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1. A Review of Funding Mechanisms for US Floodplain Buyouts

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310112  

   Peterson, Kelsey; Apadula, Emily; Salvesen, David; Hino, Miyuki; Kihslinger, Rebecca; BenDor, Todd K. (December 2020, Sustainability)

   Increases in extreme weather events have caused extensive flooding across the United States. In response, federal, state, and local governments have broadened their flood mitigation strategies to include acquisition and demolition of flood-damaged homes (“buyouts”). Little work has documented or analyzed the range of strategies for funding buyouts. Federal programs provide the bulk of funding, but these programs are often slow. Also, state and local governments struggle to meet cost-match requirements. We present and analyze a nationwide census of buyout funding programs (n = 34), which draw on five primary funding mechanisms. We find that state and local governments are using a range of traditional and innovative financial mechanisms, including municipal/green bonds, revolving loan funds, local option sales taxes, and stormwater utility fees, as viable tools for funding buyouts. These tools may promote more autonomy from federal government mitigation programs, and ultimately, faster buyout processes. 

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2. Divergent priorities in flood adaptation

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/adecba  

   Niemann-Morris, Jennifer; Siders, AR; Hino, Miyuki; Kraan, Carolien; Agopian, Armen; Samoray, Christopher; Mach, Katharine_J (July 2025, Environmental Research: Climate)

   Abstract Actions to reduce flood risk often appear to run counter to other societal goals, and resolving these conflicts is important as flood adaptations increasingly transform settlements and societies. Here, we evaluate the tensions between flood risk reduction and other priorities in the context of voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties in the United States—a controversial flood response to restore land to open space, but with trade-offs. We apply a nation-wide systematic review (133 literature references, 1983–2023) to assess goals stated for buyouts and combine it with a comprehensive media analysis (281 media articles, 1993–2023) to compare those goals to the experiences and results perceived by buyout implementers, residents, and other practitioner groups. Across the systematic-review literature, flood risk reduction dominates goals expressed for buyouts (62.6% of documented goals), and local government predominates in this goal setting (61.7% of documented goals). However, involved and affected actors—especially residents—perceive outcomes beyond flood risk reduction, most notably in the experiences of buyout implementation itself (35.5% of documented resident perceptions) and in results impacting social and economic priorities (49.5%). Despite the difficulties of buyouts, the systematic-review literature largely reflects positive perceived outcomes (79.4% of outcome sentiments, weighing each buyout location equally), but nonprofit organizations and residents perceive largely negative outcomes. Media coverage related to buyouts is more negative than positive but with improved sentiments through time. Our findings point to the importance of designing, implementing, and evaluating flood adaptations not just as flood control measures given their consequences for other societal objectives. The uneven documentation on buyouts also implies opportunities to learn from contexts where buyouts have been integrated into everyday life with little fanfare, through mechanisms either novel or perhaps routine, yielding insights into making ambitious climate adaptations a common, more ordinary, and increasingly imperative occurrence. 

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3. Contextualizing patterns in short-term disaster recoveries from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: household vulnerabilities, adaptive capacities, and change

   https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13892-280140  

   Spoon, Jeremy; Gerkey, Drew; Rai, Alisa; Chhetri, Ram (March 2023, Ecology and Society)

   Disaster recovery is multidimensional and requires theoretical and methodological approaches from the interdisciplinary social sciences to illustrate short- and long-term recovery dynamics that can guide more informed and equitable policy and interventions. The 2015 Nepal earthquakes have had catastrophic impacts on historically marginalized ethnic groups and Indigenous households in rural locations, arising in the immediate aftermath and unfolding for years afterward. Analyzing factors that shape household recovery patterns can help identify vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities in addition to signaling potential future changes. We pursue this goal using survey data from 400 randomly selected households in 4 communities over 2 10-week intervals at 9 months and 1.5 years after the earthquakes. Building on previous research that used non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination to identify patterns among multiple indicators of recovery (Spoon et al. 2020a), we investigate associations among these patterns of recovery, hazard exposure, and four domains of household adaptive capacity: institutional participation, livelihood diversity, connectivity, and social memory. Our results suggest: (1) social inequality, high hazard exposure, and disrupted place-based livelihoods (especially for herders, farmers, and forest harvesters on the geographic margins) had strong associations with negative recovery outcomes and displacement; (2) inaccessibility and marginality appeared to stimulate ingenuity despite challenging circumstances through mutual aid and local knowledge; (3) recoveries were non-linear, differing for households displaced from their primary home and agropastoral practice and those displaced to camps; and (4) some households experienced rapid changes while others stagnated. We contribute a temporal dataset with a random sample collected following a disaster that uses a theoretically informed quantitative methodology to explore linear and non-linear relationships among multidimensional recovery, adaptive capacity and change and provide an example of how vulnerabilities interact with adaptive capacity. 

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4. An integrated bioeconomic local economy-wide assessment of the environmental impacts of poverty programs

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1816093116  

   Gilliland, Ted E.; Sanchirico, James N.; Taylor, J. Edward (April 2019, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   A new generation of poverty programs around the globe provides cash payments to poor and vulnerable households. Studies show that these social cash transfer programs create income and welfare benefits for poor households and the local economies where they live. However, this may come at the cost of damaging local environments if cash payments stimulate food production that conflicts with natural resource conservation. Evaluations of the economic impacts of poverty programs do not account for the welfare consequences of environmental impacts, which are potentially large for poor communities closely tied to natural resources. We use an ex-ante policy simulation tool, a bioeconomic local computable general equilibrium model parameterized with microsurvey data, to analyze the expected welfare consequences of environmental degradation caused by a cash transfer program. For a Philippine fishing community that is a net importer of fish, we show that a government cash transfer program initially increases real incomes for all households. However, increased demand for fish leads to a decline in the local fish stock that reduces program benefits. Household groups experience declines in real income benefits of 2–63%, with fishing households suffering the largest declines. Impacts on local fish stocks depend on the extent to which markets link fishing communities to outside regions through trade. Greater market integration can mitigate the fish stock decline, but this reduces the local income benefits of cash transfers. 

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5. Buyouts with rentbacks: a policy proposal for managing coastal retreat

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-022-00762-0  

   Keeler, Andrew G.; Mullin, Megan; McNamara, Dylan E.; Smith, Martin D. (April 2022, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences)

   Abstract The discussion of adaptation to climate change in coastal areas has focused on short-term risk reduction and climate-proofing, but there is growing recognition that—at some point in the future—relocation to less vulnerable geographical areas will become necessary for large numbers of residents in many coastal communities. Spontaneous relocations that occur after catastrophic events can entail high costs, both for those who resettle elsewhere and for the remaining community. Managed retreat attempts to reduce such costs, thereby facilitating the relocation process. Property buyouts, the most prominently discussed policy tool for managed retreat, present significant challenges in terms of equity, timing, finance, and scale. We discuss innovation in buyout policy that allows residents to remain in their homes as renters after being bought out. We develop the basic structure of such a policy and show the pathways through which it can help to finance buyouts, harmonize public and private decision-making, and manage the timing of community transition. We also recommend funding mechanisms and other details to overcome the substantial barriers to implementation. Although buyouts with rentbacks will require institutional innovation in order to serve as an effective policy framework, the policy has the potential to improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes from the eventual unfortunate but necessary migration away from coastal areas. 

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