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The United States’ deeply racialized history currently operates below the surface of contemporary apolitical narratives on vulnerability mitigation and adaptation to sea-level rise. As communities, regulatory agencies, and policy-makers plan for rising seas, it is important to recognize the landscapes of race and deep histories of racism that have shaped the socio-ecological formations of coastal regions. If this history goes unrecognized, what we label colorblind adaptation planning is likely to perpetuate what Rob Nixon calls the “slow violence” of environmental racism, characterized by policies that benefit some populations while abandoning others. By colorblind adaptation planning, we refer to vulnerability mitigation and adaptation planning projects that altogether overlook racial inequality—or worse dismiss its systemic causes and explain away racial inequality by attributing racial disparities to non-racial causes. We contend that responses to sea-level rise must be attuned to racial difference and structures of racial inequality. In this article, we combine the theory of racial formation with the geographical study of environmental justice and point to the ways racial formations are also environmental. We examine vulnerability to sea-level rise through the process of racial coastal formation on Sapelo Island, Georgia, specifically analyzing its deep history, the uneven racial development of land ownership and employment, and barriers to African American participation and inclusion in adaptation planning. Racial coastal formation’s potential makes way for radical transformation in climate change science not only in coastal areas, but other spaces as situated territorial racial formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, tax incentives combined with the ecological significance of private land are driving the expansion of conservation easements held by land trusts. This development suggests a need to further identify efficient methods for assessing the conservation value of private land. We collaborated with two land trusts on a conservation assessment of the Upper Oconee Watershed in northeastern Georgia. We identified nine landscape-level conservation features that were important to the land trusts' missions. To weight the conservation features in the creation of a parcel-level index model, we used criteria from the Georgia Land Conservation Program. Out of 32,657 parcels analyzed, we identified 111 priority parcels that contain 2-15 percent of each conservation feature in the watershed. We recommended these priority parcels to the land trusts for use in their easement recruitment campaigns and conservation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]