Before the Water Rises: Reimagining Law’s Role in Climate Resilience

I attended a meeting today with the Sea Level Rise Policy Hui—a group of deeply committed professionals working across law, science, planning, and policy in Hawai‘i. The conversation was thoughtful and urgent, focused on how we respond to climate-driven threats, especially along our coasts.

As I listened, I kept coming back to a central question that guides my own work:

What role can law play before the next crisis?

When we discuss sea level rise—or any climate-related crisis—the dominant policy response is often reactive. And understandably so. Disaster demands immediacy. But legal frameworks—especially those rooted in property and land use—aren’t just reactive tools. They shape what’s possible before the crisis ever hits.

Before the water reaches the coastline, the law determines what can be built and who is allowed to build there.

Before the drought devastates farms, the law allocates water rights and determines access.

Before the heatwave scorches our cities, law has already shaped tree canopy coverage, zoning, and urban form.

The legal frameworks that govern property and land use are often invisible in public discourse, but they are foundational. They quietly determine whether communities are resilient or vulnerable—whether we’re planning with foresight or reacting out of fear.

Too often, the law operates like a firehose: it is only pulled out once the emergency has already begun. But what if we treated it instead as a kind of architectural scaffolding—a structure we intentionally build over time to support adaptation, equity, and resilience?

In my work, I explore the idea that law can do one of two things:

• It can lock in vulnerability—through rigid zoning, exclusionary property rights, or historic preservation mandates that prevent creative use.

• Or it can open space—for adaptive reuse, community stewardship, and sustainable design that anticipates change before it becomes a crisis.

This is the pivot I believe we need to make. The law is not a passive observer of climate transformation. It is an active participant. And its choices—what it permits, protects, prioritizes—shape the futures we inherit.

As we move into the next legislative cycle and engage with cross-sector working groups on sea level rise and climate resilience, I hope we can think of the law not just as a response tool, but as a design space. A space where kuleana—our shared responsibility to land, people, and future generations—can guide how we structure rights, duties, and possibilities.

The next climate crisis is already forming. But so is the next opportunity to build something better.