The Importance of Scale

Stakeholders' level or interest and power will often depend strongly on the scale of the sea level rise adaptation and mitigation strategies under discussion. For example, members of a single coastal household may have strong interest and power in the context of a family meeting about household improvements to protect themselves from sea level rise and related hazards. In the context of a city council meeting to discuss steps the city can take to protect coastal property (such as the construction of a sea wall), the family may remain interested, but will likely have less power to shape the discussion. The family's power in a national discussion of sea level rise adaptation and mitigation strategies will likely be lower still; however, their interest may remain fairly high, particularly if the strategies under consideration could affect them directly (such as changes to insurance rates). Those leading discussions about sea level rise adaptation and mitigation should therefore remember that stakeholders who were on the sidelines at one scale may be central to the discussion at other scales.

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Figure 12.6. Assessments that average vulnerability over large areas can miss small pockets of vulnerability that are only visible at local scales. When zoomed out, this NOAA map shows low to medium social vulnerability in the Santa Cruz area of Northern California. However, when zoomed in to a local scale, a small area of high vulnerability becomes apparent. Discussion organizers should keep these scale effects in mind when considering stakeholder vulnerability.
Credit: NOAA: Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts

As discussed in Module 10, vulnerability can also change with the scale of assessment. For example, a county-level assessment may find that the average vulnerability of coastal residents in a given county is low compared to other counties; however, this low average vulnerability may hide small areas within the county where vulnerability is quite high. Facilitators of sea level rise discussions should therefore also remember that highly vulnerable individual stakeholders can come from areas where vulnerability is generally low.