Appendix D

Key Terms

Adaptive governance: Adaptive governance is “a range of interactions between actors, networks, organizations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems” (Chaffin et al., 2014, p. 1). Governance in general is the manner and practice of governing.

Allostasis/allostatic load: A psycho-physiological “state” resulting from the body’s long-term attempts to maintain physical, mental, emotional, and social equilibrium; a series of continual recalibrations to chronic stresses (McEwen & Seeman, 1999; Seeman et al., 2001). Elevated allostatic load has been linked to increased risk for chronic physical health conditions (e.g., hypertension, cardiovascular disease) and premature mortality (Karlamangla et al., 2006).

Climate adaptation: “The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effect. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2014, p. 5).

Climate equity: The “goal of recognizing and addressing the unequal burdens made worse by climate change, while ensuring that all people share the benefits of climate protection efforts” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2023).

Climate justice: The belief that “[a]ll people—regardless of race, color, national origin, or income—are entitled to equal protection from environmental and health hazards caused by climate change and equal access to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022).

Collective efficacy: A form of social capital that encompasses both individual perceptions of social cohesion among neighbors as well as the willingness to intervene on behalf of the “common good.” Higher levels of collective efficacy within communities have been linked to more positive health and well-being outcomes (Cohen et al., 2008; Sampson et al., 1997).

Community: “A geographically defined collection of people, at a subnational and substate level of jurisdiction” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019, p. 12)—for example, “metropolitan statistical area[s]; rural villages or townships sharing similar environmental, cultural, or political ties; politically bounded places such as counties, cities, water districts, or wards within cities; or culturally defined places such as neighborhoods or street blocks that are greater than an individual household, parcel, or built project” (National Academies, 2019, p. 13).

Community resilience: The capacity of a community to continue its physical and cultural existence in the face of disaster, climate change, and other existential threats.¹ “Key actions that communities could take to build and measure their resilience include: (1) building community engagement and buy-in to develop resilience goals and priorities; (2) accounting for the multiple dimensions of a community—natural, built, social, financial, human, and political—to identify resilience needs and challenges and develop resilience goals” (National Academies, 2019, p. 5).

Co-production: The process of developing knowledge, plans, and strategies through the iterative engagement of at-risk communities, researchers, practitioners, and other groups, whose participation is necessary to the relocation process (see Armitage et al., 2011; Meadow et al., 2015; Wamsler, 2017).

Environmental justice: “[T]he fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies” (EPA, 2022).

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¹ The committee generated this definition.

Federal technical assistance: “[P]rograms, activities, and services provided by federal agencies to strengthen the capacity of grant recipients and to improve their performance of grant functions” (Government Accountability Office, 2020, p. 3).

Frontline community: “Those that experience ‘first and worst’ the consequences of climate change. These are communities of color and low-income, whose neighborhoods often lack basic infrastructure to support them and who will be increasingly vulnerable as our climate deteriorates” (Holland, 2023).

Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK): “[A] body of observations, oral and written knowledge, practices, and beliefs that promote environmental sustainability and the responsible stewardship of natural resources through relationships between humans and environmental systems. It is applied to phenomena across biological, physical, cultural and spiritual systems. [It] has evolved over millennia, continues to evolve, and includes insights based on evidence acquired through direct contact with the environment and long-term experiences, as well as extensive observations, lessons, and skills passed from generation to generation” (Lander & Mallory, 2021, p. 2).

Infrastructure: For the purposes of this report, infrastructure includes both physical infrastructure (e.g., utilities, roads, municipal buildings, health clinics) and social infrastructure (“the policies, resources, and services that ensure people can participate in productive social and economic activities. This includes social services, public education, and healthcare” [Gould-Werth et al., 2023]).

Land subsidence: The sinking of land due to compression of sediments, removal of groundwater or other subsurface fluids, or geologic processes such as faulting or isostatic adjustment.²

Land-use planning: A tool used to manage “a variety of influential human activities by controlling and designing the ways in which humans use land and natural resources” (Ramkumar et al., 2019, p. 6). Land-use planning emphasizes collaborative problem solving, process-based techniques, and spatially oriented processes.

Maladaptation: “Actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions,

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² The committee generated this definition.

increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable outcomes, or diminished welfare, now or in the future. Most often, maladaptation is an unintended consequence” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022, p. 7). More broadly, maladaptation impacts human capacities and may well inadvertently increase vulnerability or exposure to environmental conditions.

Non-stationarity: Natural hazard risk modeling has historically assumed that models can be predicated on an assessment of past hazard history (i.e., stationarity) to inform future hazard risk. In an era of climate change, scientists now recognize that we have entered a period of non-stationarity where we can no longer look to the past to help us predict the future. For example, 100-year floods are happening more frequently, thus becoming 50-year floods (Tessendorf, 2012).

Originating community: Originating community (or origin or sending community) refers to locations demonstrably unsafe or undergoing protracted environmental change, or where a combination of conditions makes them undesirable, and from which populations may flee following disasters or preemptively before such events or depart gradually due to environmental change or undesirable conditions.³

Participatory action research (PAR): “Collective, self-reflective inquiry that researchers and participants undertake, so they can understand and improve upon the practices in which they participate and the situations in which they find themselves”; the reflective process of PAR “is directly linked to action, influenced by an understanding of history, culture, and local context and embedded in social relationships” (Baum et al., 2006, p. 854).

Place attachment: The relationship between people, place, and process (Scannell & Gifford, 2010) and “an emotional bond between individuals or groups and their environment which is composed of both dependence and identity components” (Dandy et al., 2019; see also Masterson et al., 2017).

Place-based knowledge: Knowledge that has developed by a community in a particular location that incorporates cultural heritage as well as adaptations to the landscape and ecosystem.⁴

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³ The committee generated this definition.

⁴ The committee generated this definition.

Psychological resilience: The ability to “bounce back” or overcome adversity and “experience positive outcomes despite an adverse event or situation” (Vella & Pai, 2019, p. 233).

Psychosocial well-being: A “superordinate construct that includes emotional or psychological well-being, as well as social and collective well-being” (Eiroa-Orosa, 2020, p. 1; Martikainen et al., 2002).

Receiving community: Receiving community (or destination community) is a broad term used to describe locations where people are resettling away from a hazardous area. This may include moving to a new jurisdiction or moving within the current jurisdiction to a new location. Ideally receiving communities have a lower climate risk and the necessary physical, economic, institutional, and social infrastructure to accommodate resettlers, although this is not always the case. The term refers to both the jurisdiction to which resettlers move and the social communities into which they must integrate.⁵

Regional planning: “Regional planning may be defined as the integrated management of the economic, social, and physical resources of a spatially bounded area” (Johnson, 2015, p. 141). For example, regional planning may be used to address watershed protection, which affects more than one local jurisdiction. In this report regional planning refers to both intrastate and interstate issues.

Social capital: “[F]eatures of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, 1993, p. 2). Social capital has also been defined as the ability to secure resources by virtue of membership in social networks (Cattell, 2001), which can refer to the specific community ties held by individuals or by the broader community as a whole.

Social cohesion: “[A] descriptive, multifaceted and gradual phenomenon attributed to a collective, indicating the quality of collective togetherness” (Schiefer & van der Noll, 2016, p. 595). In reference to communities, social cohesion encompasses the quality of social relations within the community (such as social networks, trust, acceptance of diversity, and participation), the extent to which individuals identify with the community, and their orientation toward the common good (i.e., sense of responsibility, solidarity, compliance to social order; Schiefer & van der Noll, 2016).

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⁵ The committee generated this definition.

Social determinants of health: “[T]he conditions in the environments in which people live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks [. . .] the social determinants of health are: education; employment; health systems and services; housing; income and wealth; the physical environment; public safety; the social environment; and transportation” (National Academies, 2017, p. 100).

Solastalgia: The anxiety of impending loss. In contrast to nostalgia—a longing for loss of home or homelands in the past—solastalgia relates to a different set of circumstances—that is, when individuals fear or anticipate being uprooted or removed and separated from long-tenured homes, place, and/or community (Albrecht et al., 2007; Butler-Ulloa, 2022).

Structural inequities: “[T]he systemic disadvantage of one social group compared to other groups with whom they coexist, and the term encompasses policy, law, governance, and culture and refers to race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, class, sexual orientation, and other domains” (National Academies, 2017, p. 100).

Structural racism: “The public and private policies, institutional practices, norms, and cultural representations that inherently procure unequal freedom, opportunity, value, resources, advantage, restrictions, constraints, or disadvantage for individuals and populations according to their race and ethnicity both across the life course and between generations” (National Academies, 2022, p. 1).

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK): “[A] cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief that evolves by adaptive processes, is handed down through generations by cultural transmission, and centers on the relationships of humans with one another and with their environment” (Berkes et al., 2000).

Traditional population: A self-identified group with long-standing residence in a particular place, with livelihoods and other cultural practices that are intertwined with the local environment and resources. It may be indigenous or have roots in Europe, Africa, Asia, or other parts of the Americas.⁶

Underserved community: A “community with environmental justice concerns and/or vulnerable populations, including people of color, low income,

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⁶ The committee generated this definition.

rural, tribal, Indigenous, and homeless populations” (EPA, 2019, p. 1), including small communities (under 1,000 people in population) that lack the resources to carry out resilience and public health building efforts.

Well-being: Encompasses “social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political conditions” that communities and individuals identify as essential to “flourish and fulfill their potential” (Brasher & Wiseman, 2008, p. 358). It can be broadly defined as how people feel and how they function physically, socially, and psychologically (Jarden & Roache, 2023).

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