Among the many detrimental impacts from climate change, sea-level rise is one of the most damaging, costly, and devastating. Sea-level change poses particular challenges for coastal communities, and is becoming more prevalent in environmental law. Existing scientific literature about how sea-level change works can often be inaccessible to the people that need it. In addition, each coastal community experiences a unique combination of global, regional, and local factors that define sea-level change. This Article provides an overview of how sea-level change works and a repository of data tools available to the public, covering how sea level is defined, measured, and modeled, the processes that change sea level globally and regionally, how these processes have changed over time, and how to interpret the scientific uncertainty present in sea-level science. It then examines how regional and local processes determine sea-level change along the Florida coastline and provides an overview of historical, modern, and future sea-level rise there. The Article can serve as a reference for understanding the science that may come up in legal cases related to sea-level change, and the associated toolkit provides regionally specific information for understanding sea level throughout the United States.

Sea-level rise is a common denominator that prompts two related but distinct types of coastal migration: (1) wealthy coastal communities that retreat inland to ensure their physical and economic security while encroaching on the neighborhoods of existing vulnerable communities; and (2) vulnerable Native Alaskan communities that relocate inland to ensure their survival while striving to retain their cultural identity. This Comment explores how vulnerable coastal communities in both contexts require enhanced legal protections through the lens of “coastal migration with dignity.” Like the existing literature, it proposes to apply social justice-oriented safeguards to vulnerable communities in the climate migration context, but it does so without delving into the logistics and dignity rights involved in the resettlement process, focusing instead on recommendations to diminish the vulnerability of communities in two climate migration case studies in the United States.

As the United States and the global community figure out how to address climate migration, local governments can and have already been preparing for it. Planning for climate migrants is a part of climate resilience. This Comment calls on local governments, community groups, and individuals to make a stand for how their communities will address climate change, focusing on climate migration. Local governments have tremendous power when it comes to future development. With their land use authority, these governments can adopt plans to better accommodate climate migrants or climate-displaced persons. As hurricanes or other environmental disasters reveal and worsen existing social inequalities, local governments are in a special position to accommodate climate-displaced persons.