2019 Articles

Climate Adaptation and Land Use Governance: The Vertical Axis

Kaswan, Alice

The existing and expected impacts of climate change are increasingly well-documented.   Recent hurricanes,  wildfires,  and heat waves  provide dramatic examples of what climate change portends, even if no single event can be directly attributed to climate change.  The scale of anticipated climate change poses profound challenges to existing governance norms.  This Article addresses one of those norms: the norm of local control over land use.  Through an in-depth assessment of the federalism values that guide jurisdictional choices, it argues that a multilevel governance approach that supplements local control with federal parameters and resources is necessary to adequately prepare for climate change and to meet the wide range of local, state, and federal interests at stake.