Presentation short abstract

A qualitative and comparative study of Lemvig (Denmark), Lismore (Australia) and Fairbourne (Wales) demonstrating how climate turbulence and flood risks generate temporal and territorial dispossessions, while accelerated adaption timelines undermine long-term rural futures.

Presentation long abstract

Many rural coastal communities are on the frontlines of climate change, where intensifying floods collide with longstanding experiences of marginalisation and uneven attention from the state. Through the concept of 'climate turbulence', this paper examines how recurrent flood risks fracture temporal horizons and reshape climate futures in three rural places: Lemvig (Denmark), Lismore (Australia) and Fairbourne (Wales).

In Fairbourne, the planned withdrawal of state protection in 2054 has transformed the village into a place with an official expiry date. Here, long-term uncertainty combines with limited local investment to produce a temporal dispossession in which residents are asked to adjust their lives to a future that no longer includes them. In Lismore, successive catastrophic floods disrupt the temporal continuity of everyday life, pushing people into recurring cycles of displacement, rebuilding and bureaucratic delay. Here, climate turbulence unsettles the capacity to plan ahead, as residents navigate a recovery process that is out of sync with the scale and frequency of the impacts they face. In Lemvig, a new climate protection wall still offers a narrative of safety and resilience, but obscure slower-moving vulnerabilities linked to long-term risks. Here, infrastructural fixes provide temporal reassurance while deferring political questions about future viability.

Across these sites, flooding operates as both a material and temporal mode of dispossession. Official timelines overwrite local rhythms, intergenerational attachments, and situated futures, thereby revealing how time itself becomes a political terrain upon which the green transition unevenly shapes whose futures remain secure.