New Orleans, Louisiana, is locked into a future that could surround it by ocean this century, according to a new analysis from experts, who say the city must begin the relocation process now to avoid chaos.
The study’s findings are damning, but it’s no secret that New Orleans is highly vulnerable to climate change as the planet warms. Coastal Louisiana is one of the lowest regions in the world, and New Orleans, a city of 360,000 people, is particularly exposed.
The region is situated in a bowl-shaped basin, mostly below sea level. The city is almost entirely surrounded by wetlands, which act as a buffer against hurricanes and storm surges.
However, these rapidly disappear as humans drain them for development, dig canals for the oil and gas industry, and build river levees, depriving them of the sediment that prevents flooding.
Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost about 2,000 miles of wetlands. Coastal Louisiana faces sea level rise of about three to seven meters, according to analysis published in May in the journal Nature Sustainability.
The impacts will be devastating: About 75% of the remaining wetlands are destined to be lost, and the coastline could retreat inland by up to 100 kilometers, according to scientists.
The region “has crossed the point of no return,” the study authors wrote, adding that New Orleans “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.”
They argue that the city should seize the opportunity to develop relocation strategies that could make it a model for places facing a similar fate.
Consequences for residents of New Orleans
Advancing seas threaten coastal cities and towns around the world, from New York and London to Bangkok and Shanghai. “The key questions are when these futures will arrive and how they will unfold,” said Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist at Climate Central, a climate research nonprofit.
To map Louisiana’s future, the report’s scientists delved into the past.
One of the authors identified an ancient coastline approximately 30 miles north of New Orleans that formed about 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were similar to today but the oceans were at least three meters higher.
“It is very likely that sea levels will rise to this elevation in the future,” said Torbjörn Törnqvist, report author and professor of geology at Tulane University. The question is what should be done and when.
People have already been leaving coastal Louisiana for decades, said Brianna Castro, study co-author and assistant professor of urban sustainability at the Yale School of the Environment.
Since the — which hit Louisiana in 2005, killing nearly 1,400 people — New Orleans has lost about 25 percent of its population. The withdrawal has been a “pulsating” process, in which each major storm or flood causes a spike in departures, Castro said.
The storms the city faces tend to become increasingly difficult to withstand. Approximately 99% of New Orleans’ population is at high risk of flooding, according to a recent study.
“When another Katrina-like hurricane hits the city, almost everyone will suffer flood damage,” said Wanyun Shao, an author of that study and an associate professor of geography at the University of Alabama.
Failing to implement a carefully managed relocation process risks a “chaotic” evacuation that will come at a high cost, especially for the city’s poorest, the paper’s authors argue.
As the population shrinks, existing inequalities will deepen, Törnqvist said. The tax base erodes, services worsen, insurance premiums soar and properties lose value.
People may decide to stay and adapt in place, but the more money they invest in trying to protect their lives from flooding, the less they will have to relocate in the future, Castro said.
“If the writing is on the wall that we need to leave eventually, do we want to wait until people’s resources are exhausted and there is a crisis?” she asked. There is precedent for relocation.
Threats to the city’s culture
The Swedish Arctic town of Kiruna is slowly being swallowed up by the iron ore mine it was built on. As the mine expanded, buildings cracked and some collapsed.
Kiruna is now in the midst of a decades-long relocation process, voted on in 2004 and expected to be completed by 2035. Last year, the city transported its church, which is more than 100 years old, to the new city on a specially designed cart.
The new city center should be ready next year, said Clara Nyström, Kiruna’s municipal heritage officer. The relocation, however, has not been easy. Rents have risen, which is difficult for residents, and there are concerns that culture and a sense of community could be lost.
“It’s a great sadness to leave everything behind, and I think it’s important to understand that,” Nyström said. Castro is optimistic about the possibility of building a New Orleans 2.0 on safer ground without sacrificing culture.
Build a great city and people will come, she said, “you don’t have to lose the spirit of New Orleans.” Others are less optimistic. Beverly Wright, whose family in New Orleans goes back eight generations, fears the relocation could fragment the city.
“The culture we have has grown out of lived experiences and neighborhoods, so whenever you break up a neighborhood, you lose things,” said Wright, founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
She is a scientist and does not doubt that rising sea levels are an existential threat, but she is deeply concerned about the consequences of a possible relocation.
“I have no hope that the establishment will be considerate of black people… I’m looking at what they did to us after Katrina,” Wright said, referring to the government’s widely criticized response to the hurricane.
She fears that generations of black people will be forced to start over from scratch “because they have nothing if the land is taken away from them.” For now, there doesn’t appear to be much appetite among policymakers to actually start thinking about relocation, Törnqvist acknowledged.
There were efforts to buy more time for the region. In August 2023, construction began on a vast sediment diversion project to strengthen wetlands and help protect south Louisiana from storm surges and sea level rise.
In 2025, however, the project was canceled by the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, citing high costs and damage to fisheries. This decision “effectively means giving up extensive parts of coastal Louisiana, including the New Orleans region,” the report’s authors wrote.
Governor Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Törnqvist and Castro are emphatic in highlighting that their article is not just pessimism.
A carefully planned relocation could be an opportunity for New Orleans to become a benchmark for sustainable development and coastal restoration.
The exceptional vulnerability of the Gulf of Mexico offers a glimpse of what may await other coastal communities this century. The sea may take land here sooner than elsewhere, Törnqvist said, “but what happens here now is what will happen elsewhere.”
