Monthly Archives: September 2024

Washington, DC, August 16, 2024.

The Jacobs Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment at Stetson University College of Law is a program providing free legal services from law students under the supervision of licensed attorneys.  The purpose of the Jacobs Law Clinic (JLC) is to represent clients in various democracy-related and environmental issues while fostering the legal education of students at Stetson University College of Law.  JLC has agreed to represent Adaptation Leader as part of the ongoing Receiving Communities Initiative, specifically to conduct legal research on several questions being explored by participants in the initiative.  The JLC team will produce two deliverables in this collaboration.  First,  A white paper detailing whether any nations have acknowledged climate change as a factor in granting refugee status, either to persons from outside the country or to persons internally displaced, in-part as a consequence of climate change.  Second, a white paper exploring whether the framework for site selection for refugee resettlement in the U.S. provides a helpful framework that could inform selection or preparation of climate refuge receiving sites.  Adaptation Leader’s Ira Feldman will work directly with the Stetson law students on this matter.  The JLC team is being supervised by Stetson law professor and JLC director Jaclyn Lopez.

Washington, DC, September 19. We’re excited to share a published review of the anthology “Climate Migration: Critical Perspectives for Law, Policy, and Research,” edited by Calum Nicholson and Benoit Mayer. The book explores the complexities and challenges of understanding the relationship between climate change and migration, challenging some common assumptions in this field. In his review, Ira Feldman, founder of Adaptation Leader, provides a thought-provoking analysis, highlighting how the volume pushes for a more nuanced, evidence-based discussion around “climate migration.” Ira’s full review, published in the Journal of Environmental Studies & Sciences (JESS), is available at: https://www.adaptationleader.org/?r3d=review-climate-migration-critical-perspectives-for-law-policy-and-research

As the review notes, it’s a call to rethink how we frame and address climate-related migration and to ensure that policy and law are built on solid foundations.  The volume builds off a 2019 piece by nearly three dozen authors (several of whom contributed to the book) in Nature Climate Change, (Boas et al. 2019) which sounded the alarm that much academic and policy work about climate and migration is epistemologically half-baked, founded on misleading claims. Far from being a self-evident fact, “cat- egorizing climate migrants as distinguishable from ‘non- climate migrants’ is not empirically possible in most, if not all, circumstances,” and hence, “predictions of mass climate- induced migration are inherently flawed” (Boas et al. 2019, p. 901).

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 16, 2024 – The inevitability of climate impacts, the necessity of planning for more severe outcomes, and the role of the U.S. legal system in addressing these challenges are highlighted in a new article by Ira Feldman and James R. May recently published in Natural Resources & Environment (NR&E), an American Bar Association quarterly magazine. The authors examine how U.S. constitutional law informs and influences potential government programs and policies affecting millions who will be displaced from their homes and livelihoods by climate change. They argue that a “constitutional revolution” may be necessary to address these pressing issues.

Climate Displacement in America

By 2050 and in the ensuing years, America will be wildly different, even unrecognizable, with millions displaced by sea level rise, wildfires, and extreme temperatures. Given the complexity and enormity of the challenge, we need a national managed retreat strategy to coordinate where these displaced people will go. In their article, Feldman and May consider existing congressional authority to develop regulatory programs to manage internal climate displacement in the U.S. and identify constitutional concerns regarding the coordinated management of climate-displaced populations.

“Much attention is being directed towards the climate impacts on vulnerable communities, including the need for some to consider relocation. While managed retreat is important to address, fewer officials, academics and residents have given thought to where populations may relocate. Such places have become known as ‘climate havens’ in the popular press, but there is no existing game plan to assist such receiving communities,” said Feldman, the founder and chairman of Adaptation Leader, a lawyer, consultant, academic, and longstanding leader in environmental, climate, and sustainability issues.

You Say You Want a “Constitutional Revolution”

Feldman and May suggest that certain constitutional protections can facilitate the development of a national-level strategy for managed retreat and receiving communities, but other provisions may obstruct federal efforts. For example, while it’s likely that Congress has the authority to regulate internal climate displacement under the Commerce Clause, which permits Congress to regulate activities that “substantially affect” interstate commerce, a coordinated federal program could violate the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers not expressly delegated to the federal government to the states or the people.

“Climate change will displace millions of Americans and result in new – some would say revolutionary – applications of the U.S. Constitution to keep up,” said Professor May, a preeminent environmental, constitutional, and human rights law scholar, formerly of Widener University Delaware Law School and now a Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law at Washburn University Law School. Where constitutional constraints exist, adjustments may be needed, including a “constitutional revolution” – a term advanced by Robert J. Lipkin to indicate when constitutional interpretations must change in response to new conditions.

Adaptation Leader’s Receiving Community Initiative

Excerpts from Climate Displacement, Managed Retreat, and Constitutional Revolution will be included in Adaptation Leader’s Research & Policy Agenda (RPA), a cornerstone of its Receiving Communities Initiative. The next steps for the RPA include a webinar in November and an in-person multi-stakeholder convening in Washington, DC, in early 2025. These events will be produced and hosted in collaboration with Randall Abate, esteemed law professor and Assistant Dean of Environmental Law at George Washington University Law School. Follow Adaptation Leader on LinkedIn for the latest RPA updates. About Adaptation Leader Adaptation Leader is a Section 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with the mission of raising literacy in climate adaptation and resilience across all stakeholder groups.

For more information, contact:
Ira Feldman
+1 (202) 669-1858
ira@adaptationleader.org
www.adaptationleader.org