Sea walls flood neighboring regions, raising hard questions about who gets protected.

Evidence

Such protective measures raise thorny ethical issues, because barriers divert surging water to neighboring regions, which then are flooded even more heavily. What if the inundated neighboring areas are heavily populated? Who decides, by what means and criteria, which areas will be protected and which will be more heavily flooded? With rising sea levels, lowland coastal regions—many of which are major densely populated cities—will be underwater, requiring mass relocations. Tidal surges fueled by fierce storms may flood even some higher elevations. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2777

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: sea walls as a moral triage problem — protective infrastructure that redistributes harm onto the less powerful, a concrete case of structural moral disengagement.
• APHORISMS: The ethical question ‘who decides which areas will be protected and which flooded’ generalizes: any protective system deflects harm onto someone, and the decision is a moral one.