Climate havens like Michigan should start prep now for future migrants - MLive.com

Climate havens like Michigan should start prep now for future migrants - mlive.com

As climate change continues to intensify and bring more frequent catastrophes, experts argue regions dubbed climate havens like Michigan should begin to prepare now for what can be expected to be a future wave of incoming climate migrants.

Housing industry researchers with national nonprofit Enterprise studied the phenomenon of climate migration and the expected impacts on communities where people relocate. Experts argue that if climate haven communities continue to ignore the phenomenon of climate migration, it will only exacerbate the strain and perhaps even heighten conflicts when climate migrants do begin to arrive in greater numbers.

It’s a warning that can be a difficult sell in Michigan, where the statewide population is overall on the decline even as the number of those living in the northern reaches of the state continue to grow.

Related: See which Michigan towns grew, shrunk in 2022

But scientists say Americans are likely to relocate in coming decades as the more chronic effects of climate change make their homes and livelihoods untenable. And the places these folks are apt to end up should get ready, starting now.

Rachel Bogardus Drew is a research director with the nonprofit that published a policy brief about this issue this year, which is basically a handbook for how so-called climate havens and other potential receiving communities can prepare for that future expected influx of newcomers. She co-wrote the report.

“There are these big, cataclysmic events that catch the attention around the news and so forth. But there are just as many, if not more people, who deal with chronic flooding, who deal with chronic drought, to maybe they’ve been hit by just too many of these cataclysmic disasters, one after the other after the other. And it either makes it untenable for them to continue to stay there and live the life that they want, or they just get, you know, fed up with it. So that’s a lot harder to track,” Bogardus Drew said.

Yet climate scientists contend these types of climate migrations are going to happen within the United States. Bogardus Drew said that’s why they wrote the how-to guide for haven communities.

The report lays out how places where migrants are expected to settle can prepare for these future climate migrations.

First, communities with a lower risk of climate-related impacts must self-assess their potential to grow because of climate migrants and then leverage existing resources like federal resiliency and housing grant dollars.

Communities should begin to manage the expectations of current residents, plus figure out how to help newcomers find housing, medical care, education and more before they begin to arrive, the brief contends.

Bogardus Drew said for example, housing markets can be quite different from place to place, and climate migrants may not have the wherewithal to find an apartment and be ready for local expectations like typical security deposits or required references.

“Not everybody comes with that knowledge and with that ability to just, you know, drop right in and instantly become part of the fabric of their new community,” she said.

Related: Michigan is a climate haven in a warming world. Will everyone move here?

The group recommends setting up a centralized way for migrants to access various services in their new communities.

“They need to be able to find a place to live and be able to get their kids into school and so forth and find a job,” Bogardus Drew said.

“One thing we didn’t expect to hear but heard consistently, kind of across all of the different areas that we were looking at was the issue of transportation – how climate migrants often arrive without a private vehicle or have lost it in the event or are just not used to navigating whatever the transportation system is of the receiving community.”

Researchers based their report on three climate migration case studies: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to New Orleans residents relocating to Houston, Texas; Hurricane Maria in 2017 led to Puerto Rico residents arriving in central Florida; and the Louisiana coastal towns of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes with the planned relocation of their entire communities because of sea level rise.

Bogardus Drew said that although it’s difficult to predict where the expectedly millions of relocating Americans will go in the coming decades, there are advantages for places being ready ahead of time.

“Just start planning, just start looking at these issues, because we can’t predict where the next disaster will hit, and we can’t predict where those folks are going to relocate. But there are going to be disasters, there are going to be folks who need to relocate and the communities that are better prepared for this will have a better experience with it,” she said.

Leaders in Michigan’s largest city are already thinking about this future eventuality.

Related: $20M ad campaign could grow Michigan’s population – at least that’s the goal

Jack Akinlosotu is Detroit’s sustainability office director, and he said the first way the city can prepare to be a haven for future climate migrants is by solving climate problems that exist today.

“On the front end, for me, the big thing I’m focused on is how do we solve climate issues for people who are currently here,” he said.

Akinlosotu said repetitive power outages and flooding after thunderstorms are problems the city faces that need remedies before making big plans for future newcomers. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a mind to that future, he said.

And he’s already doing one of the recommended steps in Enterprise’s report on receiving communities getting prepared: bolstering coordination among the community’s key players. By working on today’s climate problems with community leaders, connections will develop with people and groups most likely to respond when new climate issues arise – like a major influx of climate migrants.

“There’s so much to be done on the front end of trying to mitigate climate disasters generally in Detroit, doing our part in the city to try to mitigate the certain climate disasters that might happen as a result of our climate going up more than 1.5 degrees,” Akinlosotu said. “We’re trying to do all that we can to make that happen. But with those actions, I believe we’ll be able to accommodate more people when (climate disasters) do happen in different parts of the world.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorses a similar approach to the state becoming a haven for climate migrants. She said it’s critical to focus on a high quality of life, lower costs of living, and protecting natural resources.

“We know that people are going to migrate because of climate, we already see in parts of this country that people are losing access to water, we see fires raging, we see climate event after climate event. And that’s why it’s so important that No. 1, we do our part to mitigate our impact on climate,” Whitmer said in mid-August during a tour of the Upper Peninsula.

“But also, we build up the foundational things to support our current population and a growing population. Our goal is to just strategically grow our population in the immediate, knowing that ultimately, we will be one of these states where people are seeking refuge.”

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