Building resilience or reinforcing vulnerability? The enduring allure of hard infrastructure as adaptation

Abstract

This paper examines a climate buffer infrastructural paradox: that, despite an expansive archive documenting the limits of hard structural solutions, they retain their allure as a popular technical solution to protect against climatic hazards. The Leyte Tide Embankment Project (LTEP) in the Philippines, also known as “The Great Wall of Leyte”, is one of dozens of climate buffer megaprojects proliferating globally that promise to protect coastal zones from increasingly devastating climate hazards. Using the LTEP as a case study, we ask: what and who drives and sustains hard infrastructure as climate adaptation, and through what processes? To analyse this question, we conducted 45 in-depth int..