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| Mon, 10th Aug 2020 13:03:00 |
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The U.S. Needs to Address Its Climate Migration Problem |
It's time for Congress to get serious about helping them find higher ground, federal auditors say in a blunt assessment of the government's scattershot approach to what could become the largest U.S. migration since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
In a61-page reportissued yesterday, the Government Accountability Office said Congress should consider a pilot program "to identify and provide assistance to climate migration projects for communities that express affirmative interest in relocation as a resilience strategy."
While retreat and relocation strategies have foundered at the federal level, Congress has continued to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in disaster assistance to rebuild communities where they are, even as they face growing climate risk.
The federal government also needs to account for the disproportionate effect of climate disasters on poor and disadvantaged communities that have fewer resources.
Weber of NRDC agreed but also cautioned that the government needs to support a variety of risk mitigation strategies, including home buyouts and restoration of natural floodplains. That's especially true for communities that are tightly bound to their locations for economic, cultural or religious reasons.
Anna Weber, a policy analyst and expert on climate change adaptation and resilience with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the report offers an opportunity to rethink the government's role in climate adaptation. But, she added, "The federal government has a really horrific history of trying to move people from place to place. This may be one of the first times a federal report has come saying let's try to do it right."
Read original full article
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