Planning for just relocations in Europe in times of climate change: a comparative study

Abstract Planned relocation is gaining traction as a preventive adaptation measure to protect communities from the impacts of climate change. While its justice implications are increasingly recognised, empirical studies often focus on single dimensions such as distributive outcomes or procedural fairness. This paper proposes a more comprehensive approach that identifies multiple forms of justice—distributive, corrective, procedural and recognitional—as relevant for planning and implementing planned relocation. It further operationalises them through the lenses of the utilitarian, libertarian, egalitarian and prioritarian philosophical traditions, and offers a framework for uncovering the implicit assumptions about justice that shape relocation policy and practice. The framework is applied to four case studies of preventive relocation in the context of flood risk in Europe (Portugal, Italy, Austria, UK). The application shows that utilitarian understandings of distributive justice dominate policy framings at national and regional levels, while prioritarian concerns emerge at community level, suggesting that different criteria can coexist across scales. An egalitarian approach characterises the sharing of costs and responsibilities, with cross-country difference in financial coverage and compensation models. Procedural justice is motivated on egalitarian grounds but practised performatively or with the utilitarian aim to promote acceptability, and it is often constrained by a reliance on technical expertise which sidelines local knowledge. Recognitional justice oscillates between exclusion based on property rights and attempts to prioritise the most vulnerable. By offering a framework to identify and clarify implicit justice assumptions in relocation decisions, this paper paves ways to support more transparent and accountable policymaking.