The Global Politics of Sea Level Rise Adaptation

Sea level rise (SLR) is increasingly reframed as a global political problem, no longer confined to local adaptation needs or the struggles of atoll nations. Recent UN debates and the creation of the Ocean Rise & Coastal Resilience Coalition (ORCRC) mark the institutionalization of SLR debates within global climate governance. This article asks how SLR is rendered governable as an object of global politics, and how that problematization reshapes the solution space for local adaptation. Adopting a poststructuralist governmentality framework and focusing on the ORCRC, I trace the visibilities, rationalities, technologies of governing, and subject positions inherent to the emerging global governing of SLR. Through a globalized vision of (coastal) resilience, this governmentality privileges the rollout of transnational knowledge infrastructures, embeds adaptation in cost–benefit logics, and opens coastal cities to investment. I argue that the dominant problematization of SLR as a biophysical challenge for humankind risks obscuring the socioeconomic and colonial drivers of climate vulnerability, which could undermine the transformative potential of the SLR agenda.