support, particularly for children—was the importance of a culturally aware receiving community that would allow families and friends to stay together. After Katrina, “We were scattered around the United States like cockroaches,” Campbell says, “forced to stay in places where we didn’t feel welcomed.”

With the help of the Climigration Network, A Community Voice has been meeting with the mayors of smaller cities a few hours up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, exploring options for temporary or permanent resettlement. As a short-term goal, Campbell says the group might like to secure a large building where 70 or more residents could evacuate together. (Some residents already have evacuation plans with family members outside the city.)

“I think that would be a start,” Campbell says. “Now, if something should happen where we would have to stay longer, in Natchez, [Mississippi], there are houses that they need renovated, so maybe that’s something to consider; we’d wind up in their community and not in an isolated area, and that would be one of the quicker things to do, rather than build from the ground up.”

In an example of community-driven, participatory scenario planning, members of A Community Voice will lead their fellow residents in collaborative workshops to design, test, and refine four to six potential relocation scenarios. ACV hopes the engagement design could create a model for other communities facing climate challenges and similarly difficult questions about the future.

“Sometimes it’s hard for people to confront the fact that we might have to relocate,” Butler says. “Even though, in the back of everyone’s mind, they know it—because we already had to do it once.”

The New Orleans project is one of four climate mobility-focused exploratory scenario planning proposals recently selected for support through the Lincoln Institute’s Consortium for Scenario Planning. The chosen projects span multiple continents, contexts, and climate risks, says Heather Hannon, director of planning practice and scenario planning at the Lincoln Institute.

“Our team believes exploratory scenario planning will be a valuable tool for these communities confronting dynamic and complex uncertainties around climate mobility,” Hannon says. “It’s a participatory and creative framework that brings together a wide range of people to imagine a range of futures and then co-develop strategies to help them adapt as the future unfolds. We look forward to learning from these projects and helping other communities do similar work.”

Some of the other projects selected include:

• An interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners will host XSP workshops in three urban regions of Brazil, each facing different climate mobility challenges: Florianópolis, a populous coastal island with increasing flooding risks; Porto Alegre, where large-scale flooding displaced thousands of residents and exposed systemic vulnerabilities in 2024; and São Paulo, Brazil’s largest metropolis and a key destination for internal migrants.
• The Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research will introduce exploratory scenario planning as an anticipatory tool for low-income settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, where 2024 rains and flooding caused loss of life and property in riverside communities—with a focus on Mukuru, which is experiencing both mass displacement and in-migration due to affordable housing interventions.

The projects were selected as part of an RFP process managed by the Consortium for Scenario Planning. Past projects have focused on disaster recovery and resilience (2024), housing affordability (2023), changing food systems (2022), climate strategies (2021), and equity and low-growth scenarios (2020).

Learn more about Lincoln Institute RFPs, fellowships, and research opportunities.

Jon Gorey is staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Downtown Natchez, Mississippi. Credit: Wayne Hsieh via Flickr/Creative Commons.