Landscapes of Retreat

Landscapes of Retreat offers a series of vivid, grounded portraits of climate adaptation. Here, “retreat” is not framed as defeat, but as a relational gesture—found in the shifting contours of land left behind as human settlement patterns change in response to a warming world. The “landscape” is understood not as passive terrain, but as living ground: animated by organisms, shaped by histories, and entwined with the lives of those who inhabit it.

Through in-depth fieldwork in places as varied as Nijinomatsubara Forest in Japan, the Maule River in Chile, Niugtaq Village in Alaska, Langtang Park in Nepal, and the Gaspésie Peninsula in Québec, the book explores how different communities face the need to move, adjust, or let go—often in dialogue with the more-than-human world around them. These stories show that climate adaptation is most resilient when landscapes are not simply sites of extraction or loss, but sources of meaning, memory, and care.

Crossing lines between geography, history, anthropology, and environmental humanities, Landscapes of Retreat reframes “retreat” as a dynamic practice—one that invites us to rethink change not as surrender, but as a way toward more livable, shared climate futures.