Presentation short abstract

Planned relocation in Enseada da Baleia reveals how climate adaptation reproduces colonial and racial violence under the guise of environmental protection.

Presentation long abstract

This paper conceptualizes planned relocation related to climate change as a violent process rooted in colonialism, racial capitalism, and coloniality. Through the case of Enseada da Baleia, a caiçara community in Brazil, it examines how planned relocation reproduces historical structures of dispossession and control rather than constituting an exceptional or purely adaptive response to climatic events. The analysis moves beyond the crisis narrative of climate change to expose the enduring systems of oppression that organize the terms of relocation—deciding who moves, who stays, and under what conditions.

The paper argues that Enseada da Baleia’s planned relocation must be understood within the continuum of slow violence shaping the community’s material and symbolic existence. These quasi-events—such as the designation of Cardoso Island as a Conservation Unit, real estate speculation, and coastal erosion—operate as subtle mechanisms of forced displacement that sustain the colonial project under the guise of environmental protection and development.

By situating planned relocation within this broader historical and political context, the paper advances a critical understanding of climate-related relocation as both a symptom and an instrument of structural violence. It calls for approaches to climate adaptation that confront rather than obscure the unequal and racialized foundations of vulnerability and displacement.