Preparing the welcome mat: Regional climate migrant projections and regional policy
Supported by the FeRSA Grant, this project takes the case of a particular region in Western New York State, USA, proclaimed by local politicians to be a “climate refuge,” to form a focused review of the existing claims and potential around this idea. Among the many urgent issues related to climate change, comparatively less attention has been paid to how the reception of climate migrants is and could be imagined in places where climate change effects will be less inhospitable to human life and livelihoods. This project takes the case of a particular region, proclaimed by local politicians to be a “climate refuge,” to form a focused review of the existing claims and potential around this idea. It will: 1) summarize current regional policy (city, towns, and county) on climate change adaptation and on new arrivals; 2) draw on several datasets and population projection models to develop a description of who may be taking “refuge” in Buffalo and the surrounding region in the coming years and decades; 3) based on socioeconomic characteristics of the current population, project broad areas of opportunity and need; 4) finally, identify current policy and grassroots organizing that appears to anticipate these areas of opportunity and need. Particularly novel in this project is the portrait of who may seek to come to the region. Generating this speculative portrait may help shed light on what changes, accommodations, and investments are likely to be needed to support climate migrants. This may give regional policy makers, and the communities that push them to act, sharper conceptualization of, and will to implement, changes that will make such a process easier on the new arrivals and on those already in the region, strengthening the region as a whole.
As Abigail reached the end of the project, she said:
The FeRSA grant I was awarded arrived at a crucial time in my career and has been pivotal in helping me develop a new line of research quite distinct from my earlier work.
Principal Investigator: Abigail Cooke
Abigail Cooke is Assistant Professor of Geography at University at Buffalo (SUNY). She is also a co-director of the Center for Trade, Environment, and Development (CTED, formerly CUSTAC). Her research focuses on the local and regional impacts of global flows. She has studied the impacts of low-wage country import competition in the US and the relationship between immigrant diversity and wages in metropolitan areas. She received her PhD in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles.