The Great Lakes Green Belt by Justin Paul Ware by Justin Paul Ware

The Great Lakes Green Belt Revitalizing America’s Post-Industrial Cities Through the Resettlement of Environmental Migrants Justin Paul Ware July 2021

The Great Lakes Green Belt

0.0

Abstract

Climate change is accelerating. The “human climate niche,” the portion of the earth’s surface that experiences the optimal climate conditions for human life, is shifting. Large segments of the world’s population will soon be left living in areas not suited for human life. As a consequence, displacement is projected to increase dramatically, with an estimated 25 million to one billion migrants expected to be on the move as a result of climate change by 2050. Unfortunately, the rigidity of the modern nation-state regime, the international borders that define it, and the resulting limits on any universal freedom of movement severely restrict the most natural mechanism that humans have for adapting to the effects of climate change: migration. At the same time, many of the world’s wealthier nations are experiencing slowing or declining population growth rates. Resulting in aging overall populations, these trends present a serious challenge for the affected nations by threatening to disrupt labor markets, destabilize economic performance, and overextend public services and social welfare programs. In addition, the economies of these developed nations have largely deindustrialized in a shift to service provision. As a result, there are countless post-industrial cities, once home to large numbers of manufacturing jobs, which have seen dramatic declines in population over the last fifty to one hundred years. These once thriving cities have been left destitute and in severe need of both human capital and financial investment. When taken together, though, these challenges present an opportunity. Up until now, resettlement as a mechanism for responding to displacement has been relatively underutilized and rarely leveraged for the benefits it can produce. If reimagined and expanded, the resettlement of displaced people, especially environmental migrants, can be reframed not as burden-sharing alone, but as an opportunity to replenish declining populations. Wherever this need and favorable climate conditions coincide, resettlement should be leveraged as a strategy for stimulating economic growth, revitalizing abandoned built environments, and creating opportunities for both displaced and host communities alike. With declining birthrates and immigration rates combined with an aging population, the United States of America is facing an impending demographic crisis. As the predominant geopolitical power since the end of World War II, these challenges threaten to undermine its position and upend the current world order. Given its long history as a nation of immigrants and its legacy as

Abstract a leader in refugee resettlement, though, no country is better poised to meet these challenges by exploiting the potential advantages of environmental migration. While projections suggest that over the next fifty years the shift of the “human climate niche” will lead to deteriorating conditions across much of the country’s most densely populated areas, the Great Lakes Region is expected to experience improving conditions. What was once the nation’s industrial heartland has steadily depopulated and deurbanized over the last sixty years as a result of deindustrialization. With improving climate conditions, though, the region is poised to once again become a hub of growth and development. Through targeted resettlement and strategic investment, the region can be repopulated, revitalized, and subsequently reimagined as “The Great Lakes Green Belt,” a vibrant and dynamic, multicultural region characterized by economic growth, sustainable development, and the creation of a climate haven for both domestic and foreign environmental migrants alike. This would enable the United States to reverse current population trends, revitalize a struggling region, and establish itself as a world leader in responding to climate change and environmental migration.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Contents Abstract 2 Contents 4 Figures 8 Acronyms 12

1.0 MIGRATION + DISPLACEMENT

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Why Do People Move?

1.3 Obstacles to Movement

1.4 Freedom of Movement, But for Who?

1.5 The Scale of Migration

1.6 The Protection Gap

1.7 Environmental Migration

1.8 Responding To Displacement: Camps Versus Cities

1.9 A Shift In Thinking: The Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework

1.9.1 Voluntary Repatriation

1.9.2 Local Integration

1.9.3 Resettlement

1.10 The Myth of Return

1.11 Born of Migration, Cities Can Be Reborn of The Same

1.12 Protecting Environmental Migrants and Reframing Resettlement

2.0 ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION

2.1 Introduction

2.2 The “Human Climate Niche”

2.3 “Mobility Is Resilience”

2.4 The Debate Over Environmental Migration

2.4.1 Challenges

2.4.2 Climate Refugees?

2.4.3 Skepticism and Opposition

2.5 In Support of Unique Protections

2.5.1 Defining “Environmental Migrants”

2.5.2 Justifications

2.6 The Consequences of Inaction

2.7 A Preview of the Future

2.7.1 The Crisis at the United States and Mexico Border

2.7.2 The European Migrant Crisis

Contents

2.7.3 A New Urgency to Act

2.8 An Alternative Approach and an Opportunity Exposed

2.8.1 The Case for Russia

2.9 Power Dynamics

3.0 BORDERS: A BARRIER TO MIGRATION AS AN ADAPTATION MECHANISM 46 3.1 Introduction

3.2 The Absurdity of Borders

3.3 Imperial Legacies: A Regime To Restrict Movement and Preserve Inequity

3.4 A Human Invention (Border Typologies)

3.4.1 Antecedent Boundaries

3.4.2 Subsequent Boundaries

3.4.3 Superimposed Boundaries

3.4.4 Relic Boundaries

3.5 The Tyranny of the Immovable Border

3.6 Some Exceptions

3.6.1 Intersectional Borders

3.6.2 The “Moving Border”

3.6.3 Displaced Nations

3.7 Open Borders

3.7.1 A Moral Perspective

3.7.2 An Economic Perspective

3.7.3 The Case of Ecuador

3.7.4 The Case of The United States

3.8 Rethinking Borders: A New Approach

4.0 AN AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The American Climate Niche

4.3 A More Detailed View of Climate Change in the United States

4.3.1 Extreme Heat and Humidity

4.3.2 Sea Level Rise

4.3.3 Wildfires

4.3.4 Economic Effects: Crop Yields and Economic Damages

4.4 The Great Lakes

4.5 America’s Post-Industrial Heartland: The “Rust Belt”

4.5.1 Challenges

The Great Lakes Green Belt

4.5.2 What comes next?

4.5.3 It’s about people and investment

4.6 Why Should the “Rust Belt” Welcome Environmental Migrants?

5.0 ENVISIONING AN AMERICAN “CLIMATE HAVEN”

5.1 Introduction

5.2 So What is a “Climate Haven?”

5.3 Transforming Post-Industrial America Into a “Climate Haven”

5.3.1 Zoning and Land Use

5.3.2 A Model for the Cooperative Revitalization of Vacant Properties

100

5.4 Methodology

101

References

122

Contents

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Figures 1.0 MIGRATION + DISPLACEMENT

Fig. 1:

Durable Solutions under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework

Fig. 2: Worldwide and United States Refugee Resettlement 1982-2020

2.0 ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION

Fig. 3: Current and Projected Scale of Global Population, Forced Displacement, and Environmental Migration

Fig. 4: “Human Climate Niche:” Current Suitability (2019)

Fig. 5: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 2.6

Fig. 6: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 4.5

Fig. 7: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 8.5

Fig. 8: “Human Climate Niche:” Change in Suitability from 2019 to 2070 at RCP 8.5

Fig. 9: World’s Largest Nations: Land Area and Population Comparison

Fig. 10: World’s Largest Nations: Land Area and Population Comparison

3.0 BORDERS: A BARRIER TO MIGRATION AS AN ADAPTATION MECHANISM 46 Fig. 11: Richard Hartshorne’s Genetic Boundary Classification

Fig. 12: Satellite Image of Berlin At Night

Fig. 13: Displaced Nations

4.0 AN AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY

Fig. 14: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Current Suitability (2019)

Fig. 15: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 2.6

Fig. 16: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 4.5

Fig. 17: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 8.5

Fig. 18: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Change in Suitability from 2019 to 2070 at RCP 8.5 72 Fig. 19: Number of Weeks Per Year Above 35°C (95°F) in the United State by County (2040-2060) 75 Fig. 20: Days Per Year With High Wet Bulb Temperatures in the United States by County (2040-2060) 77 Fig. 21: Sea Level Rise: Percentage of Property Below High Tide in the United States by County (2040-2060) 77 Fig. 22: Average Number of Very Large Wildfires in the United States Per Year (2040-2071) 79 Fig. 23: Percentage Change in Farm Crop Yields in the United States by County (20402060) 79 Fig. 24: Economic Climate Damages as a Percentage of GDP in the United States by

Figures

County (2040-2060)

Fig. 25: The Great Lakes Region

Fig. 26: The American “Rust Belt”

Fig. 27: The American “Rust Belt”

Fig. 28: The American “Rust Belt” and the American “Climate Niche”

Fig. 29: The American “Rust Belt” and the American “Climate Niche”

Fig. 30: United States Population Growth Projections Based on Different Immigration Scenarios 91 Fig. 31: United States Births, Deaths, and Net Migration, 1945–2019

Fig. 32: Components of United States Population Growth, 1941–2019

Fig. 33: The Role Of Immigrants In The American Economy

5.0 ENVISIONING AN AMERICAN “CLIMATE HAVEN”

Fig. 34: Top 100 Cities in the United States by Population in 1950

101

Fig. 35: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Categorized by Change in Population from 1950 to 2019 103 Fig. 36: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Greater than 0% Increase in Population from 1950 to 2019 103 Fig. 37: Top 100 Cities in 1950, 0% to 25% Decline in Population from 1950 to 2019

104

Fig. 38: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Greater than 25% Decline in Population from 1950 to 2019 104 Fig. 39: Cities With Declining Population Within the “Human Climate Niche”

105

Fig. 40: Number of Weeks Per Year Above 35°C (95°F) in the United State by County (2040-2060) 107 Fig. 41: Days Per Year With High Wet Bulb Temperatures in the United States by County (2040-2060) 107 Fig. 42: Sea Level Rise: Percentage of Property Below High Tide in the United States by County (2040-2060) 108 Fig. 43: Average Number of Very Large Wildfires in the United States Per Year (2040-2071) 108 Fig. 44: Percentage Change in Farm Crop Yields in the United States by County (20402060) 109 Fig. 45: Economic Climate Damages as a Percentage of GDP in the United States by County (2040-2060)

109

Fig. 46: Combined Climate Risk Analysis by City

110

Fig. 47: The Great Lakes Green Belt

112

Fig. 48: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Population Decline from Peak to 2019

114

Fig. 49: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Combined Population Decline from Peak to 2019 116 Fig. 50: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Combined Population Decline from Peak to 2019, Compared to New York City and Los Angeles 116 Fig. 51: Urban Property Vacancy by Block

118

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 52: Urban Property Vacancy by Block

119

Fig. 53: Urban Property Vacancy by Block

120

Figures

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Acronyms CIA COFA GDP IDP IOM IPCC MPI PNAS PRM RCP UDHR UN UNHCR US USA

(US) Central Intelligence Agency Compact of Free Association Gross Domestic Product Internally Displaced Person/s International Organization for Migration Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Migration Policy Institute Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US) State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Representative Concentration Pathways Universal Declaration of Human Rights United Nations United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United States (of America) United States of America

Acronyms

The Great Lakes Green Belt

1.0

Migration + Displacement

1.1 INTRODUCTION Humans started migrating, in the modern sense, at the birth of agriculture, when they stopped being hunter-gatherers, and stopped moving more or less continuously. When the primary mode of human existence transitioned away from a nomadic lifestyle, the nature of migration shifted; what was once permanent became temporary. It is then, with the birth of agriculture and later with industrialization, that humans developed a more fixed relationship with the land that they inhabited. Despite this change, however, movement, of course, continued. And thus, migration as we understand it now, from one fixed circumstance to another, began. As perpetual movement ceased, any movement was understood as a temporary state or condition, one experienced only at intervals between permanent states of fixed settlement, a passage or journey from one place to another, and as likely, back again. It became understood and widely accepted, correctly or not, that the natural state of humanity is that of stasis. In this way, as humans settled on the land and communities developed relationships with specific pieces of the land, human settlements were born. It came to be accepted then that each human being belongs somewhere, that some place is home, and that any travel away from that place is typically temporary. In practice, however, this is, and has always been, incongruent with the reality. Humans have continued to move, and likely always will. And, contrary to popular belief, humans that do move often do not return to where they leave from. The reasons for this are many, but the fact remains.

1.2 WHY DO PEOPLE MOVE? So why, since humans have settled more permanently on the land, does movement continue? In the simplest terms, movement occurs most frequently as a result of a difference or an imbalance between two places. Movement occurs when one location is understood to possess something that another location lacks. Something that a person needs or wants is missing where

1.0 Migration + Displacement they are and available, or at least perceived to be, somewhere else. In other cases, something that is present where a person is, something that they seek to escape or leave behind, is absent from another place. At times these differences may be experienced universally by entire communities, at other times they may be experienced on a much more personal level. While humans are incredibly adaptive, when conditions in one fixed circumstance change, as they are apt to, adaptation may not suffice. When conditions deteriorate beyond adapting in place, a key mechanism is, and always has been, to move in search of improved conditions. As fixed settlement has become central to how human society is structured, though, this type of movement is not always easy. It is often discouraged or disincentivized, and may be actively opposed or outright prohibited. That does not mean that this movement has stopped altogether, though. If current and projected figures are any indication, the relative stasis (understood politically as stability) that we now associate with human settlement, especially of the second half of the 20th Century, is likely eroding. Movement is again increasing and is projected to occur at a scale never before experienced. The benefits that have grown out of stasis have also enabled an incredible growth in the global population and led to extreme and widening disparities. In turn, agriculture and industrialization, the enablers of this stasis and relative prosperity (if inequitably experienced), have dramatically increased the impact of human life on the earth. While relationships with fixed points in space have solidified, relationships with the natural environment have declined with serious impacts.

1.3 OBSTACLES TO MOVEMENT For as long as humans have moved or migrated, even prior to settlement, there have been obstacles and barriers to movement. The political boundaries that now exist and which may present the greatest obstacles of all, though, are relatively new. They do not shift with the environmental conditions that support life. They do not typically expand or contract as the land shifts with rising sea levels or migrating riverbeds, ice fields, or tectonic plates. They do not grow or shrink with the size of the populations contained within each boundary. And they certainly do not change with the carrying capacity of the land to provide for those populations that inhabit it. Though the term had not yet been legally defined under international agreements when the phenomenon first emerged, the first “refugees” came when people started drawing borders and others began crossing them with cause. As territorial entities were established in a more structured manner, edge conditions began to form. As a series of centers grew and developed and as perimeters were demarcated, where these fixed circumstances came up against each other became regions of ambiguity. This, for a time, was fine. As tensions inevitably increased, power centers became stronger, and their needs and aspirations grew, a hardening of these perimeters was undertaken in an attempt to eliminate the ambiguity and solidify claims to the land. Walls and other formal barriers were erected to make physical the lines that were drawn on maps. Officials, often militarized, were set out to manage, control, and guard these perimeters and prevent crossings that were not acceptable to the power centers or the peoples currently contained within each centrality’s borders. Specific points were established where crossings were permitted, but these were highly controlled. This has largely persisted. While some movement across international boundaries is allowed, much is not. Movement between states is often negotiated bilaterally and on a case by case basis. The result is that there is

The Great Lakes Green Belt

a tremendous inequity in who possesses a right to varying degrees of free movement, or passage between states, and who does not. Some movement likely even occurs as a result of this imbalance, which in turn inspires more rigid regulation and enforcement of restrictions on the limits to this freedom. At the heart of many of these restrictions is the stated prioritization of security; it might, however, be attributed more genuinely to fear, or even a desire to maintain the present imbalance and protect the privileges enjoyed as a result.

1.4 FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, BUT FOR WHO? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, following the end of World War II, states, in Article 13, that “everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.”1 It is the freedom of movement between states, though, that is not guaranteed here. It is stated that this freedom of movement includes that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”2 Key here is the implication that leaving one’s country of origin is almost always assumed temporary, with return implied, if not mandated. The freedom of movement between states then can be understood to come with the condition of timely return to the country of origin. It is critical, therefore, to question the so-called universality of this human right to freedom of movement. As Calvin Po writes in “Inscribing Borders on Bodies,” despite the presumed universality of human rights, they nevertheless depend on a nation-state to be enacted and given meaning. The body’s subjecthood of this framework, its ‘right to have rights,’ is therefore not intrinsic to the body, but is reducible to the body’s inclusion or exclusion within a state’s territorial jurisdiction.3 In reality, that freedom manifests very differently for individuals born in different countries and is not applied equally. This is because it is granted not universally, but on a state by state basis. The right to freedom of movement is not therefore innate, it is not inherent to the body itself. It is contingent on where the body was born and what political power grants and protects the rights of bodies born and residing within the bounds of its authority. The conditions of this freedom are subject to change with the shifting sentiments of that power and its relative international influence. Therefore, there is nothing truly universal about the freedom of movement that we may claim to aspire to. Even when granted, it is not permanently guaranteed.

1.5 THE SCALE OF MIGRATION Modern international agreements recognize a fairly narrow view of what constitutes recognized and protected movement across international borders for those with limited freedom of movement based on the condition of their citizenship. Now, we primarily classify those who move between nations seeking protection as asylum-seekers, and eventually as refugees, if asylum is granted. These are relatively new terms, though, only defined after World War II and the establishment of the United Nations. Under the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,”4 a refugee is defined as “someone who is unable or

United Nations General Assembly. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations, United Nations, 10 Dec. 1948, www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. 2 Ibid. 3 Po, Calvin. “Inscribing Borders on Bodies.” e-flux Architecture, e-flux, 21 Apr. 2021, www.e-flux. com/architecture/exhausted/388000/inscribing-borders-on-bodies/. 4 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1951, www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html.

1.0 Migration + Displacement unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”5 While incredibly important for millions, this definition already excludes many who have migrated with cause and will likely be entirely insufficient to capture the scale of migration that will be experienced in the coming century. It is estimated that there are now more people experiencing some form of displacement than ever before in human history. As of the end of 2020, there were 26.4 million registered refugees under the combined mandates of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).6 That number expands to 82.4 million when including all those that the United Nations considers to be forcibly displaced, including all refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people (IDPs).7

1.6 THE PROTECTION GAP But there are large numbers of migrants that do not fall within these categories. At one end of the spectrum are those of privilege who are granted permissions to travel more freely, to obtain visas and residency permits, often available only as a result of the borders within which their body was born. Beyond citizenship, though, extensive financial means and highly desirable technical or professional skills may also expand a body’s freedoms. Importantly, though, at the other end of the spectrum, many more are forced to move outside of formal systems and regulations, covertly and often illegally, to cross borders without being granted any legal permissions or protections at all. Still many more are unable to move and suffer where they are. Some of these may be recognized internationally as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), many are not, though, and remain largely unrecognized, unassisted, and unprotected. The reasons for movement, or the desire to move, often extend beyond those that would currently grant them protections as refugees, leaving many with no formal right to travel across international borders. Even as the majority of humanity may now move less than it once did, as the world’s population continues to grow, the scale of migration may now be approaching a level that is unprecedented. As of 2017, it was estimated that as many as 250 million people live outside the nation where they were born, equivalent to roughly 3.3% of the global population.8 For comparison, it is estimated that 79 million people lived outside the nation of their birth in 1960, equivalent to around 2.6% of the total world population at the time.9 These numbers clearly eclipse the number of recognized refugees or even forcibly displaced people and may expose a protection gap.

1.7 ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION Migration that occurs, in whole or in part, as a result of climate change, for example, is not currently formally protected, even though it is already the leading cause of forced displacement worldwide. According to the Norwegian 5

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “What Is a Refugee?” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/ en-us/what-is-a-refugee.html. 6 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Refugee Statistics.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 18 June 2021, www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/. 7 Ibid. 8 Culotta, Elizabeth. “People on the Move: The Science of Migrations.” Science, 19 May 2017, doi:10.1126/science.aan6884. 9 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Refugee Council (NRC), more than 19 million people across 113 different countries were forced to flee natural disasters in 2015 alone.10 The agency estimates that natural disasters are responsible for the displacement of three to ten times the number of people displaced by war and conflict, causes of migration that are recognized and formally protected.11 Climate change has always been a fact of human existence. Environmental conditions have changed quickly and dramatically before and will again. And throughout history, humans have moved in response. But never before have there been more than seven billion humans spread across the world’s inhabitable land, all contributing to the acceleration of those changes, and all, to some degree, facing the consequences. At the same time, never before have so many people been fixed to a specific piece of land, vulnerable to any changes that occur in that place, with limited agency to relocate in response. Now, as the area of land that is inhabitable begins to itself migrate and even shrink, some of that currently inhabited land may become increasingly more difficult to extract a living from. As a result, some of it may be abandoned. In other cases, it may even disappear. Unfortunately, these changes and resulting future disasters will affect a significant portion of the global population, and may lead to a scale of displacement that the international community is simply not prepared to respond to. Already, the international community has failed to adequately provide for many of those included under the current protection frameworks which largely exclude environmental migrants. So what is the reality faced by those that are forced to migrate, both those that are currently protected and those that are not? As the scale of unprotected environmental migration grows, where will those affected go? What obstacles will they encounter along the way that limit their passage and what will they do to overcome them? In response, will the international community coordinate on the establishment of a protection system that includes environmental migrants? What can be learned from current systems and how can they best be revised, adapted, and expanded to serve the growing need? Expanding protections theoretically to include environmental migrants is one thing, but actually responding to the need is another.

1.8 RESPONDING TO DISPLACEMENT: CAMPS VERSUS CITIES For anyone forced to migrate, these are complicated questions without simple or easy answers. For those that fall outside of existing protection structures, though, options are particularly limited. For those that do fit the narrow definition of a refugee and are therefore protected under current international law, they must apply for and be granted asylum. But then where do those that are granted asylum end up once they have made the difficult journey of crossing an international border, gone through the process of applying for asylum, and finally been formally classified as a “refugee?” Would current mechanisms scale effectively to include environmental migrants if protections were simply expanded? Historically, the international community has taken the view that displacement will be short-term, so humanitarian solutions have often centered on the provision of shelter and basic services through the creation of temporary camps. Though this approach has been largely sustained as a result of political pressures and bureaucratic inertia, it has proven inadequate, if not entirely misguided. While estimates vary significantly, it is understood that after entering

10 Kamal, Baher. “Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050.” Inter Press Service, 21 Aug. 2017, www.ipsnews.net/2017/08/climate-migrants-might-reach-one-billion-by-2050/. 11 Ibid.

1.0 Migration + Displacement a camp, a refugee typically spends between 10 and 26 years there.12 Refugees housed in camps, though, while most visible, represent only a fraction of those displaced. In fact, around 60% of refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs), and asylum seekers worldwide actually reside in urban areas.13 The primary reasons for this are that towns and cities provide better access to services and opportunities and generally create a more viable path to participation in the local labor market and economy. In contrast to camps, urban areas offer refugees and other migrants a greater degree of autonomy. Within camps, freedoms are often highly restricted, participation in formal economic activities is generally prohibited, and livelihoods are often almost entirely reliant on aid. For refugees who do reside in camps, these conditions only reinforce the vulnerability of their situation and the fragility of their circumstances. Though limitations still exist outside of the camp context, refugees residing in urban settings are often able to participate in informal economies and develop some degree of independence and self-sufficiency. Risks persist, though, as individuals in these contexts often remain vulnerable to exploitation and are typically forced to operate outside of formal legal frameworks.14 The benefits that such refugees and migrants provide to the cities that they occupy, though, are significant. As James Leon-Dufour, an architect and Information Management Officer at UNHCR explains, “[b]oth socially and spatially, refugees tend to create a glue-type component in a city, filling the gaps and tying up loose ends.”15 This begins to recognize the opportunity presented by migration to urban areas and the important role migrants play in the world’s cities.

1.9 A SHIFT IN THINKING: THE COMPREHENSIVE REFUGEE RESPONSE FRAMEWORK Conceding the shortcomings of the traditional approach, the international community has, in recent years, begun to rethink strategies that center on temporary camps in favor of more integrated and sustainable solutions. In making this shift, the goal has been to bring the needs of both the displaced and hosting populations into focus and prioritize efforts and investments that benefit both communities simultaneously. This thinking begins to accept the scale of the displaced population that already resides beyond the bounds of controlled camps and acknowledges that, wherever possible, camps should be implemented not as a short-term mechanism for distributing aid, but as a vehicle for local integration, and perhaps even a pathway to naturalization where possible. In this sense, it can be understood that camps are actually the seeds from which future cities can grow. And as the global population expands and urbanizes, new cities will be needed. The Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF),16 introduced as part of the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants17 and further expanded upon within the 2018 Global Refugee Compact, lays out three durable solutions for refugees that move beyond the traditional camp strategy. The first 12 Ferris, Elizabeth. “When Refugee Displacement Drags on, Is Self-Reliance the Answer?” Brookings, Brookings, 19 June 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/06/19/ when-refugee-displacement-drags-on-is-self-reliance-the-answer/. 13 Park, Hans. “The Power of Cities.” UNHCR Innovation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 25 Nov. 2016, www.unhcr.org/innovation/the-power-of-cities/. 14 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Urban Refugees.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/urban-refugees.html. 15 Park, Hans. “The Power of Cities.” UNHCR Innovation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 25 Nov. 2016, www.unhcr.org/innovation/the-power-of-cities/. 16 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/ comprehensive-refugee-response-framework-crrf.html. 17 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/new-yorkdeclaration-for-refugees-and-migrants.html.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

INITIAL DISPLACEMENT

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

THIRD COUNTRY

#2 LOCAL INTEGRATION

#3 RESETTLEMENT #1 VOLUNTARY REPATRIATION

COUNTRY OF FIRST ARRIVAL

#2 LOCAL INTEGRATION

THIRD COUNTRY

Fig. 1: Durable Solutions under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework Source: United Nations, UNHCR

is voluntary repatriation, meaning return to the country of origin. The second involves local integration into the host community in the receiving nation, or state of first arrival following displacement. And the third is resettlement in a third country, a state other than that of origin or of first arrival.

1.9.1 VOLUNTARY REPATRIATION There is a general assumption that the preferred solution is always voluntary return. It is important to acknowledge, however, that leaving home is always a difficult decision that has not been made lightly. Once an individual leaves their home and takes on the label of refugee, asylum-seeker, illegal alien, or any other classification that is foisted upon them along the way, they have changed. And after spending years in a new place surrounded by new circumstances, they will continue to change. Meanwhile, the homes they fled will never again be as they once were, and the conditions for safe return may not be reached in the near future. In reality, many refugees will never return to their country of origin, so alternative options are needed.

voluntary repatriation

1.9.2 LOCAL INTEGRATION Where capacity and political will exist, local integration into communities in the nation of first arrival typically offers one of the more viable pathways for refugees to move beyond their temporary status and reenter society. This however places a heavy burden on states that share territorial boundaries with those experiencing large-scale displacement. Large and often sudden influxes create a serious distribution challenge and can quickly overwhelm at both the local and national levels. For this solution to succeed, low- and middle-income

local integration

1.0 Migration + Displacement

US ADMISSIONS CEILING

ALL OTHER NATIONS

9/11 TERRORIST ATTTACK ON US

200,000

US ACTUAL ADMISSIONS

TOTAL

150,000

DONALD TRUMP ELECTED US PRESIDENT

TOTAL (ALL NATIONS)

100,000

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 50,000

ALL OTHER NATIONS COMBINED

0 1982

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Fig. 2: Worldwide and United States Refugee Resettlement 1982-2020 Source: UNHCR, MPI, PRM

nations, which are where the vast majority of asylum seekers first arrive, require significant financial and technical support from the international community. In addition, local integration requires the backing and active participation of the receiving state, the local host community, and of the displaced population itself. Critical to this approach is the provision of pathways to durable legal status and naturalization by the receiving state. Beyond this, various programs should be implemented to facilitate integration, including language and vocational training, as well as those that promote positive relations between displaced and host communities. Strategic investments should be made in the development of areas where refugees will settle, with a focus on coordination with local, regional, and international frameworks that promote sustainability.18 Local integration, though, should not be seen as the only solution. It places far too much of the burden on a few nations with limited capacity and resources. In addition, abuse of this generosity unfortunately almost always leads to opposition and the eventual deterioration of relations between displaced and host communities. When this occurs, the political climate generally shifts quickly and dramatically.

1.9.3 RESETTLEMENT When voluntary return and local integration are insufficient or unattainable, international organizations may attempt to resettle refugees in third countries. As laid out by UNHCR, “[r]esettlement is the transfer of refugees from an asylum 18 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Part II - Global Compact on Refugees.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2018, www.unhcr.org/en-us/excom/unhcrannual/5ba3a5d44/ report-united-nations-high-commissioner-refugees-part-ii-global-compact.html.

resettlement in a third country

The Great Lakes Green Belt

country to another State, that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent residence.”19 However, as explained in the “Global Compact on Refugees,” “resettlement has traditionally been offered only by a limited number of countries. The need to foster a positive atmosphere for resettlement, and to enhance capacity for doing so, as well as to expand its base, cannot be overstated.”20 In the spirit of responsibility and burden-sharing, resettlement may need to be prioritized over other solutions, especially as a means to expand capacity as the need grows. Currently, the scale of third country resettlement remains miniscule when compared to other solutions and to the need more broadly. UNHCR estimates that between 1959 and 2020, a total of just under 4.4 million (4,383,094) refugees have been resettled in third countries.21 This averages out to around 70 thousand per year for just over sixty years, meaning that less than one percent of the world’s refugee population is resettled each year. Of the total number, more than 60% have been resettled in just the United States of America, more than every other country combined.22 There is a serious need to build support for this solution and to expand access to resettlement by increasing participation by nations with the capacity and resources to welcome greater numbers.

1.10 THE MYTH OF RETURN One of the major barriers to expanding resettlement, though, is the popular myth in international politics that a “good refugee” is one that returns to wherever they have come from. That is to say that popular discourse has long prioritized voluntary repatriation over all other solutions. Recalling the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” migration is assumed temporary, if only for political expediency. But, though return may be desirable for all involved on some level, practically speaking, it may not be probable or even viable in most cases. As Abdullahi Alim explains, this thinking frequently leaves refugees and other migrants “trapped in a seemingly endless state of statelessness.”23 Alim goes on to assert that “the global migration system—mired in bureaucratic inefficiencies and populist fervor—relegates refugees to a permanent state of displacement, marginalization, and trauma that prevents them from truly moving forward.”24 To meet the moment, this must change. Refugees, and other forcibly displaced migrants, should be permitted and enabled to evolve into something else, to move beyond limiting classifications, and to shed labels such as “refugee” altogether, with all of the negative associations that they carry. A “good refugee” should be newly conceived as one that ceases to be a refugee at all, despite remaining outside of the borders of their country of origin. A former refugee that is able to assimilate and participate in the local economy is also one that begins to contribute to the community and state which they come to inhabit. For receiving nations, hosting refugees has long been seen as a burden or an obligation, one that is a drain on society and redirects valuable resources away from its citizens to attend to the needs of “outsiders.” This does not have to be the case. Immigration of all kinds should be seen as an opportunity. 19 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Resettlement.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/resettlement.html. 20 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Global Compact on Refugees – Booklet.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2018, www.unhcr.org/5c658aed4. 21 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Refugee Statistics.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/download/?url=M9KpTS. 22 Ibid. 23 Alim, Abdullahi. “The West’s Obsession With ‘Good Refugees’ Is Bad Policy.” Foreign Policy, 3 Apr. 2021, foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/03/west-refugee-system-somalia-dadaab-ty-mccormickreview/. 24 Ibid.

1.0 Migration + Displacement

1.11 BORN OF MIGRATION, CITIES CAN BE REBORN OF THE SAME If environmental migration is not directed and managed, but allowed to unfold organically and within the limits of the modern nation-state regime, it will occur only within the borders of those nations that are affected at first. This first stage, which is already underway, will primarily involve rapid, uncontrolled, and unplanned urbanization as large numbers of rural farmers abandon their failing crops in search of opportunity and many others are displaced by extreme weather events. As Abrahm Lustgarten writes in “The Great Climate Migration” for The New York Times Magazine, For all the ways in which human migration is hard to predict, one trend is clear: Around the world, as people run short of food and abandon farms, they gravitate toward cities, which quickly grow overcrowded. It’s in these cities, where waves of new people stretch infrastructure, resources and services to their limits, that migration researchers warn that the most severe strains on society will unfold. Food has to be imported — stretching reliance on already-struggling farms and increasing its cost. People will congregate in slums, with little water or electricity, where they are more vulnerable to flooding or other disasters. The slums fuel extremism and chaos.25 While this pattern exists independent of climate change, it has been accelerated as a result, especially in less developed regions. These cities are ill-equipped to serve the massive influxes that they will receive, which will lead to rapidly deteriorating conditions, and, in the end, many may continue on, not finding what they sought in the cities of their home nations. As conditions worsen and whole regions become uninhabitable or impossible to extract a livelihood from, many will come up against international boundaries. The likely move to urban areas should be harnessed and manipulated, this trend should be directed not necessarily to the cities where migration might naturally occur. In many cases, this migration would only be temporary or create equally disastrous conditions, both for arriving migrants and current city residents. This movement would naturally occur almost entirely within the bounds of a nation-state and would rarely allow those migrants to fully escape the negative effects of climate change. Though day to day existence might be less directly connected to the earth, as many would be rural farmers, their difficulties would not recede. These cities rely on those rural farmers to support their food systems. They rely on water from those areas that may experience intermittent drought. Flooding is perhaps an even greater challenge to manage within cities, where population density creates extreme vulnerability. Migration stands at the forefront of global urbanization. Almost every city in the world is the product of some form of migration, whether domestic or international. As humanity has undergone a relatively rapid transition from agriculture to industrialization, away from small-scale farming to industrial food production, to manufacturing, and more recently toward a service based economy, it has quickly urbanized. As of 2018, the United Nations estimated that 55% of the world’s population then resided in urban areas, with that proportion projected to rise to 68% by 2050.26 For the first time in human history, the majority of the global population now resides in urban areas, with further 25 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/ climate-migration.html. 26 UN DESA Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “68% Of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas by 2050, Says UN.” United Nations, United Nations, 16 May 2018, www. un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects. html.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

urbanization expected to continue. At the same time, many of the world’s wealthier nations have begun to experience slowing or even declining population growth rates in recent years. While low fertility rates have been the primary force behind this trend, in certain cases, declining immigration rates (or even rising emigration rates) have also contributed in a meaningful way. This phenomenon presents a real challenge for the affected nations by threatening to disrupt labor markets and destabilize economic performance. In addition, as these trends lead to aging populations, there will be an inevitable strain on public services, health care systems, and pension, retirement, and social security resources. The United States of America, for example, experienced between 2010 and 2020 the slowest rate of population growth since the 1930s following The Great Depression and the second slowest rate on record since the first American census was taken in 1790.27 Long a leader in both immigration and refugee resettlement, the nation has also seen a decline in both over recent years. In many ways, this has been the result of shifting popular sentiment, political rhetoric, and consequent policy. But, when combined with a declining natural birth rate and an aging population, these trends threaten to undermine the country’s position in the world, and portend an uncertain future. At the intersection of urbanization and population decline, though, is a third trend that may present an opportunity. In wealthy countries like the United States that are experiencing uncertainty over their demographic outlooks, some regions have seen urbanization rates stall or even reverse. One aspect of this phenomenon is that there are countless examples of post-industrial cities, once home to large numbers of manufacturing and other manual labor jobs, which have seen dramatic declines in population over the last fifty to seventy years. Advanced economies have largely deindustrialized in their shift to service provision. The manufacturing jobs that had previously sustained these urban centers have migrated or been eliminated altogether due to the globalization of the world’s economy, the expansion of international trade, and the automation of this work. This has resulted in a redistribution of population, with often significant out-migration from deindustrializing cities towards urban centers better adapted to modernizing service and technology based economies. When considered alongside climate change and its projected effects on global migration patterns, urbanization and deindustrialization patterns expose an opportunity. For example, in the United States, many of the country’s most populated cities are poorly positioned in regards to the anticipated impacts of climate change. In fact, many of the country’s fastest growing cities, such as Phoenix, Austin, and Miami, are situated in highly vulnerable locations and should expect to see a significant reversal of current growth in the coming decades. At the same time, the majority of the nation’s depopulated postindustrial urban areas are largely well-located in this regard, with some even expected to see improved climatic conditions. With advanced planning and directed resettlement, national population growth might be maintained while struggling cities are repopulated and eventually revitalized by arriving environmental migrants, both domestic and foreign-born. Cities have always been born of migration. There is no reason that those that have experienced a decline cannot be reborn of the same. Though domestic politics may be the biggest barrier to this solution, the potential cannot be ignored. Resettlement should be reframed as an opportunity, especially for those wealthier nations, like the United States, Japan, or much of Western Europe, that are currently experiencing stagnating or declining population

27 Tavernise, Sabrina, and Robert Gebeloff. “U.S. Population Over Last Decade Grew at Slowest Rate Since 1930s.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Apr. 2021, www.nytimes. com/2021/04/26/us/us-census-numbers.html.

cities are born of both migration and of refugees, there is no reason that those that have experienced a decline cannot be reborn of the same

1.0 Migration + Displacement growth rates. Environmental migration will occur either way, but with advanced planning it might be directed toward positive outcomes.

1.12 PROTECTING ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRANTS AND REFRAMING RESETTLEMENT In summary, the current nation-state system, the borders that define our territories, and the current idea of citizenship must be rethought in order to accommodate the scale of migration and displacement that climate change will cause in the coming century. To plan for the predicted mass migration would help to reduce conflict and loss of life, decrease the number of people left in near permanent states of statelessness, and enable the matching of people with places that have experienced population decline in recent decades. This has the potential to spur economic growth, revitalize abandoned built environments and the systems that support them, and create opportunities for both displaced and host communities. Climate change is the primary reason that migration and displacement are anticipated to dramatically increase in the very near future. Unfortunately, a number of existing challenges limit the international community’s ability to effectively respond to the scale of environmental migration that is projected to occur. These barriers include the rigidity of the modern nation-state regime and the international borders that define it, the resulting limits on any universal right to freedom of movement, and the absence of a defined international protection structure for those displaced due to climate change. At the same time, many of the world’s wealthier nations, which are far better positioned to adapt to the effects of climate change, are facing challenges that stem from slowing or declining population growth rates. It is clear from this analysis that the world is not currently prepared to face these challenges and that the existing global migration system will be impotent in facing the scale of projected displacement. So what needs to happen and how can existing barriers be overcome? First, environmental migration needs to be established as a defined classification of movement with cause and a protection framework needs to be developed to serve these migrants. Next, resettlement as a mechanism for responding to global displacement needs to be reimagined and dramatically expanded. And finally, resettlement must be intentionally directed to occur in regions where environmental conditions are projected to continue to support human life for decades to come. Targeted resettlement must be reframed not as burden-sharing alone, but as an opportunity to replenish aging and declining populations, as well as a strategy for urban revitalization in post-industrial cities across wealthy developed nations, especially those with favorable climate conditions, which are wellpositioned to support long-term sustainable development. Given the United States of America’s long history as a nation of immigrants, its legacy as a leader in resettlement, and its own concerns over demographic trends, the nation is particularly well-positioned to model a program of environmental migrant resettlement in its depopulated and deindustrialized urban areas, which are primarily situated in a region that is not expected to be seriously impacted by climate change.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

2.0

Environmental Migration

2.1 INTRODUCTION Climate change is accelerating. Its effects are becoming increasingly visible across the planet. Extreme weather events and resulting disasters of all kinds are occurring more frequently. With these changes has come the realization that one of the major results will be a mass migration of people whose lives and livelihoods have been or will be severely impacted by environmental changes and the disasters that result. While efforts should be made to limit the scale of this migration, for many it may remain an important adaptation strategy where others are insufficient or unavailable. Although projections vary widely because the issue of how to designate environmental migrants has not been resolved and the range of climate change outcomes remains vast, it is estimated that by 2050 there will be between 25 million and one billion environmental migrants worldwide.28 Commonly cited, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) places the estimate at 200 million, including those forced to move both temporarily and permanently, as well as within their country of origin and across international borders.29 Due to the predicted scale of the issue, there is a growing focus on understanding and developing solutions to the phenomenon and the challenges that it will bring. Critical to this is establishing that climate change is indeed a significant primary cause of displacement and large-scale migration both within and between states.

2.2 THE “HUMAN CLIMATE NICHE” Throughout history, the majority of humanity has lived on land exposed to a relatively narrow range of climatic conditions when compared to all those that

28 Kamal, Baher. “Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050.” Inter Press Service, 21 Aug. 2017, www.ipsnews.net/2017/08/climate-migrants-might-reach-one-billion-by-2050/. 29 Ibid.

2.0 Environmental Migration

7.8 BILLION

250 MILLION

82.4 MILLION

26.4 MILLION

Global Population (2020)

People Living Outside Country of Origin (2017)

Current Scale of Forced Displacement (2020)

Current Number of Registered Refugees (2020)

9.7 BILLION

1 BILLION

200 MILLION

25 MILLION

Global Population (2050)

High Environmental Migration (2050)

Medium Environmental Migration (2050)

Low Environmental Migration (2050)

Fig. 3: Current and Projected Scale of Global Population, Forced Displacement, and Environmental Migration Source: United Nations

occur across the earth’s surface.30 In the widely cited 2019 study “Future of the human climate niche,” authors Chi Xu et al. posit that these conditions are marked by average annual temperatures of around 13°C and create what they refer to as the “human climate niche.”31 This niche represents the same land area that has afforded humans the conditions to prosper for more than 6,000 years.32 While other factors such as soil fertility and precipitation patterns were studied, their research found that temperature has had by far the strongest correlation with where humans have settled.33 The study explains that most species live primarily within a fairly narrow range of temperatures and that, despite extensive population growth and rapid technological advances, humans have largely followed this pattern and continue to reside in areas of the planet marked by similar conditions to those inhabited for millennia.34 Similarly, the agricultural activities that support human life are primarily linked to crops and livestock that inhabit a complementary climate niche.35 Chi Xu et al. go on to predict that based on a range of climate change scenarios and population growth outcomes, anywhere from one to three billion people may be left outside of the “human climate niche” within the next 50 years.36 At present, only 0.8% of the world’s land area experiences average annual temperatures above 29°C, and these conditions are mostly confined to Africa’s Sahara Desert.37 Within the next 50 years, though, as much as a third of the 30 Xu, Chi, et al. “Future of the Human Climate Niche.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, no. 21, 4 May 2020, pp. 11350–11355., doi:10.1073/pnas.1910114117. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 4: “Human Climate Niche:” Current Suitability (2019) Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Fig. 5: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 2.6 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

2.0 Environmental Migration

Fig. 6: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 4.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Fig. 7: “Human Climate Niche:” Suitability in 2070 at RCP 8.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The Great Lakes Green Belt

2.0 Environmental Migration

Fig. 8: “Human Climate Niche:” Change in Suitability from 2019 to 2070 at RCP 8.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The Great Lakes Green Belt

global population, approximately 3.5 billion people, could witness these temperatures where they live now.38 Similarly, Abrahm Lustgarten estimates that only around 1% of the earth’s surface is currently uninhabitable due to extreme heat, but that that area is expected to rise to around 19% by 2070, and will include land that is currently inhabited by billions of people.39 It is unlikely that technological solutions alone will allow humanity to continue to survive and prosper in these conditions. Without dramatic (and costly) mitigation and adaptation measures, which will likely include migration for some, much of the world’s population will soon endure hotter temperatures than almost any humans alive today or at any time in recorded history.40

2.3 “MOBILITY IS RESILIENCE” It is unlikely that all those who experience these rising temperatures and changing climatic conditions will migrate, even if they are permitted to. There is, therefore, unlikely to be an exact correlation between changes to the “human climate niche” and migration patterns. In certain cases, especially where resources are plentiful and capacity is higher, mitigation and adaptation activities may be sufficient to manage the negative effects of rising temperatures. But, given the dramatic change in average temperatures alone, it is probable that, at least for some, migration will be the only option, even if it remains a last resort. Beyond rising temperatures, there are a number of other anticipated environmental changes that will likely each influence migration patterns and lead to large-scale displacement, as well. When it does occur, migration often occurs in waves and as a result of sudden and dramatic developments, such as extreme weather events and disasters. However, rising sea levels, desertification, flooding, land degradation, and other environmental changes will all lead to some amount of displacement and migration, as well. In these cases, without a specific incident, migration may occur more gradually and in relatively smaller numbers, which may create challenges in directly attributing such movement to environmental conditions alone. But another important factor is that, while some land will become uninhabitable, other regions will see improved climatic conditions. In other words, the so-called “human climate niche” is not simply shrinking, it is actually itself migrating.41 Some of the land area that was previously uninhabitable due to extreme low temperatures may become increasingly attractive, creating even greater incentive for migration. “Therefore,” as Chi Xu et al. explain, “despite the formidable psychological, social, and political barriers to migration, a change in the geographical distribution of human populations and agricultural production is . . . [a] likely part of the spontaneous or managed adaptive response of humanity to a changing climate.”42 This may present an opportunity if the international community is willing to reevaluate current restrictions on freedom of movement and develop mechanisms that not only allow but enable certain migration, even if it remains highly controlled. As Abrahm Lustgarten writes in “The Great Climate Migration” for The New York Times Magazine, There is no more natural and fundamental adaptation to a changing climate than to migrate. It is the obvious progression the earliest Homo

38 Ibid. 39 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/ climate-migration.html. 40 Xu, Chi, et al. “Future of the Human Climate Niche.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, no. 21, 4 May 2020, pp. 11350–11355., doi:10.1073/pnas.1910114117. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

“mobility is resilience”

2.0 Environmental Migration sapiens pursued out of Africa, and the same one the Mayans tried 1,200 years ago. As Lorenzo Guadagno at the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration told me recently, ‘Mobility is resilience.’ Every policy choice that allows people the flexibility to decide for themselves where they live helps make them safer.43 Understanding that “mobility is resilience,” it is clear that some degree of freedom of movement will be critical to humanity’s ability to respond to and adapt to the effects of climate change. It would be a mistake not to acknowledge this and begin to plan accordingly.

2.4 THE DEBATE OVER ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION So, as climate change accelerates and the “human climate niche” shifts, how will the international community respond to the resulting displacement and migration? There are those that, for a variety of reasons, have taken the position that no new protections should be established for those migrating, in whole or in part, as a result of climate change. Others have proposed expanding the definition of what constitutes a “refugee” in order to include environmental migrants and extend similar protections to those affected. The advantage of this approach comes from the use of familiar existing terms and frameworks that already fit within the neo-liberal world order’s understanding of the relationship between the nation-state and individuals who would transgress defined political boundaries seeking protection. However, many others agree that this might be a mistake, and have proposed that a new and unique designation such as “environmental migrant” be established and given a universally agreed upon legal definition with specific protections.

2.4.1 CHALLENGES Though establishing a new “environmental migrant” designation appears to be the most promising strategy to ensure a positive outcome for all those displaced by the effects of climate change, in order to accomplish this task, a number of challenges must be overcome. One of the biggest challenges faced in establishing a definition and subsequently providing those displaced with protections comes in distinguishing which migrants can attribute their displacement primarily to environmental factors and which cannot. As Anthony Oliver-Smith explains, “without the parameters of an established definition, it is difficult to state whether migrating populations are actually environmental migrants or, for example, economic migrants.”44 This concern is central to the opposition’s argument against recognizing the severe vulnerabilities experienced as a result of climate change and protecting environmental migrants as members of a distinct and isolated phenomenon. In addition, it can be nearly impossible to distinguish migration that is forced from that which is voluntary. How can the international community develop a methodology for discerning legitimate claims of forced displacement from voluntary decisions to migrate in search of improved economic opportunities, for example? As Vikram Kolmannskog and Lisetta Trebbi explain, “there are major methodological challenges involved in establishing the link between climate change and displacement. People leave their homes for a complex set

43 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/ climate-migration.html. 44 Oliver-Smith, Anthony. “Debating Environmental Migration: Society, Nature And Population Displacement In Climate Change.” Journal of International Development, vol. 24, no. 8, 2012, pp. 1058–1070., doi:10.1002/jid.2887.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

of reasons, and there is ‘multi-causality’ even in forced migration.”45 When a person makes the decision to leave their home, it is often difficult to untangle the pressures they have experienced and fully parse their reasoning. But who has the right to determine whether a person’s rationale for moving is valid and whether their decision to move represents a voluntary choice or rather a necessary adaptation mechanism or even a survival strategy? The motivations behind migration are always difficult to differentiate, but in the case of environmental factors, it can be particularly confounding. While environmental migration resulting from sudden natural disasters like earthquakes or rapid-onset flooding are often easier to isolate and attribute, as Maria Stavropoulou explains, “there are many situations of gradual environmental degradation, such as desertification, where people adapt and may eventually migrate, and where the imperative to perceive or treat them as refugees is not obvious.”46 This has been one of the primary obstacles that advocates of a coordinated response to climate change have faced all along, and it is no different for those displaced as a result. Except when easily attributed to a specific climate event, many of the effects are experienced incrementally over time, so it may be difficult to determine direct causation. In fact, rapid-onset natural disasters resulting from specific climate events are more likely to result in only temporary displacement and not the kind of long-term or permanent displacement that would largely constitute the kind of migration that would necessitate a protection framework.47 Therefore, it may actually be more challenging to link displacement back to environmental causes when long-term durable protection solutions are most needed. Similarly, humanitarian and national emergency and disaster response agencies are far better equipped to respond to the types of disasters that result in only temporary displacement, with coordinated return often a motivating force behind their activities. There are numerous systems in place to respond to extreme weather events, not to mention the extensive media coverage, inevitable political attention, and financial support that typically accompany such events. This is often not the case for victims of more gradual changing environmental conditions. Environmental changes do not necessarily need to be untangled from all other factors, though, in order for those affected to gain status as “environmental migrants” and subsequently benefit from such a designation. With the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” as a reference, Olivia Dun and François Gemenne explain that, in determining whether or not someone is a ‘Convention refugee’ it is not necessary to determine whether or not the reason leading to persecution (political opinion, race, nationality, religion or membership of a particular social group) is the main reason for displacement but whether or not it happened.48 This rationale could be similarly applied in the case of “environmental migrants,” and may present a model for how to overcome this obstacle.

45 Kolmannskog, Vikram, and Lisetta Trebbi. “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: a Multi-Track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps.” International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, no. 879, 2010, pp. 713–730., doi:10.1017/s1816383110000500. 46 Stavropoulou, Maria. Drowned in Definitions?, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www. fmreview.org/climatechange/stavropoulou. 47 Kolmannskog, Vikram, and Lisetta Trebbi. “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: a Multi-Track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps.” International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, no. 879, 2010, pp. 713–730., doi:10.1017/s1816383110000500. 48 Dun, Olivia, and François Gemenne. Defining ‘Environmental Migration’, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www.fmreview.org/climatechange/dun-gemenne.

2.0 Environmental Migration

2.4.2 CLIMATE REFUGEES? Throughout the years that the topic has been discussed, a number of possible solutions to providing these protections have been explored. An obvious starting point has been to consider amending the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” to include those displaced across international borders due to environmental and climatic causes as “refugees,” “climate refugees,” or “environmental refugees.” The benefit of this approach would be to incorporate those affected into the frameworks of established and widely adopted and regularly implemented international agreements. Another benefit is that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM), already likely the international organizations best equipped to manage the impending crisis, could, with expanded mandates, be entrusted to do so.49 There are concerns, though, that any attempt to expand refugee-like protections would, as Maria Stavropoulou puts it, “serve only to confuse the traditional concept of a refugee and play into the hands of those – governments – who wish to classify all as economic migrants and thereby avoid their obligation to provide refugee protection.”50 In this way, nations seeking to evade their responsibilities under existing protection frameworks like the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” could paradoxically benefit from attempts to expand protections in this way. By muddling the popular understanding of a “refugee,” states could, through political rhetoric, diminish the perceived scale of the problem and further restrict who they grant asylum to. For these reasons, this strategy has largely been abandoned on the basis that any adjustments to the existing 1951 Refugee Convention and associated agreements could risk renegotiation of existing agreements and the subsequent weakening of existing protections. While it is possible that this approach could have positive results, that seems unlikely given the current political climate. It is widely feared that reopening the 1951 Convention would more likely result in narrowing the criteria for who qualifies as a refugee, weakening the protections for those who do, and ultimately the effective destruction of the modern refugee protection framework.51

2.4.3 SKEPTICISM AND OPPOSITION Any attempt to establish a protection framework for environmental migrants will have to address these challenges, but it will also require significant political support from across the international community. Unfortunately, there remain those that oppose this approach. As with climate change itself, there remains some skepticism about whether or not environmental migration is, or ever will be, a major issue that needs to be addressed through a formal international response. As Maria Stavropoulou explains, “there are those who believe that any notion of the existence of ‘environmental refugees’ and their need for refugee-like protection is at best exaggerated and at worst politically motivated and dangerous.”52 Some believe that such a designation would be arbitrary and impossible to truly define, since environmental causes are particularly difficult to isolate and 49 Fornalé, Elisa, and Curtis F Doebbler. “UNHCR and Protection and Assistance for the Victims of Climate Change.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 183, no. 4, 9 Nov. 2016, pp. 329–335., doi:10.1111/geoj.12193. 50 Stavropoulou, Maria. Drowned in Definitions?, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www. fmreview.org/climatechange/stavropoulou. 51 Kolmannskog, Vikram, and Lisetta Trebbi. “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: a Multi-Track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps.” International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, no. 879, 2010, pp. 713–730., doi:10.1017/s1816383110000500. 52 Stavropoulou, Maria. Drowned in Definitions?, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www. fmreview.org/climatechange/stavropoulou.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

attribute to. Others fear that such a designation, by expanding protections for migrants more broadly, would weaken the existing criteria for protection and could be easily abused, at times by those without legitimate need, and at other times by nation-states wishing to shirk their responsibilities. Either result could put an unnecessary strain on the international community’s capacity to respond by redirecting resources away from those in greatest need and diluting efforts. Unfortunately, at this time, there seems to be little political will to move toward expanding protections to a wider range of displaced persons. On the contrary, there may actually be a growing desire to reduce protections. Nationalist and isolationist sentiments have gained strength and legitimacy in many states, while the politics of xenophobia have been embraced by large segments of the global population. This all contributes to the narrative of why reopening and renegotiating the 1951 Convention could be a dangerous approach. It also demonstrates how difficult establishing a new protection framework will be, while at the same time how critically one is needed.

2.5 IN SUPPORT OF UNIQUE PROTECTIONS These challenges, though all representing valid concerns that must be addressed, are not reason alone to abandon the effort and should not prevent the establishment of an “environmental migrant” designation and an associated protection framework to support all those who could be classified as such. An entirely new agreement and framework that seeks to independently address this challenge could be established that borrows from existing policies and conventions without jeopardizing them. In addition, there is a depth of work that has already been done to build a universal definition to classify environmental migrants. Such an agreement could bring this work together and put it into practice.

2.5.1 DEFINING “ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRANTS” One of the most widely accepted definitions that has been explored is that set out by the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the “International Migration Law: Glossary on Migration.” Here “environmental migrants” are defined as: persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move within their country or abroad.53 Here also, “environmentally displaced persons” are defined as: persons who are displaced within their country of habitual residence or who have crossed an international border and for whom environmental degradation, deterioration or destruction is a major cause of their displacement, although not necessarily the sole one. This term is used as a less controversial alternative to environmental refugee or climate refugee that have no legal basis or raison d’être in international law, to refer to a category of environmental migrants whose movement is of a clearly forced nature.54 These definitions provide an initial framework to build on and may well be

53 Perruchoud, Richard, and Jillyanne Redpath-Cross. Glossary on Migration. International Organization for Migration, 2011. 54 Ibid.

2.0 Environmental Migration definitions that could be adopted and become widely accepted.

2.5.2 JUSTIFICATIONS Implementing new designations and corresponding definitions like these would allow for more advanced study of the problem and the formation of a better understanding of the underlying causes and decision-making processes that lead to environmental migration.55 Establishing definitions would also allow for a better understanding of the true scale of the issue and to track its evolution over time.56 This is important, because more consistent projections could help to overcome the concerns that current estimates must be exaggerated or determined arbitrarily since they vary so dramatically.57 Developing accurate estimates is therefore critical to assessing the problem and determining the appropriate response. From a legal and policy standpoint, a definition is needed to determine what rights such persons should be afforded and what protections the international community should be responsible for providing to those who qualify.58 In addition, a definition could help to make the combined impacted populations more visible, their plight more widely acknowledged, and would help to institute a structure through which they might receive the assistance that they need and deserve. From a more ideological perspective, Benoît Mayer outlines three primary narratives that help to justify the establishment of specific protections for environmental migrants separate from those afforded to other vulnerable population groups. The first centers on the protection of human rights and leans heavily on a broader understanding of international cooperation. This rationale borrows from the foundational logic behind our current understanding of refugees and displaced persons, which both benefit from some formal identification and protection.59 It also ties in with previous discussions of the illusion of a universal freedom of movement and the need to significantly expand this freedom as an available adaptive response. The next narrative is that of responsibility and burden sharing, especially in relation to the varying contributions of each state to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.60 This narrative is deeply tied to the immense imbalance that exists between those states that have contributed most substantially to the underlying problem and those individuals that are most vulnerable to the effects. Some of the most vocal opponents of this rationale are perhaps representatives of states that are among those most responsible and that would likely be held most accountable for their contributions to the problem. The world’s wealthy and powerful developed nations, many of which rose to their current standing through rapid industrialization, experienced this growth often at the expense of the planet and of poorer states. Often this came in the form of extraction of natural resources and exploitation of labor. But what has 55 Dun, Olivia, and François Gemenne. Defining ‘Environmental Migration’, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www.fmreview.org/climatechange/dun-gemenne. 56 Fornalé, Elisa, and Curtis F Doebbler. “UNHCR and Protection and Assistance for the Victims of Climate Change.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 183, no. 4, 9 Nov. 2016, pp. 329–335., doi:10.1111/geoj.12193. 57 Oliver-Smith, Anthony. “Debating Environmental Migration: Society, Nature And Population Displacement In Climate Change.” Journal of International Development, vol. 24, no. 8, 2012, pp. 1058–1070., doi:10.1002/jid.2887. 58 Kolmannskog, Vikram, and Lisetta Trebbi. “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: a Multi-Track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps.” International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, no. 879, 2010, pp. 713–730., doi:10.1017/s1816383110000500. 59 Mayer, Benoît. “The Arbitrary Project of Protecting Environmental Migrants.” Advances in Global Change Research, vol. 61, 17 Dec. 2015, pp. 189–200., doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25796-9_12. 60 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

become clear now, is that the cost to the environment was far greater than was understood at the time. Those industrialized nations have contributed far greater to climate change through a disproportionate release of greenhouse gas emissions. With the wealth amassed at the expense of the earth and its most vulnerable inhabitants, these nations are generally better positioned to weather the effects of climate change and are therefore least likely to produce great numbers of environmental migrants. These are generally also the nations that are best positioned to receive environmental migrants if protections were to be expanded. And while most nations in this position seem to fear this responsibility, there is an emerging recognition of the opportunity that it presents. Mayer’s final narrative is that of national security,61 which actually draws on the nationalist and xenophobic sentiments that many opponents of these efforts subscribe to. This justification does not rely on an ethical argument, but rather on a commonly held fear of the “other.” What it lacks in ethical convictions, though, it makes up for in providing a justification that many who might otherwise oppose protecting migrants could potentially support. Therein lies its inherent strength. The objective of this rationale is to preemptively establish a framework for protecting those at risk of displacement in order to prevent, or at least limit, large-scale, especially international, migration. This has traditionally been a cause that can unite a wide spectrum of ideological positions and may provide the strongest foundation on which to build support.

2.6 THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION Despite the challenges and the opposition, it would be a mistake not to work toward the protection of “environmental migrants.” There is no question that significant migration will occur, and at the scale that is projected in the coming century, it simply cannot be ignored. This migration has the potential to create a global emergency that will dramatically reshape the world for centuries. Taking an ethical approach involving the protection of human rights, the recognition of responsibility, and the acceptance of a share of the burden, though, may not be enough to convince many that a solution is needed. Alternatively, the very real anxieties around national security should be shared by every nation and may be the key motivating force behind any action. There are also serious risks associated with not addressing the issue in advance. Already, with current levels of displacement and migration, the international community is buckling under the pressure. Any initial migration has the potential to lead to further displacement as the strain on the environment is compounded, such as through land degradation. Unmanaged displacement will inevitably lead to competition over access to services, shelter, and limited natural resources. With each new displacement event, there is a ripple effect, with hosting communities thrown into distress, which often leads to deteriorating conditions for both communities and eventually to the further displacement of members of both communities. It will also put an immense strain on the borders that define the world’s regime of nation-states. When migration occurs that is blocked at international borders, large numbers of people will amass at these borders. Many will try to cross illegally despite numerous barriers and the dangerous conditions they encounter along the way. Many may forfeit exorbitant sums of money in order to engage smugglers with dubious reputations and varying results. Large numbers amassing at borders will put an exceptional strain on communities that already reside there and will lead to tensions both with the local communities and with the neighboring state that is likely to respond by hardening its borders in an effort to fend off the growing numbers and to discourage additional 61 Ibid.

2.0 Environmental Migration arrivals. Typically, with each large-scale influx, political sentiments shift further in opposition, borders are hardened, and acceptance rates of asylum seekers are lowered in an effort to deter asylum applications and illegal attempts to cross outside of formal systems. The situation grows worse and more are displaced in the process.

2.7 A PREVIEW OF THE FUTURE A vision of what the world can expect in the coming years, if environmental migration reaches even a fraction of the projected numbers, can be extrapolated from contemporary situations. Two prominent examples include the longstanding crisis at the border between Mexico and the United States of America and the ongoing European migrant crisis that recently reached a climax in 2015. While the crisis in Europe has stabilized for now, both of these situations will likely deteriorate further as a result of climate change. The intense debates around each crisis suggest just how tenuous the relative stability that the world has come to expect really is and how quickly domestic politics can be thrown into chaos by migrant surges. Situations like these are likely to repeat across the globe at borders that separate wealthy and well-resourced nations from those with less and that separate nations better able to adapt to climate change from those that may struggle to do so.

2.7.1 THE CRISIS AT THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO BORDER The land border between Mexico and the United States of America, the world’s longest boundary that separates a wealthy nation from a poorer one, is already the world’s most frequently crossed international border with an estimated half a million people crossing from Mexico into the United States each day.62 Of course, many return and cross numerous times each year. In addition, though the numbers fluctuate significantly from year to year, United States Customs and Border Protection typically apprehends anywhere from around 500,000 to a million people attempting to cross the border illegally from Mexico into the United States annually.63 This number likely includes many repeat attempts. Although the greatest proportion of these are typically Mexican nationals, large numbers also originate from the small Central American nations of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, commonly referred to as the Northern Triangle.64 Asylum-seekers and would-be immigrants from across Mexico and Central America continually gather along the border with hopes of entering the United States of America. Already the site of a perennial crisis, the region is projected to see an increase in activity as a result of climate change. For many years, attempts to migrate to the United States over land through Mexico have largely been fueled by economic pressures, political forces, corruption, and gang violence, but recent migration has also been linked to climate change and natural disasters.65 As Adam Wernick asserts in “Climate change is contributing to the migration of Central American refugees,” Central America may become

62 Southern Border Communities Coalition. “The U.S.-Mexico Border Region at a Glance - Border Lens: A Border Research Project.” Southern Border Communities Coalition, Alliance San Diego, 11 Sept. 2020, www.southernborder.org/border_lens_southern_border_region_at_a_glance. 63 U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Southwest Land Border Encounters.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, 9 June 2021, www.cbp.gov/newsroom/ stats/southwest-land-border-encounters. 64 U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Southwest Land Border Encounters (By Component).” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, 9 June 2021, www.cbp. gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters-by-component. 65 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/ climate-migration.html.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

the epicenter of climate change across North and South America.66 Wernick goes on to explain that this is because the region occupies “an isthmus, meaning it has large bodies of water on two sides, so it is more vulnerable to sea level rise, powerful storms, hurricanes and large swings between too much and too little rain.”67 In order to estimate the scale of the anticipated migration to the United States and Mexico border, The New York Times Magazine, ProPublica, and the Pulitzer Center developed a model based on various climate change scenarios. In more extreme scenarios, Abrahm Lustgarten explains, they projected that over 30 million total migrants (inclusive of environmental migrants and all others, as well) would move from across Central America and Mexico toward the border with the United States by 2050, with between 700,000 and 1.5 million arriving each year.68 Another study, cited by Michael Kimmelman in “Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis,” “predicts that 10 percent of Mexicans ages 15 to 65 could eventually try to emigrate north as a result of rising temperatures, drought and floods, potentially scattering millions of people and heightening already extreme political tensions over immigration.”69 What these projections suggest is that an already tense situation, one that is now frequently understood as a humanitarian crisis, is likely to worsen if nothing is done to address the underlying issues and also acknowledge that many will migrate no matter what is done to deter and block their passage. The question is, how will the affected countries, but especially the United States, respond?

2.7.2 THE EUROPEAN MIGRANT CRISIS The European migrant crisis, which reached a climax in 2015, was marked by unprecedented numbers of migrants attempting to enter Europe seeking asylum. In 2015 alone, Europe, including the 28 European Union member states, Norway, and Switzerland, received a record of over 1.3 million asylum applications.70 Previously, the highest number of asylum requests in a single year had been around 700,000 in 1992 following the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.71 Of those that applied in 2015, though, only a fraction, just under 300,000, were granted asylum in Europe, with the vast majority received by Germany.72 When measured on a per capita basis, though, Hungary and Sweden took in the greatest shares.73 The recent influx, which was primarily fueled by conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, contributed to a political and humanitarian crisis across the continent with wide ranging effects. The situation was notoriously exploited by separatist activists to fuel Euroscepticism (growing doubts over the European project as a whole) and by rightwing politicians to stoke xenophobia and nationalism. In this case, land borders played a lesser role than in that of the United States and Mexico. The majority of migrants arrived to Europe, especially Greece and Italy, after making a dangerous passage, often in overcrowded crafts that were 66 Wernick, Adam. “Climate Change Is Contributing to the Migration of Central American Refugees.” The World, PRX, 15 July 2018, www.pri.org/stories/2018-07-15/climate-changecontributing-migration-central-american-refugees. 67 Ibid. 68 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/ climate-migration.html. 69 Kimmelman, Michael. “Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2017, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/17/world/ americas/mexico-city-sinking.html. 70 “Number of Refugees to Europe Surges to Record 1.3 Million in 2015.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center, 2 Aug. 2016, www.pewresearch.org/ global/2016/08/02/number-of-refugees-to-europe-surges-to-record-1-3-million-in-2015/. 71 Ibid. 72 BBC News. “Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe Explained in Seven Charts.” BBC News, BBC, 4 Mar. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911. 73 Ibid.

2.0 Environmental Migration ill-equipped for the journey, across the Mediterranean Sea from Northern Africa and the Middle East. Although many died attempting the journey, other migrants were not deterred and the flow persisted. And though the crisis was officially declared over in 2019, migration has continued. With anticipated addition of environmental migration, a resurgence should be expected.

2.7.3 A NEW URGENCY TO ACT These examples are nothing compared to what will be experienced if plans are not made to respond to the impending environmental migration crisis. They offer a valuable preview of the future and clearly demonstrate how poorly prepared the world is to respond to large-scale displacement events and how dramatic the effects could be if environmental migration projections come to fruition. Compared to the scale of displacement that occurs each year across the world, the United States and Europe have only ever received a small fraction, even at the height of these crises. That will likely change as the “human climate niche” shifts. Environmental migrants will inevitably seek to move further north en masse and the United States and Europe will become ever more likely destinations. What these situations offer is a preview of the uncertain future that awaits as both displacement and migration increase dramatically in the coming years. With these previews, the image of the future is a startling one and should provide an incentive to act. The governments in both Europe and the United States were utterly unprepared to respond to these past influxes and, as a result, experienced serious repercussions. Taken as a warning, these past crises should instill a new urgency to inspire preparation for the next influxes that will likely be even larger.

2.8 AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH AND AN OPPORTUNITY EXPOSED If the international community is unable to reach a consensus on how to respond to environmental migration, though, it is possible that establishing and implementing a universal protection framework may remain out of reach, at least for now. Recognizing this reality, there is another approach that offers the potential for individual nations to respond to the impending crisis independently while demonstrating a model of how to do so. It requires leadership through example, but there is reason to believe that this might be possible considering the potential benefits for those countries that are in a position to act and that stand to benefit from doing so. Instead of understanding the projected migration as a looming crisis, it could, for certain nations, be reframed as an opportunity. As Abrahm Lustgarten explains, “for a few nations, climate change will present an unparalleled opportunity, as the planet’s coldest regions become more temperate.”74 Lustgarten goes on to explain that, as a result, [t]here is plenty of reason to think that those places will also receive an extraordinary influx of people displaced from the hottest parts of the world as the climate warms. Human migration, historically, has been driven by the pursuit of prosperity even more so than it has by environmental strife. With climate change, prosperity and habitability — haven and economic opportunity — will soon become one and the same.75

74 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climatemigration-crisis.html. 75 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Migrants will come whether they are wanted or not and certain regions can expect to see the largest numbers. Where they go will be determined by a variety of factors, but will be influenced most significantly by a combination of economic opportunities and improved environmental conditions. These nations have the option to expend immense resources to fortify borders, guard entry points, and track down those that manage to cross illegally in an effort to prevent this natural migration. If past experience is any indication, though, this will have only limited success and will most likely lead to humanitarian crises along affected borders. Alternatively, these nations could focus available resources on managing the inevitable migration and channeling it in a way that creates opportunities for both those that are displaced and a nation’s own citizens.

2.8.1 THE CASE FOR RUSSIA There are a number of wealthy, powerful, and influential countries that are particularly well-positioned to respond to this challenge independently, but there is one that stands to gain the most. As the “human climate niche” migrates, generally northward, Russia is especially well poised to benefit from climate change and even the population influx that environmental migration could bring. As Abrahm Lustgarten writes in “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis,” “[c] limate change and its enormous human migrations will transform agriculture and remake the world order — and no country stands to gain more than Russia.”76 For Russia, accepting environmental migrants can therefore be understood not exclusively as an altruistic humanitarian initiative that will be a drain on the nation’s resources, but as an opportunity to strategically grow the nation’s population in order to effectively take advantage of improved environmental conditions. Because of its immense northern land area, Russia can expect to see dramatic increases in both habitable and arable land in the coming century and therefore will likely benefit more than any other country from the warming of the planet. In addition, it is well-positioned geographically to attract and eventually receive environmental migrants. As Lustgarten explains, “[i]t is positioned farther north than all of its South Asian neighbors, which collectively are home to the largest global population fending off displacement from rising seas, drought and an overheating climate.”77 And, although it already possesses the largest land area of any country on the planet by far, nearly double the land areas of Canada or the United States, the world’s second and third largest nations by land area respectively78, up until now, much of that land has remained relatively inhospitable, positioned primarily outside of the “human climate niche.” That is now changing. As a result, Russia should expect to see a significant expansion of its role in producing the world’s food supply, especially as other regions see diminished productivity due to rising temperatures and more frequent droughts and flooding. Therein lies the opportunity. Lustgarten asserts that Russia could experience growth of its per capita gross domestic product by up to five times current levels by 2100.79 This growth, however, is entirely contingent on the nation’s ability to expand its population enough to support this level of economic output. This means that Russia will increasingly require a simultaneous expansion of its labor pool in order to meet the expanding demand and fully realize the potential that the expansion of habitable and arable land will create. In advanced 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Central Intelligence Agency. “Country Comparisons—Area.” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/area/country-comparison. 79 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climatemigration-crisis.html.

2.0 Environmental Migration

POPULATION

LAND AREA

Fig. 9: World’s Largest Nations: Land Area and Population Comparison Source: United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook

17.1 MILLION km²

10.0 MILLION km²

9.8 MILLION km²

9.6 MILLION km²

142 MILLION PEOPLE

38 MILLION PEOPLE

335 MILLION PEOPLE

1.4 BILLION PEOPLE

RUSSIA

CANADA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CHINA

8.5 MILLION km²

7.7 MILLION km²

3.3 MILLION km²

2.8 MILLION km²

213 MILLION PEOPLE

26 MILLION PEOPLE

1.3 BILLION PEOPLE

46 MILLION PEOPLE

BRAZIL

AUSTRALIA

INDIA

ARGENTINA

Fig. 10: World’s Largest Nations: Land Area and Population Comparison Source: United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook

The Great Lakes Green Belt

industrialized countries like Russia with low, and often declining, natural birth rates, fully exploiting these advantages will be highly dependent on immigration as a strategy for replenishing the labor market. In doing so, countries like Russia could solve some of their own problems while effectively responding to some of the challenges of climate change and of the resulting environmental migration. Returning to the examples of the crisis at the United States and Mexico border and the European migrant crisis, but with Russia in mind, Abrahm Lustgarten explains that, If there is any lesson to be learned from the instability that has already been caused by climate-driven migration around the world, whether drought-stricken Guatemalans at the U.S. border or Syrians pressing into Europe, it’s that a strategy of accommodating migrants would almost certainly be more to Russia’s benefit than one that attempts to keep them out. Accommodation, an abundance of migration research shows, stands a better chance of preserving Russia’s own sovereignty while improving the stability of its surrounding regions; exclusion is likely to lead to endless conflict and chaos on its borders, which risks spilling across in destabilizing ways.80 And though the benefits of accommodation may be apparent, that does not mean that such an approach will be easy or simple to implement. Despite the incredible opportunity that these intersecting trends represent for Russia, the country will face serious challenges in building domestic support for admitting the number of environmental migrants that would be needed to fully realize the kind of economic growth that is possible.81 Therefore, the domestic political reality likely remains the greatest obstacle for Russia or any other country that would seek to extract a positive outcome from the looming environmental migration crisis. What is needed then is an intellectually honest debate over the costs of defending borders versus the advantages of accommodating natural migration, at least to some degree.

2.9 POWER DYNAMICS As climate conditions change and as the world’s wealthier nations experience slowing population growth rates or even declining overall populations, it is clear that a redistribution of the world’s population would occur naturally if not for the barriers that maintain the modern nation-state regime and limit the freedom of movement of most of the world’s population. Therefore, one of the biggest barriers to migration as an adaptation response mechanism for those that encounter deteriorating conditions as a result of climate change is that humanity is divided up into sovereign nation-states that maintain significant powers over all bodies born within the physical and administrative bounds of their authority. Beyond possessing these expansive powers, though, each state also displays a surprising amount of influence over all those bodies born outside the bounds of its authority, as well. That power is expressed in the ability to limit access to its territory, the resources it possesses, and the national cultural identity shared by all those people that inhabit it. But it also represents control over who has access to the climate conditions that occur across that territory. As the “human climate niche” shifts north, there are states, like Russia, that will see conditions improve, but many more that will see conditions deteriorate. For bodies born within those disadvantaged states, the modern nation-state regime, and the borders that form its foundation, therefore represent the primary barrier to each individual's freedom of movement, severely limiting one of the most natural and effective mechanisms that humans have for adapting to the effects of climate 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid.

2.0 Environmental Migration change: migration.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

3.0

Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism

3.1 INTRODUCTION A border is a line separating physical space that may limit or control passage from one side to the other of everything that would travel between the two independent spaces formed by its presence. In the international context, a border is a line that separates two sovereign territories, each autonomous from the other and governed independently. A border that is invented, at times becomes physical in space. But more importantly, in society and culture, it becomes entirely inescapable; it becomes part of a mythos, a regime of classification and for ordering the world. As described by Tatiana Bilbao and Ayesha S. Ghosh in “Where is the border?,” Thinking about the word “border” produces a collective eidetic memory, removed from the scale of the body; an aerial view of landscapes divided by a thick black line. The border line is what separates two places, demonstrating a difference. It is a mechanism of othering that creates a reality of here and there; of us and them. If seen as a symbol of separation, the border starts to become diffuse, lifted from its geospatial location on a map to become enacted within the experiences and

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism memories of people throughout entire regions.82 The relationships between bodies and the borders that surround them are defined at birth based on the location of that birth. For many, the classification, assigned at birth and enforced by borders, becomes as innate to the body as gender, race, or ethnicity, height or weight. It is through borders that the national identity of a body becomes as inescapable as any physical characteristic, though it may not appear as visibly as some other characteristics. Though two adjacent entities that share a border may have many common interests, cooperation is not guaranteed. Where some level of cooperation exists and passage between territories is permitted, albeit controlled, a border is a filter through which everything must pass in order to travel to another territory. As anything passes through this filter, it receives a label which grants it certain rights while also limiting others. There are both temporal and spatial conditions of this passage in that there are limits on where each thing can go, for how long it may stay, and what it can do while it remains there. Everything that passes through the filter that is a border, therefore, is somehow changed in the passage; the border imparts some new meaning on all that which passes. As Calvin Po writes in “Inscribing Borders on Bodies,” ‘imperceptible’ . . . borders then become perceptible as a threshold of rights gained and lost by a body, as it crosses from one sovereign soil to another. Crossing either . . . land or sea borders . . . can entail a change in the body’s age of legal responsibility, employment, sexual and medical consent; rules for same-sex marriages, civil partnerships, deed polls, legal gender recognition; access to cross-gender hormone treatment, abortion rights, maternity leave and pay; and more. A ‘hard’ . . . border may not be marked in the land, but is still inscribed upon each individual body.83 By passing across a border, a body or an object is painted, its reality is revised. That passage over, across, or through a border takes any thing’s entire lived experience and summarizes it, oversimplifies it, and establishes it as something new and different, something two-dimensional. It establishes it as something “other” and “others” it in a way that may be difficult to overcome. A border can instill stereotypes on the individual in the most simplistic manner. As Tatiana Bilbao and Ayesha S. Ghosh posit, a “border is not just a line. It is a psychospatial experience carried within people.”84 In this way, the power of borders over individuals, their perception of themselves, and how they are perceived by others, cannot then be overstated.

3.2 THE ABSURDITY OF BORDERS Although highly intentioned in ordering the world and maintaining a certain control over all its human inhabitants, borders can, at times, feel entirely arbitrary in their particular placement and management. Unless they follow natural physical formations or are made physical through markers or barriers, it can be difficult to even discern their precise positioning. This is clearly demonstrated in an example of a border that wasn’t. In 2019, a would-be human smuggler established an artificial border crossing station near, but not actually at, the Russian border with Finland (and therefore the European Union). He was caught after conning four individuals into each paying him around USD $11,000 to cross

82 Bilbao, Tatiana, and Ayesha S. Ghosh. “Where Is the Border?” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 17 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-the-border/325748/where-is-the-border/. 83 Po, Calvin. “Inscribing Borders on Bodies.” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 21 Apr. 2021, www.e-flux. com/architecture/exhausted/388000/inscribing-borders-on-bodies/. 84 Bilbao, Tatiana, and Ayesha S. Ghosh. “Where Is the Border?” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 17 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-the-border/325748/where-is-the-border/.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

this imaginary border from Russia into what he assured them was Finland.85 In reality, the individuals never left Russia, and all five were eventually arrested within Russia by Russian authorities. What was likely intended only as a con in order to exploit certain vulnerabilities of both the migrants and of the border regime itself, demonstrated the relative ease of temporarily reimagining a border (if absent the legal means or military force to enforce it), and could as easily be understood as a thoughtful piece of political performance art. As described by Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi in “The Magic of Borders,” [w]hat the con artist did here was nothing exceptional. He did what usually states do: he drew a line that did not exist before, set up a checkpoint, and persuaded people on the move to believe that the line drawn was real. Like with magic, being able to control the position from which one encounters a border often places it out of reach. When you think you have realized or reached the border, it is somewhere or something else. The border is always ahead of you. Its form and shape constantly shift. Its place stretches; its time expands. It moves across city life, the countryside; it cuts through schools, public squares, and hospitals.86 In this way, Keshavarz and Khosravi recognize the absurdity of borders, but also their lasting mythological power. There is a persistent stain or residue that they leave on the body, even one that crosses over a border legally. It also recognizes the power that borders have over humanity and the apparent randomness with which that power is distributed, applied, and enforced. In some ways, borders could even be understood to stretch beyond their territories to follow, and thus encompass, the bodies that they maintain some authority over, even after those bodies have crossed a territorial border. This is where mechanisms such as deportation and extradition become relevant and the onesided elasticity of borders becomes apparent.

3.3 IMPERIAL LEGACIES: A REGIME TO RESTRICT MOVEMENT AND PRESERVE INEQUITY Though borders are mostly taken for granted and commonly understood as intractable, they are little more than a modern human invention, a mechanism by which human society has determined to organize itself. They are not a natural truth inherent to the land or even to humanity. But humans have always sought to bring order to the natural world in their effort to understand it and control it. Borders have been a key innovation in that pursuit. Many aspects of the natural world and of human society predate the borders that now structure them. And yet, borders have come to define so many of the ways in which each human that is born experiences the world, the opportunities they are afforded, the freedoms that they are granted, the privileges that they are able to enjoy, and even the length of time that their life in this world will last. As described by Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi in “The Magic of Borders,” By assembling materials, images, discourses, and resources into forms that do not exist before, borders appear as naturalized and timeless. By rendering the histories and politics behind them invisible, borders even emerge as beautiful and normal. What materialization does here, be it through fortification, visa procedures, military operations, propaganda,

85 BBC News. “People Smuggler ‘Built Fake Russia-Finland Border Posts’.” BBC News, BBC, 4 Dec. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50666436. 86 Keshavarz, Mahmoud, and Shahram Khosravi. “The Magic of Borders.” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 13 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-the-border/325755/the-magic-of-borders/.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism or humanitarian engagements, is to configure a single space and time for some as one of control, and for others as one of care. With its active production of binaries, this demarcation is part of classificatory practices of western modernity, in which people, places, and times are ‘defined by diametrically opposed difference from the other.’87 The produced binary here of “control” and “care” is critical to understanding the inequities established and enforced by borders, especially when it comes to the levels of freedom of movement enjoyed by those born and residing on either side of them. For anything that would cross a border, traveling in one direction permanently is not necessarily a problem. Many things cross borders effortlessly, while many others are allowed to cross with relative ease. There is also much, though, that borders prevent, or at least attempt to prevent, from passing between states. As Sarah Green writes in “A Sense of Border,” there is a strong association between borders and stopping things from happening, and also stalling things, as well as generating endless waiting. Border dynamics can be the opposite of dynamic, as it were. This is not surprising, given that many borders are supposed to act as barriers, intended to control the movement of things, people, and sometimes also ideas, between one place and another.88 However, borders control the passage of few things with more effort, diligence, or success than people. For people that would cross a border, passage is almost always conditionally granted only on the promise of passage back across that border within a certain established timeframe. For any that would wish to cross in only one direction, with no assurance of return, passage becomes a bit more complicated. The freedom of movement, or lack thereof, between states, and across borders, very often demonstrates an extreme inequity between adjacent states and the populations that inhabit them. In fact, one of the primary purposes of borders is to preserve these existing inequities. If inequity did not exist between two places, would the enforcement of borders even be necessary? For example, open borders, which allow for largely unregulated and uncontrolled passage, are rarely implemented unless relative parity already exists between the two states separated by the border that is opened. There is also a strong connection between the modern nation-state regime and colonial history, which is, in many ways, a manifestation of this inequity. As Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi explain, Colonialism could not operate without restricting the mobility of the colonized while facilitating it for the colonizers. This gave birth to the current technological, bureaucratic, and administrative identification practices that determine who can and cannot cross the border. Those who make and maintain borders believe in this Westphalian magic: in linking the right to mobility to identity; in turning chance into destiny; in exercising power over the seemingly uncontrollable movement of people, viruses, and escalating environmental catastrophes.89 Everything from passports and visas to border walls and customs controls are structured in such a way so as to maintain these inequities and the world order that is, in many ways, a legacy, or even a continuation of, colonialism.

87 Ibid. 88 Green, Sarah. “A Sense of Border.” A Companion to Border Studies, 5 Dec. 2012, pp. 573–592., doi:10.1002/9781118255223.ch33. 89 Keshavarz, Mahmoud, and Shahram Khosravi. “The Magic of Borders.” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 13 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-the-border/325755/the-magic-of-borders/.

the active production of a binary of “control” and “care”

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Borders are therefore inherently a regime to enforce inequity and have largely preserved those relationships between states that were established during periods of more overt imperialism. As quoted by Farhad Manjoo in a New York Times opinion piece entitled “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders,” Reece Jones of the University of Hawaii explains, “[w]hen you start to think about it, a system of closed borders begins to feel very much like a system of feudal privilege. . . . It’s the same idea that there’s some sort of hereditary rights to privilege based on where you were born.”90 It may now be time to question this more aggressively.

3.4 A HUMAN INVENTION (BORDER TYPOLOGIES) It may seem that borders are implicit, that they are somehow naturally occurring separations of space, but in most cases, they are not. They are generally a human invention overlaid, sometimes with little care or intention, onto a landscape of natural and human socio-cultural conditions by those with the power and authority to enforce their existence. As Sarah Green writes in “A Sense of Border,” borders are often claimed to have been built out of an eternal truth— one of the most common being the nation, which is regularly claimed to preexist the bounded territory that rightfully belongs to the nation; that is, of course, a part of asserting that the border marks a preexisting truth, rather than itself being or generating one.91 Borders are political in nature, and they have often been drawn on paper (or in virtual space) in rooms far from where they fall, and often before they have ever been marked or even traced on the landscape itself. At times, they may follow a natural path, whether a river, a mountain ridgeline, a coastline, or some other geographic landform. But just as often, they transect natural conditions, disrupt ecosystems, and even separate centuries old communities, ignoring even human social and cultural conditions. To understand how borders are formed and where they come from, it is useful to classify them. Richard Hartshorne, a prominent political geographer developed the “Genetic Boundary Classification” system, which categorizes all political boundaries into four typologies: Antecedent, Subsequent, Superimposed, and Relic(t) Boundaries.92 Of these, both Antecedent and Subsequent Boundaries can be understood as derivative boundaries, as their presence and location are generally based on existing conditions of some kind. In contrast, Superimposed Boundaries are particularly problematic and tend to be at the center of many of the world’s more entrenched conflicts as they typically ignore existing conditions that might have suggested an alternative placement. Relic Boundaries, which are defunct borders, are particularly instructive in that they demonstrate the lasting effect of borders even after they are no longer actively maintained or enforced. Where a border exists for only a time, its effects often linger long after it is destroyed or decommissioned, which clearly demonstrates the immense influence that borders retain.

3.4.1 ANTECEDENT BOUNDARIES An Antecedent Boundary is one that predates the societies that come to 90 Manjoo, Farhad. “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-borders-immigration.html. 91 Green, Sarah. “A Sense of Border.” A Companion to Border Studies, 5 Dec. 2012, pp. 573–592., doi:10.1002/9781118255223.ch33. 92 Hartshorne, Richard. “The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 29, no. 3, Sept. 1939, pp. 173–412., doi:10.2307/2561063.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism

NATION #1 NATION #2 NATION #1 NATION #2

ANTECEDENT

SUPERIMPOSED

NATION #1

NATION #1 NATION #2

NATION #3

SUBSEQUENT

NATION #1

RELIC

Fig. 11: Richard Hartshorne’s Genetic Boundary Classification Source: “The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past” by Richard Hartshorne

recognize it and the authorities that come to manage it. Antecedent Boundaries are integral to the territory itself and generally take their form from the natural landscape by following physical geographic features of the land such as rivers, coastlines, mountain ridgelines, or watersheds. Examples include Chile’s eastern border with Argentina and Bolivia which is formed by the Andes Mountains and the Mississippi River that bisects much of the United States of America and forms portions of many of the nation’s state borders, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Illinois, and Missouri. These are generally some of the easiest borders to define, manage, and defend, as their natural forms often predate any human settlements and they can be easily recognized as boundaries by all who encounter them.

3.4.2 SUBSEQUENT BOUNDARIES A Subsequent Boundary is one that is established after one or more societies have already settled on the land and seek to define their respective territories based on the identification of a society with the land that it inhabits. In this way, Subsequent Boundaries typically seek to honor some present social, cultural, or economic conditions, though they are also often established following conflict in an effort to restore peace and reestablish territorial claims, which are often renegotiated as a result of a conflict. That does not mean, however, that they are without controversy. Power dynamics often play a major role in the resulting boundaries and are often used to enforce some pre-existing inequities or to establish new ones. An example of a Subsequent Boundary can be found in the border separating Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which was first established in 1921, long after the territory was inhabited. This border was drawn in part as a result of religious differences, but more importantly as a result of the move to establish

The Great Lakes Green Belt

an independent Republic of Ireland, while Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom. Violent conflict and unrest have continued to plague this largely open border since its establishment, as there remains a strong divide within Northern Island over the territory’s future as part of the United Kingdom or as part of a reunited Republic of Ireland. Though recent years have been marked by a relative stability, these tensions have been reignited as a result of Brexit and the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, which means that this largely uncontrolled border now separates the European Union, of which the Republic of Ireland remains a member, from a non-member state, the United Kingdom. Certain Subsequent Boundaries are also sometimes classified as Consequent (or Ethnographic) Boundaries, as well. These are specifically implemented in order to divide populations based on certain socio-cultural characteristics such as ethnicity, language, or religion. The problem with this approach to partitioning is that a population, having coexisted on a territory for a period of time, is rarely divided perfectly along spatial lines. An example of the problematic nature of Consequent Borders can be found in the modern borders that separate India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Following independence from British colonial rule, British India was divided to form Pakistan in 1947 in an attempt to create a Muslim state separate from the predominantly Hindu state of India. Bangladesh would be formed later when it seceded from Pakistan in 1971. It is important to note, though, that the Partition of India led to a period of mass migration as Hindus residing in present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh fled to India and Muslims residing in present-day India fled to Pakistan. It is estimated that this resulted in between 200,000 and two million deaths93 and the displacement of between ten and twenty million people.94 A complete redistribution of the populations, however, never fully occurred, which has resulted in ongoing persecution of the remaining ethnic minorities in each modern nation. In addition, in certain regions, the exact location of the border remains contested, which has contributed to unresolved tensions and occasional conflict.

3.4.3 SUPERIMPOSED BOUNDARIES A Superimposed Boundary is one that is established by a conquering, colonial, or imperial power over a foreign territory with little respect for the existing social and cultural characteristics of the people that reside there or even the physical characteristics of the land that is being partitioned. Examples of Superimposed Boundaries can be found across the African continent, which was largely partitioned by European colonial powers during a period often referred to as New Imperialism or the Scramble for Africa that was initiated far from the territory itself at a conference in Berlin in 1885.95 In most cases, these borders were drawn with little to no respect for the existing distribution of territory among tribal communities. The legacy of these largely uninformed decisions is still felt today with conflicts and disputes that continue to persist, demonstrating the sensitivity of the placement of borders and the serious dangers of Superimposed Boundaries, especially by outside authorities. Certain Superimposed Boundaries are also sometimes classified as Geometric Boundaries, based on the nature of their form. In this case, the same characteristics apply, but the resulting border, for expedience, follows a straight line that clearly ignores all natural conditions, often producing awkward and 93 Talbot, Ian, and Gurharpal Singh. The Partition of India. Cambridge University Press, 2014. 94 Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. “India-Pakistan Partition 1947 and Forced Migration.” The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, 4 Feb. 2013, doi:10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm285. 95 Iweriebor, Ehiedu E. G. The Colonization of Africa, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, 2011, exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-colonizationof-africa.html.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism

Fig. 12: Satellite Image of Berlin At Night Source: Mapsland

inconvenient results that can cultivate persistent challenges. An example of a major Geometric Boundary can be found in the land border between the United States of America and Canada, of which a significant section follows the 49th parallel, with more than 2,000 kilometers of its nearly 9,000 kilometer total length roughly coinciding with the line of latitude.96, 97 One of the world’s longest land boundaries, it is made physical by what is commonly known simply as “The Slash,” a continuous width of 20 feet of land that has been cleared of all trees and that is maintained in this way at immense cost.98

3.4.4 RELIC BOUNDARIES A Relic Boundary is one that is no longer maintained or operated as a boundary, though its legacy remains imprinted on society, its mark often still visible on both the physical and cultural landscapes of the reunited territory. One of the most widely recognized examples of a Relic Boundary is the Berlin Wall, which separated East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Though its physical form has largely been dismantled, some portions do remain as a monument to the period, and its mark on the city is still palpable over thirty years after the border’s opening. Nighttime satellite images of the city, for example, reveal the historic division into two halves with two different color temperatures emitted by the streetlights in each half, the warmer lights representing the East half of

96 Jacobs, Frank. “A Not-So-Straight Story.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Nov. 2011, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/a-not-so-straight-story/. 97 Blank, Lew. “United States–Canada Border Slash.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 19 Sept. 2016, www.atlasobscura.com/places/uscanada-border-slash. 98 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

the city and the cooler lights representing the West.99 Another example can be found in the former boundary that separated North and South Vietnam, nominally referred to as the 17th Parallel, from 1954 up until the country’s official reunification in 1976 following the Fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975 and the end of the Vietnam War.100, 101

3.5 THE TYRANNY OF THE IMMOVABLE BORDER Classifying the world’s borders in this way helps to expose that they are infrequently drawn with respect to natural conditions, and even when they are, they are rarely designed in a way that would allow them to adapt to the changes that those natural conditions undergo in real time. Borders are almost always applied, and even when they result from natural conditions, it is unlikely that all natural conditions were taken into consideration in their formation. To do so would be nearly impossible, because natural conditions rarely fit into neat boundaries, and when they do, they often intersect with other conditions. There is also a strong legacy of borders being drawn that conflict directly with the reality on the ground for the people that live there. Too often, borders are established that divide a society that occupied an undivided territory, inevitably dividing that society, as well. The effects of these often misguided partitionings have, throughout history, often affected economic, social, cultural, and political realities for generations, very often producing disastrous results. In reality, the earth’s surface was never really intended to be artificially divided up by its inhabitants. The naturally occurring flows of all natural things, rarely benefit from being restricted and confined by these artificial boundaries. For example, the physical manifestations of borders often ignore and disrupt animal migration patterns, which can have very negative effects on ecosystems. And now, as human migration rises to new levels, the borders that have been created to organize and contain humanity’s sprawling presence may pose as big a threat to humanity itself as the global population seeks to negotiate its relationship with a rapidly changing natural world. Humanity must now grapple with the legacy of having divided up the earth’s surface at specific moments in time, while the earth continues to change and the conditions experienced in each region shift in significant ways. As discussed previously, the “human climate niche” is shifting, and at this point, there are few mechanisms in place for borders to respond to evolving environmental and climatic conditions. Human migration will occur with or without the movement of borders, but without adjustments, or at least a revision of how existing borders are understood, major challenges loom. Recognizing this, it could be said that there is a tyranny of the immovable border. In a natural world that is constantly changing and where political, socio-economic, and environmental conditions are frequently transformed, the regime rarely follows. Even in the case of Antecedent Borders, when borders are drawn with reference to natural conditions, they are fixed to a specific moment, they are a snapshot of conditions at a specific point in time. Natural conditions change and evolve, but borders typically do not. They generally only shift for political reasons and in sudden and dramatic fashion, often only after violent conflict. It is extremely uncommon to find a border that is actively revised to shift with changing environmental conditions. This will increasingly become a problem as climate change continues to transform the world at a startling pace, radically 99 Hartley, Emma. “How Astronaut Chris Hadfield Showed Berlin’s Ongoing Struggle for Unification.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Apr. 2013, www.theguardian.com/ world/shortcuts/2013/apr/21/astronaut-chris-hadfield-berlin-divide. 100 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Seventeenth Parallel.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 20 July 1998, www.britannica.com/topic/seventeenth-parallel. 101 Spector, Ronald H. “Vietnam War.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 July 2021, www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism revising the conditions experienced across each fixed territory.

3.6 SOME EXCEPTIONS There are, however, some exceptions, where the nation-state breaks down and the permanence of borders and their intransigence are tested or even overcome. One place where this occurs most frequently coincides with the presence of indigenous communities whose connection to the territory they inhabit often extends back long before present state structures were established. Though more often ignored, in certain instances, the claims of indigenous peoples to the territories they inhabit are honored, if only grudgingly. But though this partial reinstatement of authority may allow some degree of autonomy, any authority that is granted does generally remain subordinate to that of the nation-state. The result is a compromise that only offers the possibility to exist in a parallel reality that does not truly undermine the present regime. In addition, there are the nations of people, united by a shared cultural identity, without states, that do not possess territories defined by distinct borders of their own. While they share some similarities with recognized indigenous communities, at an international level, they remain powerless in shaping their own destinies and their rights to any self-governance are generally denied. One of the prime examples of this can be seen in Palestine, which is largely controlled by Israel, despite a distinct national identity and historic claims to the territory that is divided between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Another example can be found in Kurdistan, which exists outside of the modern nationstate regime, with its population divided across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In each of these nation-states, the Kurdish people live as a persecuted ethnic minority, though none of these nations is interested in giving up any portion of its territory to allow for the creation of an independent Kurdish state. Another example occurs where the two parties that share an Antecedent Boundary that was established in relation to a natural landform agree to honor any changes that naturally occur to that landform. This may be more out of expedience than anything else, because maintaining long borders can be technically challenging and costly, but here, where a river migrates or a ridgeline shifts, the border is allowed to follow these changes. One authority may see their territory grow, while the other may forfeit some portion of theirs, so international cooperation is imperative. But, because these changes are spatial and highly visible, they can be relatively easily accepted and subsequently managed. And finally, there are the social and cultural exceptions that exist outside of the modern nation-state regime, if only informally. Occurring as a result of the spread of people who possess distinct ties to specific foreign nations across the globe, there has been the spread of numerous diaspora communities across the world. A diaspora is, as Walker Connor defines it simply, “[t]hat segment of a people living outside the homeland.”102 In a spatial sense, diaspora communities often create what was once understood perhaps as ghettoes, but now more often are understood as the Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Italys, Banglatowns, and Little Havanas that feature in cities across the world. Here you often have the result of specific moments in history when a large influx of immigrants from a particular country arrive in the same foreign place and are able to create an enclave and establish an identity that exists in the space of a so-called “third culture.” These communities and the physical spaces that they create have become integral to a globalized society and invaluable to those who migrate beyond the bounds of the nation which they originate from, even if they can also, for native communities, represent a failure to assimilate. 102 Walker, Connor. “The Impact of Homelands upon Diasporas.” Modern Diasporas in International Politics, 1986, pp. 16–46.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

3.6.1 INTERSECTIONAL BORDERS Though rare, there are existing legal frameworks that allow certain peoples, particularly those with indigenous claims, to exist, at least in part, outside the bounds of the modern nation-state regime. One example can be found in the Sápmi territory, sometimes referred to as Lappland, that spans the northern lands of northwest Europe’s Scandinavian region, including parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, where the indigenous Sámi people have been uniquely granted the right to free movement across international borders. As explained by Patrik Lantto of the Centre for Sámi Research at Umea University in Sweden, [w]hereas borders and citizenship are generally used to defend cultures, interests and territories, separating those who belong from those who do not, this perspective does not include how a non-dominant indigenous people such as the Sami is affected by the partitioning of their territory.103 Now, though, with a total population estimated at between 60,000 and 80,000, the Sámi people maintain a freedom of movement across state borders that is exceptional.104 Though each individual is required to maintain citizenship to one of the modern nation-states that they occupy, their membership in the Sápmi nation affords them the unique status of occupying and belonging to two intersecting nations. Unfortunately, the population is divided up among the modern states, with about half living in Norway, and an estimated 20,000 in Sweden, 8,000 in Finland, and 2,000 in Russia, which has created certain divisions within the community, despite the partial preservation of a distinct Sápmi nation.105 Though the Sámi claim to this territory predates the contemporary states that now control the land, when the borders between Denmark/Norway and Sweden/Finland were drawn in 1751, the Sámi were not included in the process and their rights were largely an afterthought. They were not entirely forgotten, though, and the Lapp Codicil was established. The purpose of this treaty, which was notably not created as an agreement with the Sámi people, was to recognize and partially preserve the Sápmi nation by granting its members the right to move freely across the newly established state borders. The primary reasoning behind the establishment of this freedom of movement stems from the fact that the Sámi are a nomadic people who engage in reindeer husbandry that requires that they follow natural reindeer migration patterns and their own traditional herding routes.106 Though this special status has been somewhat eroded since the Lapp Codicil was first enacted, these rights were affirmed by the Norwegian supreme court in 1968.107 In this example, where intersectional nations coexist, there is a model for a cross-border freedom of movement that has been granted to a specific population based on indigenous claims to a territory, a shared cultural identity, and a connection with natural migration patterns that predate and clash with modern borders.

3.6.2 THE “MOVING BORDER” A “moving border” occurs where the land itself on which a border is projected moves and the border is permitted to follow. This occurs most often

103 Lantto, Patrik. “Borders, Citizenship and Change: the Case of the Sami People, 1751–2008.” Citizenship Studies, vol. 14, no. 5, 27 Oct. 2010, pp. 543–556., doi:10.1080/13621025.2010.50670 9. 104 Broderstad, Else Grete. “The Promises and Challenges of Indigenous Self-Determination.” International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis, vol. 66, no. 4, 2011, pp. 893–907., doi:10.1177/002070201106600416. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid 107 Ibid.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism unintentionally, because according to our understanding of borders, they are not meant to move independently. An example of this can be found at Italy’s northern border with Austria and Switzerland, as demonstrated by Studio Folder’s project (or perhaps provocation) “Italian Limes,” which studied Italy’s socalled “moving border.” As the studio explains, their project explores how natural borders—apparently unquestionable and selfevident—are in fact exposed to the complexity of long-term ecological processes, unveiling the problem of territorial representation and its political implications.108 In this case, Italy’s northern land boundary, which was set out at the end of World War II in the Treaty of Paris, primarily follows a natural watershed line through the mountainous Alpine region.109 Most of this 1,913 kilometer land border occurs along rocky ridgelines and exposed earth with its position indicated there by a series of over 8,000 physical markers.110 But for some sections of the border with Austria and Switzerland, it reaches higher altitudes and runs through snowfields and along glacial ridges that form the watershed there. In these sections, physical markers are not able to preserve the border’s presence and so its location is maintained only in official state cartographic records, far from the boundary itself.111 During the 1990s, the precarity of this condition was discovered when it was observed that the Alpine glaciers that the border traverses had, as a result of climate change, seen a 50% reduction in size since 1850, with melting only accelerating over recent decades.112 As a consequence of these changes, Italy determined that the location of the border had itself moved and that its precise location needed to be ascertained and renegotiated. This determination led to agreements with Austria in 2006 and Switzerland in 2009 that acknowledge the unstable nature of the boundary’s actual position on the land and establish the concept of a “moving border.”113 Italy now surveys the affected region every two years to track any observable changes and maintain current official records of the border’s perceived location.114 Here then is an example of a border that has been allowed to follow natural changes and be revised accordingly.

3.6.3 DISPLACED NATIONS It is generally assumed that refugees and those displaced due to circumstances more commonly recognized under current international protections would generally like to return to their homes or countries of origin if the threats that forced their migration are reduced or eliminated. Unfortunately, environmental migrants face the difficult reality that, in many cases, the prospect of returning to their homes may never again be possible. As the climate changes and the land either disappears or becomes entirely uninhabitable, conditions that would allow for return may be unattainable. As Maria Stavropoulou explains, “there is a plausible scenario according to which[,] sooner or later[,] some states may disappear altogether, leaving their citizens not only without a home and obliged to seek refuge elsewhere[,] but also stateless.”115 While displacement is usually discussed in reference to individuals or groups of people, if climate change continues unabated, it is likely that by the end of this century, a number of the world’s small island nations will be rendered 108 Ferrari, Marco, et al. Italian Limes, Studio Folder, 2016, italianlimes.net/project.html. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Stavropoulou, Maria. Drowned in Definitions?, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www. fmreview.org/climatechange/stavropoulou.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 13: Displaced Nations Source: Justin Paul Ware

entirely uninhabitable. Extreme weather events and coastal flooding related to climate change will impact nations across the world, but the entire existence of most nations isn’t truly endangered by such threats. While projections vary, records show that sea levels are rising across the globe and the rate of change is accelerating.116 Nowhere are levels rising faster, though, than around the small island nations that are most vulnerable to such changes. If these trends continue, entire nations will be displaced and there will be no home state for the citizens of these nations to ever return to. With as many as eighteen island nations projected to be affected in this way, there is a potential to create a displaced population of nearly five million landless and stateless environmental migrants. Where will they go? When an entire nation is swallowed by the sea, does it simply cease to exist? Is a nation’s sovereignty inextricable from its territory? What will happen to its identity, its culture, its language, and its traditions? What is a nation without land and what status would be granted to a citizen of such a state? As of now, the international community has not answered these questions and existing agreements don’t provide any practicable solutions. The affected landless migrants would not be considered refugees according to the definition laid out in the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” and would therefore not be granted any of the rights associated with that status. But beyond that, beyond the rights of displaced individuals, is the issue of the displaced nation, the sovereign state without a territory. Island nations like the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, that may all be left entirely landless by sea level rise, are now facing this reality. 116 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Is Sea Level Rising?” NOAA’s National Ocean Service, US Department of Commerce, 26 Feb. 2021, oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ sealevel.html.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism

With an average elevation of around two meters above sea level, for example, the Marshall Islands have begun experiencing waves of five to seven meters high on a nearly annual basis.117 Waves like these have already caused significant damage and are expected to occur more frequently. While the nation only gained its independence from the United States of America in 1986, as much as a third of its total population of 55,500 (2018) has already fled the dangerous and worsening conditions and is now residing primarily in the United States.118 The greatest number have settled in Hawaii, but the largest concentration in a single community in the continental United States occurs in Springdale, Arkansas.119 With a total population of only about 80,000, the Marshallese community of around 15,000 makes up a significant and growing portion of the city.120 Springdale has become the center of the American Marshallese diaspora mostly by chance, but this demonstrates the draw of an established community for those who are forced to migrate. With growing momentum and the expansion of social infrastructure there, a strong diaspora community has taken root. The small island nation has even established a consulate in Springdale to support the growing community.121 This growth is likely to continue and could, in the coming years, result in the creation of a community of Marshallese that eventually outnumbers the population that continues to inhabit the island nation’s actual territory. This has been made possible by the “Compact of Free Association” (COFA), which also includes the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau. Created partially out of strategic military benefits, strong historic ties, and a sense of obligation, the agreement has created unique relationships between the United States and these sovereign island nations. In exchange for exclusive military access to the island territories, the United States has provided financial support to each and has also granted each nation’s citizens visa-free travel to and the right to work in the United States.122 As more and more take advantage of this special relationship, though, the agreement’s future remains uncertain, as what is in place currently ends in 2023 and will need to be renewed.123 This example begins to provide a preview of a possible future for other island nations in similar situations that may experience a comparable scale of displacement and should be expanded.

3.7 OPEN BORDERS These exceptions suggest that borders should be understood not only in how they were formed, but in how they are administered, managed, and enforced. With this approach, borders can be classified as Controlled, Fortified, or Open. Although there are many overlaps between Controlled and Fortified Borders, and a border may be both, there are specific characteristics of each that should 117 Storlazzi, Curt. “Low-Lying Areas of Tropical Pacific Islands.” Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, United States Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov/centers/pcmsc/science/low-lyingareas-tropical-pacific-islands. 118 Milman, Oliver, and Mae Ryan. “Lives in the Balance: Climate Change and the Marshall Islands.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Sept. 2016, www.theguardian.com/ environment/2016/sep/15/marshall-islands-climate-change-springdale-arkansas. 119 Ibid. 120 Keating, Joshua. “Why a Pacific Islander Community in Arkansas Became a COVID Hot Spot.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 15 Sept. 2020, slate.com/technology/2020/09/marshallese-covidarkansas.html. 121 Ibid. 122 Hirata, Alexander J. “Postcolonialism and the Marshallese Diaspora: Structural Violence and Health in the Marshallese Community in Springdale, Arkansas.” University of San Francisco, 2015. 123 Milman, Oliver, and Mae Ryan. “Lives in the Balance: Climate Change and the Marshall Islands.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Sept. 2016, www.theguardian.com/ environment/2016/sep/15/marshall-islands-climate-change-springdale-arkansas.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

be considered. Fortified Borders, which are often arranged along a spectrum ranging from Fenced on one end to fully militarized on the other end, are boundaries that are controlled, at least in part, with the installation of physical barriers that limit passage between territories. Controlled (or Regulated) Borders are those that demonstrate varying degrees of administrative regulation on who and what may pass. In most cases, this is managed through a customs and border control agency that administers visas, checks passports, and manages what goods a person may carry across the border through customs checks. Nation-states exhibiting highly controlled and regulated borders include the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates.124 In contrast, Open Borders are those that exist for the purpose of maintaining separate nations with unique systems and identities, but, based on favorable relations and a perceived equity and peace between the people occupying each territory, are kept largely unguarded, unregulated, and uncontrolled, with free travel of people between states openly permitted. Historically, Open Borders were far more common, but since World War I, they have become the exception. The European Union has established the world’s most highly visible modern example with the creation of an entire region of functionally open borders: the Schengen Area. First created in 1985, it has since grown to comprise 26 nation-states, including most European Union member states and some others, as well. But while borders have been opened between states within the area, borders between the Schengen Area member states and nations outside of the area have been hardened in order to preserve the overall security of the expansive region. The success of the Schengen Area offers a valuable vision of a more open future with a renewed interest in opening borders, where possible, but falls short on the key challenge of how to open borders between nations where relative parity is not present. It clearly demonstrates the benefits of taking a regional approach, but only in the context of wealthy, developed, and peaceful nations that are united by numerous other interests, as well. In the case of the Schengen Area, it is difficult to imagine it’s success without the existence of the European Union itself. Even here, though, the limitations of open borders were exposed by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic as many Schengen Area member states did, in effect, temporarily close their borders in order to contain the spread of the virus across the region. But, despite the weaknesses and shortcomings exposed by the world’s most prominent example, compelling moral and economic arguments remain that demonstrate the advantages of open borders.

3.7.1 A MORAL PERSPECTIVE From a moral or intellectual perspective, the case for open borders is directly connected to previous discussions of the inequities that borders create and preserve by selectively limiting the freedom of movement of much of the world’s population. Closed borders have, in a sense, established that rights and freedoms are determined almost exclusively based on the location of a body’s birth. As Alex Tabarrok writes in “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders— Completely,” man is born free, yet everywhere he is caged. Barbed-wire, concrete walls, and gun-toting guards confine people to the nation-state of their birth. But why? The argument for open borders is both economic and moral. All people should be free to move about the earth, uncaged by the arbitrary

124 Groundwater, Ben. “Border Force: The World’s Toughest Customs and Immigration.” Traveller, 30 Nov. 2016, www.traveller.com.au/border-force-the-worlds-toughest-customs-andimmigration-gt0zi3.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism lines known as borders.125 When put simply like this, it may appear obvious, but obviously there are reasons that borders exist and that they have come to define the world order. Again, borders are a regime to preserve and enforce inequity. To have open borders, would be to seek to achieve equity. But where do the inequities that exist now arise from and how is it that borders are so effective in preserving them? Tabarrok goes on to explain that, Not every place in the world is equally well-suited to mass economic activity. Nature’s bounty is divided unevenly. Variations in wealth and income created by these differences are magnified by governments that suppress entrepreneurship and promote religious intolerance, gender discrimination, or other bigotry. Closed borders compound these injustices, cementing inequality into place and sentencing their victims to a life of penury.126 And though it would be difficult to defend this reality that has been created, that some humans receive greater rights and freedoms than others based on the location of their birth, from a moral standpoint, this condition is perpetuated.127 Those with the power and authority to revise it are also those who have been arbitrarily privileged by the location of their birth. Therefore, in a selfish and short-sighted sense, they have no desire to seek parity, because the present imbalance benefits them. Worst of all, many of privilege have been able to exploit not only the natural resources contained within the boundaries of their territory, but those beyond their borders, having mastered their borders and developed an authority to reach beyond them to their own advantage while at the expense of others. Many speak of universal human rights, of intrinsic freedoms, and yet there are few systems in place that restrict these rights and freedoms more effectively than borders. Closed borders remain because they do not restrict these rights and freedoms equitably, which creates winners and losers, with the winners naturally inclined to preserve the existing rules.

3.7.2 AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE But while borders have remained largely closed, maintaining heavy restrictions on the movement of people between nations, globalization has instigated a dramatic opening of borders to the largely free movement of both goods and capital. Between free trade agreements, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary fund (IMF), international trade and the transfer of money across borders have seen many restrictions lifted or loosened.128 These changes stand in stark contrast to the tightening of restrictions and hardening of borders in relation to the migration of humans. In this way, the economic benefits of open borders have already been recognized and accepted, but this understanding has not yet been extended to human migration. The economic benefits of open borders, though, do not stop at goods and capital. When it comes to people, the benefits of free movement would extend not only to those currently disadvantaged by the present system, but to all the world’s inhabitants. As Tabarrok explains,

125 Tabarrok, Alex. “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders-Completely.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 Oct. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borderscompletely/409501/. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 Petersen-Smith, Khury. “Progressives Should Support Open Borders - With No Apology.” Foreign Policy In Focus, 21 Feb. 2019, fpif.org/progressives-should-support-open-borders-withno-apology/.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Even relatively small increases in immigration flows can have enormous benefits. If the developed world were to take in enough immigrants to enlarge its labor force by a mere one percent, it is estimated that the additional economic value created would be worth more to the migrants than all of the world’s official foreign aid combined. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised.129 This suggests an immense benefit for those who desire to migrate and are subsequently allowed to do so. It also exposes how inadequate and misguided the world’s current approach to humanitarian aid is. But immigration presents an opportunity for those who reside in the nations that receive immigrants, as well. For example, though often forgotten or ignored, the United States of America owes its geopolitical standing in large part to immigration. As Farhad Manjoo explains, “People worry they’ll take jobs away from native workers, even though most studies suggests [sic] that immigration is a profound benefit to the economy, and there’s little evidence it hurts native workers. And if we worry that they’ll hoover up welfare benefits, we can impose residency requirements for them.”130 Some economists have even projected that universal open borders would likely result in a doubling of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).131, 132

3.7.3 THE CASE OF ECUADOR An important counterpoint to these arguments and the relative success of the Schengen Area’s open borders, though, can be found in the case of Ecuador, which, in its new 2008 constitution, laid the intellectual foundation for establishing some of the most functionally open of any state borders in the world. Even before this, though, Ecuador had adopted a fairly expansive definition of who should be protected as a “refugee.” In 1984, along with several other Latin American nations, Ecuador joined the Cartagena Declaration, which expanded on the standard set out in the Eurocentric 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees133 to include, as William Wheeler describes, all “those threatened by generalized violence, internal conflicts, mass human-rights violations, and disturbances of public order (in other words, the conditions faced by many of those fleeing repressive governments and domestic conflicts across the region).”134 In this way, nations in the region revised their understanding of what migrants and displaced people deserve protection, from one that was developed specifically as a response to World War II, to one more applicable to the contemporary concerns of the region. Going a step further in 2008, though, as William Wheeler explains in “How Not to Design a World Without Borders,” Ecuador’s 2008 constitution recognizes unfettered mobility across borders as a basic human right, advocating ‘the principle of universal citizenship, the free movement of all inhabitants of the planet, and the progressive extinction of the status 129 Tabarrok, Alex. “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders-Completely.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 Oct. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borderscompletely/409501/. 130 Manjoo, Farhad. “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-borders-immigration.html. 131 Tabarrok, Alex. “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders-Completely.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 Oct. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borderscompletely/409501/. 132 Petersen-Smith, Khury. “Progressives Should Support Open Borders - With No Apology.” Foreign Policy In Focus, 21 Feb. 2019, fpif.org/progressives-should-support-open-borders-withno-apology/. 133 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1951, www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html. 134 Wheeler, William. “How Not to Design a World Without Borders.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 July 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/how-not-to-design-aworld-without-borders/374563/.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism of alien or foreigner as an element to transform the unequal relations between countries, especially those between North and South.’135 This framing establishes a human rights centered approach to borders and immigration and also expresses a desire to, through domestic policy, begin to dismantle and overcome the extreme inequities that are maintained through the limitations on freedom of movement that closed borders perpetuate. Despite these lofty aspirations, though, the results have been discouraging for those who support the project of moving towards open borders and establishing a more universal freedom of movement for all of humanity. Even with virtuous intentions, it is incredibly difficult for an individual nation-state to find success in opening borders unilaterally, especially when one of its neighbors (Colombia) is producing significant numbers of refugees. Here, favorable conditions of peace and equity between neighboring nations were not treated as prerequisites, perhaps because it was assumed that these conditions would develop naturally as a result of the opening of borders, if only after an initial period of instability. It remains to be seen if this can still be achieved, but already the national government has retreated from its initial intent in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, as an unforeseen consequence of its progressive approach to immigration and border control, Ecuador has become a preferred entrypoint into the Americas for citizens of nations outside of the hemisphere seeking to access illicit overland smuggling networks that lead to the United States. After the country eliminated visa requirements for anyone traveling to the country for less than 90 days in mid-2008, there was a dramatic spike in entries. For example, in just the second half of 2008, after visa and entry restrictions were loosened, the number of Chinese nationals arriving in Ecuador increased by nearly six times.136 Many of these were later determined to have traveled to Mexico’s border with the United States in order to attempt, with the help of smugglers, to enter the country illegally. In the end, Ecuador’s experiment has not inspired other nations to follow its lead as it had originally hoped. Instead, it has drawn criticism and been blamed for contributing to instability in the region, with the strongest condemnation largely originating from the United States. This position largely ignores, though, the role the United States itself has played in destabilizing the region and in promoting a strong regime of closed borders across the Americas, both factors which have contributed to the explosion of human trafficking, that those entering Ecuador have only sought to exploit.137

3.7.4 THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES But, despite its vocal opposition to Ecuador’s open borders project and perhaps even some responsibility for its failure, the United States of America may have something to learn from the example. Due to the troubling population trends that the world’s wealthier developed nations are experiencing, open borders may soon become a necessity to enable a redistribution of the world’s population in accordance with shifting environmental conditions. In addition, without increased immigration, nations like the United States, for example, may risk their standing in the world. In the case of the United States, Farhad Manjoo posits in “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders,” an opinion piece for the New York Times, that, Economically and strategically, open borders isn’t just a good plan — it’s the only chance we’ve got. America is an aging nation with a stagnant population. We have ample land to house lots more people, but we are

135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

increasingly short of workers. And on the global stage, we face two colossi — India and China — which, with their billions, are projected to outstrip American economic hegemony within two decades. How will we ever compete with such giants? The same way we always have: by inviting the world’s most enthusiastic and creative people — including the people willing to walk here, to risk disease and degradation and death to land here — to live out their best life under liberty.138 Understanding this, it becomes clear that the future ways in which each nation-state manages its borders will play a significant role in the “great power competition” of the coming century. As China, the United States, and Russia compete for standing on the world stage, the population trends of each nation-state will play a significant role. Not only do climate change and environmental migration pose serious security threats, but so would an overall population decline. As Abrahm Lustgarten writes, “[a]ll of that makes the flow of people — whether you call them climate refugees or human capital — an inseverable part of the geopolitical power struggle driven by climate.”139 Already it is clear that Russia is well-positioned in regards to climate change, with much to gain as a result of the shifting “human climate niche.” Similarly, it has begun to recognize the crucial role that immigration will play in taking advantage of these changes. Meanwhile, the predominance of the United States stands in the balance as the nation’s immigration rates decline and the natural birth rate slows. But, recalling the history of the United States as one defined by immigration, it can be understood that a significant part of its recent dominance can be attributed to its size, multicultural composition, and its ability to attract the so-called “best and brightest” from across the globe. Though perhaps a cliché at this point, the modern United States is and always has been a nation of immigrants; its future depends on renewing and expanding a commitment to this identity.

3.8 RETHINKING BORDERS: A NEW APPROACH Already it is clear from the example of Ecuador that an approach centered around open borders would require broad regional participation in order to succeed, not to mention that other entrenched challenges would need to be overcome prior to a successful implementation. Despite the tyranny of borders, the inequities that they preserve, the colonial history that they often originate from, and the various examples of where they have been brought into question, it is unlikely that borders, as we currently understand them, are going away altogether any time soon. Though there are fringe movements that promote a wholesale shift to open borders and some limited examples of their implementation, as in Europe and Ecuador, it is difficult to imagine universal open borders at an international level. It is even more difficult to imagine the emergence of the political support needed to implement such a dramatic transformation of the world order. Between climate change and globalization more broadly, though, the world is evolving rapidly and dramatically. At this point, borders have not been conceived of in a way that provides the flexibility to adapt to the projected changes. This suggests that a new approach is needed. As Roger Rouse writes, We live in a . . . world of crisscrossed economies, intersecting systems of 138 Manjoo, Farhad. “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-borders-immigration.html. 139 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climatemigration-crisis.html.

3.0 Borders: A Barrier to Migration as an Adaptation Mechanism meaning, and fragmented identities. Suddenly, the comforting modern imagery of nation-states and national languages, of coherent communities and consistent subjectivities, of dominant centers and distant margins no longer seems adequate. . . . [W]e have all moved irrevocably into a new kind of social space . . .140 So what does this “new kind of social space” look like? And how will it relate to the modern nation-state regime and the borders that define it? Absent open borders or the establishment of an international protection framework for environmental migrants, which both appear out of reach at this time, a more localized or regional approach may provide the most viable solution. The intersectional boundary created to encompass the Sápmi Nation demonstrates a model of a recognized cross-border freedom of movement. And Italy’s “moving border,” that follows the Alpine watershed, demonstrates an openness to permitting borders to be revised organically according to natural changes. But what the example of the Marshall Islands and the “Compact of Free Association” (COFA) begins to demonstrate is an alternative approach to how individual nations can respond to environmental migration on a bilateral basis with or without international consensus, open borders, or an internationally agreed upon protection framework. It alludes to an acknowledgment that the world is on the verge of a level of migration that is going to call into question the entire nation-state regime and current migration structures. It also begins to envision a solution to the challenges facing landless and stateless migrants, especially those originating from soon to be landless nations. From history, it is clear that these conditions will lead to rising instability and prompt major displacement events that place large numbers in positions of extreme and often protracted vulnerability. What is needed now is a reformulation of our understanding of nation-states and their defining borders, one that is based more on an understanding of diasporas than on the present conception of the modern nation-state. As humans and the nations that they belong to begin to experience a less certain relationship with the territories that they are born to, a new regime must be explored. Each of these examples will likely be replicated elsewhere and may provide some vision of how this future regime might manifest.

140 Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 1991, pp. 83–99., doi:10.1353/dsp.1991.0004.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

4.0

An American Opportunity

4.1 INTRODUCTION While global projections suggest that the shifting of the “human climate niche” may benefit countries like Russia or Canada most meaningfully in the coming decades, a more nuanced analysis suggests that the shift does expose a significant opportunity for large parts of the United States of America, as well. With the third largest land area of any state in the world, behind only Russia and Canada, the United States will experience many of the same benefits from a changing climate in the northern half of its territory that those other countries hope to capitalize on.141 Because its large territory spans a wide range of climatic conditions, even with deteriorating circumstances in certain parts, a large swath of the American heartland is expected to be transformed into one of the largest contiguous land areas positioned within the “human climate niche.” The fact that these conditions are largely concentrated within the bounds of the United States should be understood as a major opportunity for the nation. There is evidence that Russia has already recognized the gains it can make in global standing as a result of climate change, especially if it is willing to accept significant numbers of immigrants to support the economic growth that would be needed to fuel its rise. However, it may face some challenges in this pursuit. As Abrahm Lustgarten explains, Russia “may be no better positioned, politically speaking, to welcome large numbers of migrants than the U.S. or Canada; in fact, xenophobia is probably even more prevalent there.”142 In this way, it may be countries like the United States and Canada, with large multicultural and immigrant populations, along with a history of refugee resettlement that could seize this opportunity to lead the international community by recognizing environmental migrants and taking advantage of the potential that they offer.

141 Central Intelligence Agency. “Country Comparisons—Area.” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/area/country-comparison. 142 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climatemigration-crisis.html.

4.0 An American Opportunity There is also evidence that Canada is already mobilizing to embrace this strategy. With the second largest land mass of any of the world’s states after only Russia and a history of promoting immigration, Canada has embraced its role as a magnet for immigrants. In fact, Canada rose in 2018 to overtake the United States in the resettlement of refugees for the first time since the United States passed the Refugee Act in 1980, which established its Federal Refugee Resettlement Program.143, 144 In addition, as Abrahm Lustgarten notes, recognizing the potential benefits of increased immigration, “a group of Canadian business executives and academics have called on their government to turn the country’s immigration system into a magnet for the planet’s most talented people, hoping to nearly triple Canada’s population by 2100.”145 Though this might sound ambitious, because Canada is by far the least populous of the world’s three largest nations by territorial area, it also has the most space to grow. Succeeding in this initiative would likely place the country in a position to supplant the United States as the primary destination for the world’s so-called “best and brightest,” the talented youth that each of these countries will need to attract in order to truly leverage its expanding territory within the “human climate niche.” And, although Canada is currently only home to a little over 10% as many people as the United States, this would represent a competitive threat that the United States should take quite seriously. At home, the United States does face some serious challenges as a result of climate change, though, that cannot and should not be ignored. Much of the nation’s most heavily populated regions are located primarily in areas that will experience the most significant changes over the coming decades as a result of climate change. Sea level rise poses a threat to many of the nation’s most densely populated urban centers, which are highly concentrated along the nation’s two long coastlines. Rising temperatures and increasingly frequent storms and wildfires will likely leave parts of the country uninhabitable. As a result, the scale of movement within the United States itself could be quite significant. As Abrahm Lustgarten describes in “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America,” Across the United States, some 162 million people — nearly one in two — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be particularly severe, and by 2070, our analysis suggests, if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least four million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life.146 These alarming predictions only tell half of the story, though. While large numbers of Americans may move as a result, these conditions are anticipated to lead to mostly localized regional displacement patterns within the bounds of the country’s expansive territory.147 Due to its vast size and extensive resources, the United States is likely capable of managing this kind of population redistribution. Where those that move are likely to move to, though, should be the focus of inquiry.

143 Radford, Jynnah, and Phillip Connor. “Canada Now Leads the World in Refugee Resettlement, Surpassing the U.S.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 19 June 2019, www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/19/canada-now-leads-the-world-in-refugee-resettlementsurpassing-the-u-s/. 144 United States, Congress, “Refugee Act of 1980: Conference Report to Accompany S. 643.” S.643 - Refugee Act of 1979. www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/senate-bill/643. 145 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climatemigration-crisis.html. 146 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climatecrisis-migration-america.html. 147 Robinson, Caleb, et al. “Modeling Migration Patterns in the USA under Sea Level Rise.” PLOS ONE, vol. 15, no. 1, 22 Jan. 2020, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227436.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

4.2 THE AMERICAN CLIMATE NICHE To understand the projected shift of the “human climate niche” in the context of the United States, a number of factors should be considered. As previously discussed, though, no environmental factor plays a greater role in defining where on earth is best suited to support human life than temperature. In the 2019 study “Future of the human climate niche,” authors Chi Xu et al. identify the “human climate niche” by determining the suitability of every part of the earth’s land surface for human life based on temperature. Then, based on three different climate change models, the study presents how the “human climate niche” might shift from current conditions to the year 2070 for each scenario. For their study, Chi Xu et al. utilized standard Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP), which are modeled trajectories of greenhouse gas concentrations that have been adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to represent possible outcomes depending on the level of additional greenhouse gases that are emitted over the coming years.148 While the RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5 scenario outcomes are included here for reference and to show the full range of plausible outcomes, the high emissions RCP 8.5 scenario, which assumes “business as usual” and that only relatively modest progress is made in cutting emissions, is used here for this study as the most probable outcome. Currently, as can be seen in Figure 12, the “human climate niche” encompasses the vast majority of the nation’s major population centers, from the Northeast, down through the Mid-Atlantic, across the South and Southwest, and up much of the Pacific Coast.149 Notably, though, much of the Great Lakes, Upper Midwest, the Great Basin, and the Rocky Mountains currently fall outside of ideal conditions for human life.150 That does not mean they are uninhabitable or that people do not live and thrive there, but it does provide a rough view of where humans experience the most optimal conditions for life. With only a modest gain in greenhouse gas concentrations over the next fifty years, represented by the RCP 2.6 scenario, it is clear that the United States would experience noticeable changes by 2070. As Figure 13 shows, the “human climate niche” would shift noticeably to the north, likely causing changes that would be experienced by millions, especially in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast. Will these changes be enough to force the majority of those experiencing these effects to move? In isolation, it is unlikely. But some may move, and there are other factors that may help motivate them to do so. With a more moderate gain, though, the effects become even more noticeable. As seen in Figure 14, which illustrates the RCP 4.5 scenario, by 2070 the Southeast would be almost entirely left behind. The “human climate niche’s” shift north would be far more pronounced. Improvements in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest, though, would also become more noticeable. Overall the portion of the Continental United States that falls within the “human climate niche” would actually begin to grow. Again, the majority of those left outside of the shifting niche are unlikely to move as a result, but some will, and that number is likely to grow as projections intensify. In a more extreme scenario, which follows the RCP 8.5 trajectory and assumes that business continues as usual over the next fifty years in regard to greenhouse gas emissions, the shift northward would be even more dramatic. In this outcome, which can be seen in Figure 15, the entire Southern half of the country would be left almost entirely outside of conditions ideal for human life. 148 Van Vuuren, Detlef P., et al. “The Representative Concentration Pathways: an Overview.” Climatic Change, vol. 109, no. 1-2, 2011, pp. 5–31., doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0148-z. 149 Shaw, Al, et al. “New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 15 Sept. 2020, projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/. 150 Ibid.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 14: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Current Suitability (2019) Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Fig. 15: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 2.6 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The Great Lakes Green Belt

In addition, in this scenario, much of the densely populated Northeast, one of the country’s primary population centers, which remained within the “human climate niche” through other scenarios, here begins to fall outside of preferred conditions. In contrast, the movement of the niche into the Great Lakes Region would be solidified, and the overall land area encompassed within the niche would increase significantly. The advantages for this region will be immense. As Al Shaw et al. describe, “the northern Midwest and Great Plains will benefit, in farm productivity, in economy[,] and in overall comfort.”151 It’s also notable that pockets of improved conditions would also begin to appear across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions in this scenario. With this result, the area of American territory in the South of the nation that falls outside of the “human climate niche” in 2070 would largely mirror that which falls within it today. And while those that live outside of the niche today are largely outside of it due to cold temperatures, in the future, those that live outside of it are more likely to experience extreme heat, which can be more dangerous to human life and more difficult to overcome. In Figure 16, the scale of change in suitability from current conditions in 2019 to projected conditions in 2070 under the RCP 8.5 trajectory are mapped alongside the 2070 “human climate niche” boundary to illustrate where the greatest changes will occur, whether that change comes in the form of improving or deteriorating conditions. As before, people will continue to live outside of ideal conditions, but where conditions change significantly, life is likely to change in meaningful ways. Much of the South and South East, including much of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, are likely to experience the most dramatic decline in conditions. At the same time, the Northeast, including much of New England, but most notably Boston and New York, will also see noticeable deterioration. In contrast, as previously described, the Upper Midwest and Great Plains, including parts of the Rocky Mountains, will see the most apparent improvements in climatic conditions. In analyzing these results, Al Shaw et al. assert that each of these “scenarios suggest massive upheavals in where Americans currently live and grow food.”152 But what becomes clear is that the role of the United States in the production of the world’s food and in housing millions of people is not likely to be reduced by climate change even if it is transformed in real ways. Conditions are expected to deteriorate as much or more across much of the earth’s inhabited surface. Especially under the more extreme projections, there appears to be the potential for the United States to see an expansion of the portion of its land area that falls within the “human climate niche.” While Russia and Canada are generally discussed as having the most to gain in this respect, the United States may come to have one of the largest portions of the world’s preferred conditions for human life.

4.3 A MORE DETAILED VIEW OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE UNITED STATES Already the analysis of the “human climate niche” relies heavily on temperature to assess where climatic conditions will improve and where conditions will decline, but a further analysis provides a more localized and granular view of the anticipated changes across a variety of intersecting factors. This analysis is based on data from the Rhodium Group (which describes itself as “an independent research provider combining economic data and policy insight to

151 Ibid. 152 Ibid.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 16: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 4.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Fig. 17: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Suitability in 2070 at RCP 8.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 18: “Human Climate Niche” in the United States: Change in Suitability from 2019 to 2070 at RCP 8.5 Source: Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

4.0 An American Opportunity

The Great Lakes Green Belt

analyze global trends”153), the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and the United States Forest Service that were compiled by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine. By considering temperature, humidity, sea level rise, wildfires, crop yields, and economic damages all together and at the county level across the continental United States, a more complete and detailed understanding of climate change and its anticipated effects on the country can be established.

4.3.1 EXTREME HEAT AND HUMIDITY As is clear from the analysis of projected changes to the “human climate niche,” temperature will play one of the key roles in determining where humans can continue to live and thrive in the United States. To build on that preceding analysis and gain a deeper understanding of where climate change will result in the most extreme warming, the Rhodium Group assessed where extreme temperatures are most likely to occur and for how long. To illustrate this, Figure 17, shows the number of weeks out of each year that each county has been projected to sustain temperatures above 35°C (95°F) in the period between 2040 and 2060. This analysis shows that much of the South and Southwest will begin to experience more frequent and sustained periods of extreme temperatures in the coming decades. For example, Phoenix, Arizona, with a population of nearly 1.7 million people as of 2019,154 is, based on the more extreme RCP 8.5 climate change model, projected to experience 35°C (95°F) temperatures for around six months out of each year by 2060.155 The city was the country’s fifth largest in 2019156 and one of the nation’s fastest growing, having grown by around 200 people a day since 2010.157 At current rates, it is projected to double in population by the year 2040.158 Can this growth be sustained as temperatures increase? As Kelly Leilani Main and Greg Lindsay write, To save lives during extreme weather, we need air-conditioning, and lots of it. But abnormal weather, which is becoming the new normal, puts tremendous strain on electrical systems, as seen during Texas’s deadly winter storm [in 2021]. Summer blackouts may become even more common, and deadlier, as temperatures soar. The energy required to save lives during these events directly threatens emissions-reduction targets, and makes our planet even hotter.159 While innovation and technological advances may allow for Phoenix to continue to grow at this pace for some time by bringing in the needed water to sustain life and artificially cooling the homes there, the role that these innovations are likely to play in contributing to the underlying causes of climate change should be of serious concern. And while Phoenix may be the most extreme example, it is far from an outlier; 153 Rhodium Group. Rhodium Group, 2018, rhg.com/. 154 United States Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010stotal-cities-and-towns.html. 155 Shaw, Al, et al. “New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 15 Sept. 2020, projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/. 156 United States Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010stotal-cities-and-towns.html. 157 Weatherhead, Madeleine, and What Works Cities. “Phoenix Is Ready for More Rapid Growth.” What Works Cities, Medium, 29 June 2020, medium.com/what-works-cities-certification/ phoenix-is-ready-for-more-rapid-growth-286121eb6cea. 158 Ibid. 159 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy.

Phoenix, Arizona could experience up to six months of temperatures above 35°C (95°F) each year by 2060

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 19: Number of Weeks Per Year Above 35°C (95°F) in the United State by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

in fact it is representative of trends across much of the so-called American “Sun Belt,” a region which includes much of the southern half of the nation. When considering the 22 largest cities across the “Sun Belt,” all with metropolitan populations of over a million each, these cities accounted for nearly half of all population growth in the United States from 2010 to 2016.160 Unfortunately for these growing cities, rising temperatures will only compound a growing list of existing challenges they already face. According to a report published by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in 2020, Overall, the combination of growing income inequality, rising housing costs, segregation and the automobile-centric nature of Sun Belt cities creates an interconnected set of challenges that would be difficult for any city or metropolitan area to deal with. The fact that these challenges are occurring in large, young, fast-growing metros makes the challenge doubly difficult.161 These cities are growing faster than those in other parts of the country by attracting a mix of younger and older residents, but increasingly more lowincome residents, as well. Jobs being added are largely constrained to the highest paying sectors, which is driving up housing costs. And on top of these factors, these cities are notoriously dependent on automobiles, with very low public transportation usage, which is very worrying for a region projected to warm considerably as a result of climate change. But temperature projections alone are independent from other factors like humidity that can contribute to how humans experience extreme heat and the 160 Fulton, William, et al. “The Urban Sun Belt: An Overview.” The Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University, 2020, kinder.rice.edu/research/urban-sun-belt-overview. 161 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

impact that that heat can have on human health. Figure 18 takes humidity into consideration, as well, by illustrating the number of days per year that extremely high wet bulb temperatures have been projected for each county during the period between 2040 and 2060. This metric is used, because high wet bulb temperatures represent a serious risk to human health; high humidity combined with extreme heat reduces the body’s natural ability to cool itself by sweating and can be far more dangerous than dry heat alone. This analysis shows that while extreme heat may be experienced most significantly in Arizona and Texas, high humidity will amplify the effects of high temperatures especially along the Gulf Coast and throughout the Mississippi River Valley.162 This means that high humidity will create the conditions for the effects of extreme heat to reach further north than temperature alone would suggest. It also means that much of the southern extent of the nation’s Atlantic coastline will also be put at risk. As Al Smith et al. explain, “heat and humidity in Missouri will feel like Louisiana does today, while some areas we don’t usually think of as humid, like southwestern Arizona, will see soaring wet bulb temperatures because of factors like sun angle, wind speed and cloud cover reacting to high temperatures.”163 Gulf Coast cities like New Orleans, Louisiana; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Gulfport, Mississippi, that already experience periods of high heat and humidity will likely experience an increasing number of days with dangerously high levels of both. But cities further north, like Memphis, Tennessee and Louisville, Kentucky, may, as a result of climate change, also experience similar conditions by the year 2070.

4.3.2 SEA LEVEL RISE With much of the nation’s major population centers concentrated along the coasts, though, few factors represent a more serious threat to the United States than sea level rise. As Figure 19 illustrates, many of the country’s most prominent cities will be affected. Of these, many, like Miami, New York, and Boston, already have plans to spend billions of dollars to mitigate the effects, but this is only possible for large and wealthy cities. Though the area of land affected will be relatively small in comparison to the size of the country, the number of people affected will be disproportionately immense. As presented by the Union of Concerned Scientists in their 2018 report “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate,” across the country, more than 300,000 homes, which together house an estimated 550,000 people and were then valued at about USD $117.5 billion, will be at risk of regularly flooding as a result of sea level rise by 2045.164 By 2100, it is estimated that this number would rise significantly to include up to 2.4 million homes that together house an estimated 4.7 million people and were then valued at about USD $912 billion.165 For comparison, this would be as if every house in both Los Angeles and Houston, two of the country’s largest cities, were affected.166 By 2100, of those affected homes, it is estimated that as many as 1 million will be in Florida alone, accounting for more than one out of every ten houses in the state and nearly half of all those affected across the country.167 New Jersey, with around 250,000 affected homes and New York with 143,000 affected homes are projected to be the next hardest hit.168 Unfortunately, despite these projections, these areas continue to grow and 162 Shaw, Al, et al. “New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 15 Sept. 2020, projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/. 163 Ibid. 164 Union of Concerned Scientists. “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 18 June 2018, www.ucsusa.org/ resources/underwater. 165 Ibid. 166 Ibid. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 20: Days Per Year With High Wet Bulb Temperatures in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

Fig. 21: Sea Level Rise: Percentage of Property Below High Tide in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

The Great Lakes Green Belt

attract new residents, with houses being built in Florida, New Jersey, and North Carolina, at around two or three times the rate of home construction elsewhere, a troubling trend that will continue to put more Americans at risk.169 From this analysis, it appears likely that millions of Americans will be forced to move off the coasts in the coming century. It is also clear that the costs will be immense. Luckily, the vast majority of the nation’s territory is not at risk as a result of sea level rise. These changes will, though, lead to a meaningful redistribution of where people live and work.

4.3.3 WILDFIRES Moving off of the coasts, though, one of the major risks in the United States, especially across the Western half of the country, including the Great Plains, the Great Basin, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest, is the proliferation of very large and long lasting wildfires. With rising temperatures and crippling droughts, the frequency and scale of these fires is only expected to increase. Already across Northern California, extreme wildfires have become an annual occurrence, taking lives, causing extensive property damage, and affecting the air quality for millions.170 But what was once isolated to a few regions will spread to affect larger swaths of the country, even those not heavily forested. For example, parts of both Oregon and Nevada are projected to experience periods of alternately extremely wet and dry weather, which is expected to result in the growth of grasses that burn extremely easily and enable fires to spread quickly with high winds.171 Figure 20 depicts the average number of very large wildfires predicted to occur each year in each county across the country during the period from 2040 to 2071 based on modeling by United States Forest Service researchers. It is estimated, based on this analysis, that by 2070, around 28 million people will likely be affected by extreme wildfires.172 Again, this will likely affect where Americans live, understanding the serious risk to buying or building a home in an area that is prone to wildfires.

4.3.4 ECONOMIC EFFECTS: CROP YIELDS AND ECONOMIC DAMAGES From an economic perspective, two of the primary factors that help to predict how climate change will affect life in the United States are projected crop yields and the projected economic damage that will be sustained as a result of changing conditions. Figure 21 shows the projected percentage increase or decline in crop yields from current levels to those anticipated for the period between 2040 and 2060. As temperatures rise across much of the country’s agricultural lands, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain certain agricultural activities there. Two of the country’s primary crops, soy and corn, for example, which are grown across large swaths of the country and provide livestock feed and a primary ingredient in many major foods, are both particularly sensitive to rising temperatures, even more so than to drought.173 As Al Shaw et al. explain, “[b]y midcentury, North Dakota, which already harvests millions of acres of both [soy 169 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy. 170 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climatecrisis-migration-america.html. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Shaw, Al, et al. “New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 15 Sept. 2020, projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/.

parts of Texas and Oklahoma may see crop yields drop by more than 70%

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 22: Average Number of Very Large Wildfires in the United States Per Year (2040-2071) Source: United States Forest Service, ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

Fig. 23: Percentage Change in Farm Crop Yields in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

The Great Lakes Green Belt

and corn] crops, will warm enough to allow for more growing days and higher yields. But parts of Texas and Oklahoma may see yields drop by more than 70%.”174 This illustrates just how dramatically where food is grown in the United States is likely to shift in the coming years. The financial costs associated with climate change have yet to be fully realized, but for much of the country, the costs will be immense. As Al Shaw et al. explain, “[r]ising energy costs, lower labor productivity, poor crop yields and increasing crime are among the climate-driven elements that will increasingly drag on the U.S. economy, eventually taking a financial toll that exceeds that from the COVID-19 pandemic in some regions.”175 In Figure 22, the projected economic damages from climate change have been displayed as a percentage of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for each county for the period from 2040 to 2060. Major cities, like Houston and Miami for example, will likely see damages in the billions, but that may still represent only a fraction of their overall GDP.176 It is actually some of the country’s more rural counties, with small GDPs to begin with, that will be impacted most significantly in this way. It is estimated that in some areas, as much as half of a county’s GDP may be lost as a result of climate change.177 It is also true, though, that some counties stand to see a benefit, with projected increases in their GDP as a result of improving environmental conditions resulting from the shifting of the “human climate niche.” Figure 22 shows that these gains will be concentrated in the northern half of the country, with the greatest gains experienced in the Upper Midwest and the Great Plains.

4.4 THE GREAT LAKES While projections suggest that the shift of the “human climate niche” will lead to deteriorating conditions across much of the country’s most densely populated areas, they also demonstrate that America’s Upper Midwest heartland, the region surrounding the Great Lakes, will likely experience improving conditions over the next 50 years. Combined with the fact that the region is home to the Great Lakes, which together form one of the world’s largest freshwater sources and represent approximately 20% of the earth’s total surface freshwater supply, it is well-poised to become a climate haven for the United States, and perhaps the world more broadly.178, 179 Though its extents are only loosely defined, the Great Lakes Region is usually considered, according to the Brookings Institution, to include “all or part of 12 states, including the western portions of New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia; northern Kentucky; all of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin; and eastern Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri.”180 With shifting climate conditions and a greater reliance on its wealth of natural resources, though, the region’s importance for the United States will only grow over the next century. By some estimates, the region is already home to about a third of the nation’s population.

174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid. 178 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy. 179 Environmental Protection Agency. “Facts and Figures about the Great Lakes.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 6 Apr. 2021, www.epa.gov/greatlakes/facts-and-figuresabout-great-lakes. 180 Affolter-Caine, Britany, and John C. Austin. “The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.” Brookings, Brookings Institution , 1 Oct. 2006, www.brookings. edu/research/the-vital-center-a-federal-state-compact-to-renew-the-great-lakes-region/.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 24: Economic Climate Damages as a Percentage of GDP in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

But as deteriorating climatic conditions lead millions to migrate off of the nation’s coasts, out of its hottest areas, and in search of fresh water, the region will likely see a significant increase in population, especially if its role as a haven for environmental migrants is embraced and its potential for housing millions more is realized. Already there is evidence to suggest that Americans are thinking about climate change when deciding where to move to. According to a survey published by Redfin in April of 2021, “[a]bout half of respondents who plan to move in the next year said extreme temperatures and/or the increasing frequency or intensity of natural disasters played a role in their decision to relocate.”181 More than a third of people who planned to move in the coming year also responded that sea level rise would play a role in their decision.182 When respondents were categorized based on region, it became apparent that those currently residing in the Midwest were the least likely to cite climate change or its effects as a reason for considering moving.183 When it came to buying a home, concerns over climate change were even more dramatic, with nearly 80% of people responding that they would be hesitant to buy a home in a location experiencing increasing risk of natural disasters, sea level rise, or higher temperatures.184 As summarized by Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s Chief Economist, “[c]limate change is making certain parts of the country less desirable to live in. As Americans leave places that are frequently on fire or at risk of going underwater, the destinations that don’t face those risks will become increasingly competitive and expensive

181 Katz, Lily. “Nearly Half of Americans Who Plan to Move Say Natural Disasters, Extreme Temperatures Factored Into Their Decision to Relocate: Survey.” Redfin Real Estate News, 5 Apr. 2021, www.redfin.com/news/climate-change-migration-survey/. 182 Ibid. 183 Ibid. 184 Ibid.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 25: The Great Lakes Region Source: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

for homebuyers.”185 In other words, climate change is already impacting where Americans are moving to and from, and already patterns suggest that the Midwest is growing in appeal due to relatively lower risks than elsewhere. These trends are only expected to become more pronounced over the coming years. The importance of the Great Lakes as a source of freshwater for this anticipated influx of people and for the nation more broadly becomes especially clear when the challenges facing some of the country’s other key water sources are considered. For example, it is estimated that the Ogallala Aquifer, which serves much of the Great Plains, including portions of eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas) and accounts for approximately a third of irrigation groundwater used in the country, may be almost entirely depleted within the next eighty years.186 In addition, Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir and one of the largest in the world, has, as of June 2021, reached its lowest level since the 1930s187 as a result of one of the worst megadroughts in the last 500 years.188 Created with the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1937, by damming the Colorado River, Lake Mead serves approximately 25 million Americans with hydroelectric power

185 Ibid. 186 Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climatecrisis-migration-america.html. 187 Yetikyel, Gia. “Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead Hits Lowest Water Level Since 1930s.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 18 June 2021, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hooverdams-lake-mead-hits-lowest-water-level-1930s-180978022/. 188 Egan, Timothy. “The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/waterhoover-dam-climate-change.html.

4.0 An American Opportunity and/or freshwater.189 When built, the reservoir’s capacity would have been enough to fill an area the size of the state of New York with 30 centimeters (one foot) of water, though its current volume is substantially less as the natural flow of the Colorado River which feeds it has slowed by about 20% over the last hundred years.190, 191 As described by Timothy Egan in “The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.,” “[t]he dam powered Los Angeles and birthed modern Las Vegas. Downriver canals made Arizona habitable yearround, delivered cold water to drinking fountains in Disneyland and created an Eden for winter vegetables in Southern California.”192 The role of the Hoover Dam in establishing life in the Western United States cannot be overstated and the risks that Lake Mead drying up represent cannot, therefore, be ignored. But beyond the all important water resource of the Great Lakes, it is clear from the previous analysis of climate change across the United States, that much of the region will be spared the most extreme heat and humidity of a warming planet. If anything, its historically colder seasons will simply become more temperate, which has the potential to enable increased agricultural activities throughout the region for more of each year. As a result, expanded growing seasons will lead to increased agricultural output and improve crop yields. As conditions deteriorate across America’s traditional croplands, the region will be called on to take on a greater role in the production of the nation’s food supply, a transition that could bring many new economic opportunities, as well. An increasing labor pool will also be required to support these activities. Economically, though not quite the force that it was in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of American industrial strength, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management, the region still accounted for roughly 16% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2017193 and remained, according to the Brookings Institution, “one of the largest wealth generators and marketplaces in the world.”194 If taken alone, the region’s estimated USD $3.2 trillion in gross domestic product in 2017195 would have positioned it as the fifth largest national economy that year, behind only the United States as a whole, China, Japan, and Germany and just ahead of the United Kingdom and India.196 Proximity to a rising Canada could also represent a major benefit for the region’s future. Given that the Great Lakes are largely shared between the United States and Canada, it should be recognized that the region would also include some

189 Yetikyel, Gia. “Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead Hits Lowest Water Level Since 1930s.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 18 June 2021, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hooverdams-lake-mead-hits-lowest-water-level-1930s-180978022/. 190 Egan, Timothy. “The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/waterhoover-dam-climate-change.html. 191 Milly, Paul, and Krista Dunne. “Atmospheric Warming, Loss of Snow Cover, and Declining Colorado River Flow.” United States Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/waterresources/science/atmospheric-warming-loss-snow-cover-and-declining-colorado. 192 Egan, Timothy. “The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/waterhoover-dam-climate-change.html. 193 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office for Coastal Management . “NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy: Regional and State Profiles.” NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy, Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast, 2020, coast.noaa.gov/ digitalcoast/training/econreport.html. 194 Affolter-Caine, Britany, and John C. Austin. “The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.” Brookings, Brookings Institution , 1 Oct. 2006, www.brookings. edu/research/the-vital-center-a-federal-state-compact-to-renew-the-great-lakes-region/. 195 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office for Coastal Management . “NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy: Regional and State Profiles.” NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy, Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast, 2020, coast.noaa.gov/ digitalcoast/training/econreport.html. 196 The World Bank. “GDP (Current US$) Data.” The World Bank Data, The World Bank, 2017, data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2017&amp;most_recent_value_ desc=true&amp;start=1960&amp;year_high_desc=true. World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 26: The American “Rust Belt” Source: Brendan Jennings, Emily S. Thompson, Kirsten M. de Beurs

of Canada’s most important urban centers with Toronto, the country’s largest city and its financial capital; Montreal, the country’s second largest city; and Ottawa, the capital of Canada and home to the national government. When considering the region with a binational perspective, its strength and influence become even more apparent. This binational region has, by some, been referred to as the Great Lakes Megalopolis, which, when conceived of in this way, would create the largest and most highly populated urban megalopolis in North America. When these factors are combined with analyses of the shifting “human climate niche” and the various other climatic conditions, it is clear that the Great Lakes Region is the part of the United States that stands to see the greatest improvements to the environmental and climatic conditions experienced there in the coming decades. As a result, it appears nearly inevitable that there will be significant migration to the region, as many are forced to leave other parts of the country and beyond as a result of climate change. As Kelly Leilani Main and Greg Lindsay write in “Why the Great Lakes need to be the center of our climate strategy,” Not only is the region projected to avoid the most egregious climate impacts, but it also possesses an abundance of affordable housing, room to grow, and a commitment to equity and sustainability. Funneling growth there would not only address the legacies of disinvestment but create new opportunities for those who will need to move by providing dedicated resources for climate migrants relocating from other parts of the country.197 However promising, though, that does not mean that this transformation will be 197 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 27: The American “Rust Belt” Source: Brendan Jennings, Emily S. Thompson, Kirsten M. de Beurs

without challenges. The availability of affordable housing and the space to absorb newcomers are symptoms of years (if not decades) of disinvestment and outmigration. Much of the nation’s current perception of the region is that it has refused to evolve or modernize and that it is stuck in the past, especially as other regions have embraced the future and long since left it behind. While there may be some truth in these perceptions and there are certainly both social and economic factors that stand in the way of its transformation, the Great Lakes Region is still home to a large segment of the American population and it still plays a significant role in the country’s economy. If climate change projections are any indication, these roles are likely to expand dramatically over the coming century. If the region, and the nation at large, embrace this potential and leverage the many conditions that have primed it for a renaissance, then the Great Lakes Region is poised to, once again, become the focal point of growth and innovation in the United States.

4.5 AMERICA’S POST-INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND: THE “RUST BELT” What was once America’s industrial heartland has experienced steady depopulation and deurbanization over the last sixty to seventy years as a result of deindustrialization, a transformation characterized by social and economic changes linked to a reduced role of the manufacturing sector in a region’s economy. Consequently, the once prosperous Great Lakes Region is now more widely known pejoratively as the “Rust Belt,” because heavy industry and manufacturing activities, which once formed the foundation of the region’s economy, have been significantly diminished. Though already well underway at the time, this process accelerated in the 1980s when numerous automobile factories, long central to the region’s identity, shuttered. The impact of these

The Great Lakes Green Belt

changes have been immense, resulting in a hollowing out of the region’s once thriving urban centers and serious doubts about its future. Though the phenomenon was not unique to the Great Lakes Region, or to the United States more broadly, few regions embody these changes quite so distinctly as the American “Rust Belt.” Often credited with building America and playing a pivotal role in helping the Allies to win World War II, the region emerged after the war with an immense sense of pride and purpose and the anticipation of a bright future. As W. F. Lever describes in “Deindustrialisation and the Reality of the Post-industrial City,” though, The post-war period has, in the developed countries, seen two major shifts—one in economic structure and one in urban structure. The former, usually termed deindustrialisation, measures the shift from manufacturing, as the major source of employment and income, to services; the second, usually termed counterurbanisation, measures the shift of residential and subsequently employment location from the largest urban centres to smaller towns and rural areas.198 In the context of the Great Lakes Region, these two factors have contributed to the rapid automation of work, the disappearance of especially urban jobs for the working class, and the overall decline of the post-industrial city, all dramatic changes impacting how, where, and by who work is being done in America. Consequently, there has also been a meaningful redistribution of the American population in response. For many of those affected, these changes have been traumatic, and any suggestions of embracing the consequences have largely been met with skepticism, if not outright hostility.

4.5.1 CHALLENGES Unfortunately, these changes have stoked regionalist, nationalist, and xenophobic sentiments as a result of mounting fears over the threat that immigration and globalization represent to the region’s economic viability. While many American politicians and the nation’s disenfranchised workforce have long mourned the decline of manufacturing jobs in America, and the chilling effect it has had on the so-called “Rust Belt,” America’s deindustrialization has been a consistent and widely acknowledged trend that has continued uninterrupted for around seventy years at this point, since the end of World War II. As described in The Economist, “[t]he share of American employment in manufacturing has declined sharply since the 1950s, from almost 30% to less than 10%. At the same time, jobs in services soared, from less than 50% of employment to almost 70%.”199 Though manufacturing jobs have disappeared, the overall number of jobs in the United States has continued to rise to replace the loss and to accommodate population growth. These jobs have been created primarily in the service sector, which means that the nature of work in the United States has shifted and likely will continue to. Therefore, the challenges facing the region are likely as much a result of a stubborn refusal to evolve than to the actual decline of manufacturing itself. At the same time, though, the role of the United States in global manufacturing remains significant. Despite representing just 11% of the nation’s GDP in 2019, the United States still accounted for nearly 17% of the global manufacturing output

198 Lever, W. F. “Deindustrialisation and the Reality of the Post-Industrial City.” Urban Studies, vol. 28, no. 6, 1 Dec. 1991, pp. 983–999., doi:10.1080/00420989120081161. 199 The Economist. “The Future of Jobs: The Onrushing Wave.” The Economist, The Economist Group Limited, 18 Jan. 2014, www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previoustechnological-innovation-has-always-delivered-more-long-run-employment-not-less.

4.0 An American Opportunity that same year, second only to China.200 It is also well-documented that the decline in manufacturing jobs in America is not primarily due to globalization. As Jeffrey J. Selingo explains, “nearly nine in 10 jobs that [have] disappeared since 2000 were lost to automation in the decades-long march to an informationdriven economy, not to workers in other countries,”201 or to foreign-born workers in the United States, for that matter. This decline is primarily due to incredible progress in manufacturing technology and to the automation of countless tasks that would once have required human labor, both areas where the United States has excelled. As the trend toward automation only accelerates, those jobs are not coming back, which means that the United States, a society that celebrates work as the bedrock of a productive civilization, will have to adapt by redefining what work will be in the coming century. But, as John Austin and Britany Affolter-Caine explain, there are other challenges, as well, which include, “an underdeveloped human capital base, a weak culture of entrepreneurialism, largely uncompetitive metropolitan areas, and a legacy of employee benefit, job, and income security programs unsuited for today’s economy.”202 These localized factors have all combined with a long history of political negligence, mismanagement, and racialized policies, that have been imprinted onto the urban landscape through redlining and segregation, to contribute to the region’s overall decline. The result is that the Great Lakes Region now boasts an abundance of downtrodden and disenfranchised post-industrial towns and cities, each with a highly personal and localized story of this painful transition. These are the municipalities with excess building stock, diminished populations, high unemployment rates, and cultural identities tied to a different time, to companies that have left or gone out of business, to factories and plants that have closed, and to industries that have become largely irrelevant. These are the towns clinging stubbornly to a nostalgic ideal, to a past that will not return. These are the cities that must now evolve to survive in a changing world and must embrace new opportunities to buoy themselves and the citizens that call them home.

4.5.2 WHAT COMES NEXT? So, what should become of the post-industrial American city? There are those who favor embracing the depopulation trends of the past half century and allowing large swaths of these cities to return to nature. There are those who favor a kind of preservation of the ruin and would create museums of the decay. There are those in complete denial, characterized by a prideful stubbornness, that believe that the right combination of politics and investment will bring back the golden age of manufacturing, that industry will reclaim these places, that workers that have fled will return to fill reformed assembly lines, that new investment will follow, and that a thriving middle class will once again enjoy the “American Dream” of a past era.203 Not one of these visions, though, offers the kind of forward thinking that the region really needs now. The existing challenges, combined with a wealth 200 Richter, Felix. “Infographic: China Is the World’s Manufacturing Superpower.” Statista Infographics, 4 May 2021, www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-by-share-of-globalmanufacturing-output/. 201 Selingo, Jeffrey J. “Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workerscollege-degree-apprenticeships.html. 202 Affolter-Caine, Britany, and John C. Austin. “The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.” Brookings, Brookings Institution , 1 Oct. 2006, www.brookings. edu/research/the-vital-center-a-federal-state-compact-to-renew-the-great-lakes-region/. 203 Interboro Partners. “Improve Your Lot! Introducing The New Suburbanism.” Interboro Partners, Interboro Partners, pp. 238–255, www.dropbox.com/s/hf0xscydcmz7gm1/Interboro_ Improve%20Your%20Lot_01.pdf.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 28: The American “Rust Belt” and the American “Climate Niche” Source: Brendan Jennings, Emily S. Thompson, Kirsten M. de Beurs; Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

of land, infrastructure, and vacant properties in need of occupants and entrepreneurs, should not be seen as impossible obstacles to overcome or as scars to memorialize. These conditions represent an opportunity to develop a new vision for the future of America’s post-industrial cities, one that centers the prosperity of future generations of inhabitants. Combined with improving climatic conditions, the region is now in a position to reinvent itself by reimagining the distressed post-industrial city as a thriving center of life and work for the future, one which accommodates evolving demographics and reconciles the continuing transformations in how Americans live and work. In recent years, these challenges have already helped to shift many “Rust Belt” cities to adopt progressive policies that promote sustainability, resilience, and immigration. As Kelly Leilani Main and Greg Lindsay explain in “Why the Great Lakes need to be the center of our climate strategy,” “[f]orced to grapple with a shrinking tax base, they’ve also became [sic] leaders in sustainability. For example, Flint, Michigan; Worcester, Massachusetts; and Rochester, New York, are remediating contaminated land to create new amenities. In Ohio, Akron, Cincinnati, and Cleveland have focused their efforts on racial equity and resilience.”204, 205 These developments demonstrate a willingness to embrace new strategies and to reimagine the role the region will play in America’s future. Main and Lindsay also point out that many of the cities throughout the region are still home to critical “anchor institutions such as universities and hospitals, not to mention the capacity to house populations twice as large as today’s

204 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy. 205 Lombraña, Laura Millan, and Sam Dodge. “Whatever Climate Change Does to the World, Cities Will Be Hit Hardest.” Bloomberg Green + CityLab, Bloomberg, 19 Apr. 2021, www.bloomberg. com/graphics/2021-cities-climate-victims/.

4.0 An American Opportunity

Fig. 29: The American “Rust Belt” and the American “Climate Niche” Source: Brendan Jennings, Emily S. Thompson, Kirsten M. de Beurs; Chi Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

residents.”206 These elements form a critical foundation from which to build.

4.5.3 IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE AND INVESTMENT Efforts to revitalize the region, though, will require two key ingredients: people and investment. As discussed, due to the need and the favorable conditions in the region, if environmental migration is embraced, the people will come. Investment, though, will require the support of the federal government and possibly even international actors. Combining the existing conditions with an influx of people and investment will create the conditions for success, because the region is already primed for a comeback. As John Austin and Britany Affolter-Caine suggested back in 2006, “it’s time to enlist the people and applied work tradition of the region to help solve the economic and social challenges facing the nation.”207 The results would have wide reaching effects and benefit not just the region itself, but the entire nation. Understanding this, the United States should be focusing more energy and resources into the region. There is reason to believe that this is entirely possible. As John Austin explains more recently, The federal government has played an important role in these efforts. Encouraged in part by a 2007 Brookings study predicting a 3-to-1

206 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy. 207 Affolter-Caine, Britany, and John C. Austin. “The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.” Brookings, Brookings Institution , 1 Oct. 2006, www.brookings. edu/research/the-vital-center-a-federal-state-compact-to-renew-the-great-lakes-region/.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

economic impact for every dollar invested in Great Lakes cleanup, Congress and President Obama approved funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), beginning in 2009. Since then, the federal government has spent over $2.3 billion on more than 3,500 projects along the 10,000 miles of Great Lakes freshwater coastline. Projects . . . have cleaned toxic hot spots, redeveloped wastewater systems, restored harbors and waterfronts, protected and reconstituted vital wetlands and fish habitats, reduced invasive species, curbed nutrient runoffs, and improved overall water quality.208 This demonstrates an appetite for the kind of projects that will be needed to support the revitalization of the region’s infrastructure to enable the kind of population growth that is needed. It also demonstrates the crucial role that the federal government can and must play in this work. As Kelly Leilani Main and Greg Lindsay explain, The federal government has the power to persuade with its dollars, by directing targeted investments to cities and regions where people could or even should move, with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to steer Americans to safety on higher ground. Funneling targeted infrastructure spending toward regions with fewer climate risks and providing dedicated resources to help climate-affected communities relocate can reap the benefits of mitigation and adaptation simultaneously. It can also ensure the longevity of these programs, providing a new legacy for the rest of the world to live up to.209 In other words, this is also about global competition, about the United States, and the Great Lakes Region, once again leading the world in innovation. When it comes to people, up to now, America’s more populous urban centers throughout the “Sun Belt” and along the coasts have been more successful in reinventing themselves after the decline in industry and the transition to a service based economy. For decades, they have acted as the primary attractors of growth and investment. But now, as these cities are threatened by the numerous effects of climate change, focus must shift. America’s post-industrial cities offer lower cost of living and lower vulnerability to climate change. Combined with access to natural resources, they are ideal locations for future population growth, investment, and development. For these reasons, the “Rust Belt” represents immense potential as a so-called “climate haven.” Already, many of these cities have been engaged for years in efforts to attract people and investment; all in pursuit of revitalization. Efforts range, but, importantly, many have begun to recognize the potential of attracting domestic migrants, immigrants, and even refugees, especially those motivated by environmental factors. Cities like Dayton, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan; and Buffalo, New York have all formalized efforts to attract immigrants and specifically environmental migrants.210 A key component of the revitalization of the region relies on repopulating these cities, and some have begun to embrace environmental migration as a clear pathway to accomplishing this goal. The goal is for a redistribution of people from places of high risk to places of low risk, pairing those fleeing the effects of climate change with the post-industrial cities that seek new residents. To successfully accomplish this, resettlement programs need to evolve. Long a leader in resettlement of refugees, the United

208 Austin, John C. “The Nation’s Freshwater Coast Is a Key Fulcrum for Rust Belt Revival.” Brookings, Brookings Institution, 31 May 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/05/31/ the-nations-freshwater-coast-is-a-key-fulcrum-for-rust-belt-revival/. 209 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy. 210 Ibid.

4.0 An American Opportunity

ZERO IMMIGRATION

LOW IMMIGRATION

MEDIUM IMMIGRATION

HIGH IMMIGRATION

500 MILLION

447 MILLION

405 MILLION

400 MILLION

376 MILLION

320 MILLION 300 MILLION

200 MILLION

100 MILLION

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

2050

2060

Fig. 30: United States Population Growth Projections Based on Different Immigration Scenarios Source: William H. Frey, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution

NET MIGRATION

5 MILLION

DEATHS

BIRTHS

BIRTHS 4 MILLION

3 MILLION

DEATHS 2 MILLION

1 MILLION

NET MIGRATION -1 MILLION 1945

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Fig. 31: United States Births, Deaths, and Net Migration, 1945–2019 Source: Daniel Griswold, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, United States Census Bureau

2010

2019

The Great Lakes Green Belt

NATURAL POPULATION GROWTH RATE

2.5%

NET MIGRATION RATE

2.0%

NET MIGRATION RATE 1.5%

1.0%

0.5%

NATURAL POPULATION GROWTH RATE 0.0% 1941

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Fig. 32: Components of United States Population Growth, 1941–2019 Source: Daniel Griswold, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, United States Census Bureau

States saw a dramatic decline under the previous administration. But even before, leading the world in resettlement meant accepting only around 100,000 refugees a year.211 Compared to the scale of the problem, this is completely inadequate. But more importantly, compared to the need of post-industrial cities for residents, this is a massive missed opportunity. Even with investment, the true revitalization of the “Rust Belt” will not happen without people.

4.6 WHY SHOULD THE “RUST BELT” WELCOME ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRANTS? With declining birth rates and immigration rates combined with an aging population, the United States of America is facing an impending demographic crisis. As the predominant geopolitical power in the world since the end of World War II, these challenges threaten to undermine its standing and upend the world order that has characterized this period. Given its long history as a nation of immigrants, its legacy as a leader in refugee resettlement, and its concerns over demographic trends, though, no country is better poised to meet these challenges and exploit the potential advantages of environmental migration. This confluence of factors presents a very serious opportunity for the United States, but it will involve a rethinking of immigration. According to William H. Frey, if the United States were to revert to zero immigration, the nation would, over the coming decades, start to experience a

211 Migration Policy Institute (MPI). “U.S. Annual Refugee Resettlement Ceilings and Number of Refugees Admitted, 1980-Present.” Migration Policy Institute (MPI), 7 May 2021, www. migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/us-annual-refugee-resettlement-ceilings-andnumber-refugees-admitted-united.

2010

2019

4.0 An American Opportunity decline in overall population for the first time in its history.212 While this trajectory seems improbable, even with a low immigration rate, the country would start to see a leveling off of population growth that would be quite worrying. As Nicole Narea explains, Some parts of the US are already beginning to experience some of the downsides of population slowdown or decline: Shrinking tax bases in rural areas have made it harder for government budgets to support essential services, such as infrastructure and public schools. As population growth slows, the pressure for cuts will likely grow. Meanwhile, the existing population will continue to age; by 2030, the Census Bureau estimates that one in five US residents will be of retirement age.213 This means that, without immigration, many of the challenges that have plagued the “Rust Belt” for decades would begin to affect a wider range of towns, cities, and regions more meaningfully. By moving to fill the environmental protection gap, the United States could get ahead of the worst of these possible outcomes and address some of its own challenges related to population trends. It should not be ignored, also, that this represents one of the United States’ best strategies for countering Russia’s (and also China’s) position in the world in the geopolitical great power competition. Already, there are examples of “Rust Belt” cities that have embraced this logic. Detroit, Michigan, for example, one of the largest cities in the region, and easily one of the most heavily affected by deindustrialization, has been at the forefront of this movement, resettling significant numbers of refugees from both Iraq and Syria in recent years.214 This work of promoting this approach is being led by organizations like Global Detroit, which describes itself as “a national leader advocating for and executing strategies to drive equitable local, regional and statewide economic growth through immigrant inclusion.”215 Its director, Steve Tobocman, previously a Michigan state legislator, has been an outspoken advocate for this approach for years. As organizations like his initially looked to develop strategies for revitalizing their cities, they realized the potential role that immigration could play, largely because of the outsized impact that it was already having. As Adele Peters explains in “Refugees Will Revitalize The Economy–If We Let Them,” they discovered that, In Michigan, . . . immigrants are almost twice as likely as the U.S.-born population to have a four-year college degree. They’re also more likely to be educated in STEM fields–often at U.S. universities. While international students make up around 5% of all students at American colleges, they represent 40% of all grad students in STEM. About a quarter of hightech firms in the country have an immigrant founder–in Silicon Valley the number is closer to 50%, and in Michigan, it’s around a third.216 But beyond that, evidence shows that immigrants represent an outsized role in most parts of the American economy. According to David Kallick and Steve Tobocman, “[n]ationwide, immigrants make up 28 percent of Main Street business owners and 16 percent of the labor force, while only comprising 13 212 Frey, William H. “What the 2020 Census Will Reveal about America: Stagnating Growth, an Aging Population, and Youthful Diversity.” Brookings, Brookings Institution, 11 Jan. 2021, www. brookings.edu/research/what-the-2020-census-will-reveal-about-america-stagnating-growthan-aging-population-and-youthful-diversity/. 213 Narea, Nicole. “The Census Shows the US Needs to Increase Immigration - by a Lot.” Vox, Vox Media, 6 May 2021, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22411236/immigration-census-populationgrowth. 214 Peters, Adele. “Refugees Will Revitalize The Economy–If We Let Them.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 15 Mar. 2016, www.fastcompany.com/3056324/refugees-will-revitalize-the-economyif-we-let-them. 215 Global Detroit. “Our Story.” Global Detroit, 1 Apr. 2020, globaldetroitmi.org/our-story/. 216 Peters, Adele. “Refugees Will Revitalize The Economy–If We Let Them.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 15 Mar. 2016, www.fastcompany.com/3056324/refugees-will-revitalize-the-economyif-we-let-them.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

The Role of Immigrants in the American Economy

28%

of “Main Street” Business Owners

16%

of Labor Force

Fig. 33: The Role Of Immigrants In The American Economy Source: Welcoming Economies Global Network, The Fiscal Policy Institute

percent of the national population.”217 Research shows that immigrants are more likely to be self-employed, entrepreneurs, and business owners, especially the “Main Street” businesses like restaurants, salons, and retail shops that are critical to revitalizing urban centers and rehabilitating a city’s reputation.218 In addition, immigration offers an untapped and underappreciated pathway to rehabilitating the many vacant, abandoned, and decrepit properties plaguing the “Rust Belt.” The negative impact that this burden has on these cities is immense. As David Kallick and Steve Tobocman explain in “Do Immigrants Present an Untapped Opportunity to Revitalize Communities?,” when a city has a substantial amount of distressed housing, it experiences a downward fiscal spiral: fewer houses on the tax rolls means reduced city revenues, which leads to decreased public services, which results in further decline in quality of life and further out-migration. . . . Yet, too often efforts to match eligible buyers to distressed homes have overlooked the potential for immigrants as purchasers. That’s a real missed opportunity, since in many of the cities with a substantial stock of distressed housing the number of immigrants is growing even as the U.S.-born population continues to decline.219 Understanding the outsized role that immigrants already play in the American economy, it seems only right that they should be invited to play a bigger role in

217 Kallick, David, and Steve Tobocman. “Do Immigrants Present an Untapped Opportunity to Revitalize Communities?” Welcoming Economies Global Network (WE Network), Welcoming Economies Global Network and Fiscal Policy Institute, 2016, www.weglobalnetwork.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/10/WE_Distressed-Housing-Report_H.pdf. 218 Ibid. 219 Ibid.

13%

of Total National Population

4.0 An American Opportunity the housing market, as well. A strategy that centers immigrants in the work of rehabilitating distressed properties across post-industrial America, may offer a way to address the affordable housing deficit, while also establishing a pathway to home ownership and simultaneously the expansion of the tax base. There is also an immense cost to attempting to migrate to the United States illegally, a cost that many are willing and able to absorb in the hopes of reaching the country in the end. And though the amounts paid to smugglers vary dramatically, based on the country of origin, the mode of transportation, the distance to be traveled, and other factors, there is a vibrant informal network in place to serve the increasing demand.220 For example, as of 2018, smugglers typically charged around USD $10,000 to facilitate overland passage from Central America into the United States, a cost with no guarantees that successful entry will result.221 And where overland routes are not available, smuggler fees tend to be far higher.222 It would be a mistake not to consider expanding formal pathways to immigrate legally, given the combined benefit that immigration offers to the nation from both demographic and economic perspectives. Shifting resources away from preventing illegal immigration and reducing the money funneled to illegal smugglers and human traffickers would both be positive outcomes for the United States and for those wishing to immigrate. And, if some portion of that money were rather invested in the revitalization of America’s post-industrial cities, then the effect would be transformative.

220 Nowrasteh, Alex. “The Conservative Case for Immigration Tariffs.” Competitive Enterprise Institute, 7 Feb. 2012, cei.org/studies/the-conservative-case-for-immigration-tariffs/. 221 Kulish, Nicholas. “What It Costs to Be Smuggled Across the U.S. Border.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/30/world/ smuggling-illegal-immigration-costs.html. 222 Nowrasteh, Alex. “The Conservative Case for Immigration Tariffs.” Competitive Enterprise Institute, 7 Feb. 2012, cei.org/studies/the-conservative-case-for-immigration-tariffs/.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

5.0

Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

5.1 INTRODUCTION As established through an analysis of the shifting of the “human climate niche,” the ideal conditions for human life on the earth are not disappearing, they are migrating. Although current structures do not accommodate the kind of subsequent migration of people that will be needed to allow humans left outside of the niche to follow conditions that would support life and prosperity, a massive redistribution of people across the earth’s surface remains inevitable. It could occur organically, coming up against barriers, working informally to overcome them, and likely resulting in widespread conflict and humanitarian disasters. Or, alternatively, this migration could be managed in a way that prevents an international crisis and works with the natural shift of the “human climate niche” to redistribute humanity across the earth’s surface in a coordinated manner. Through strategic investment and the targeted resettlement of environmental migrants, the Great Lakes Region can be repopulated, revitalized, and subsequently transformed from today’s “Rust Belt” into “The Great Lakes Green Belt” of the future. Creating a vibrant and dynamic, multicultural region marked by economic growth and sustainable development, would help to establish the Great Lakes Region as a “climate haven” for both domestic and foreign-born environmental migrants alike. In this way, the United States can reverse troubling population trends, revitalize a struggling region, and establish itself as a world leader in the response to climate change and environmental migration.

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven” This vision offers an optimistic alternative to the dystopian ones that are most often predicted in political rhetoric, literature, and popular culture for a world grappling with climate change and predicted mass migration. As isolationism takes over in the national politics of many countries, especially in the world’s wealthier developed ones, a future more like that described in John Lanchester’s “The Wall” may seem more likely.223 In his novel, Lanchester depicts a world where every nation has essentially closed and militarized its borders as a response to climate change, to protect its territory, its resources, and its people from all those who might wish to enter from abroad. It paints a bleak perspective on the state of humanity and world affairs. Though the fictionalized scale of migration is staggering, it is not entirely beyond the realm of realistic projections, so avoiding an outcome like this should be a priority of the international community. These visions should be offered as fable or allegory and not taken as prophecy, because there is another possibility.

5.2 SO WHAT IS A “CLIMATE HAVEN?” Recognizing the threat of climate change to much of the world’s inhabited surface, there is an emerging concept of a “green haven” or “climate haven,” which is a place, whether an individual property, a municipality, or a region more broadly, that exhibits characteristics that are likely to make it comparatively more resilient to the projected effects of climate change than other places. Though no place will be fully immune to the rapidly evolving environmental conditions, certain places are expected to suffer less, while others may even see some isolated benefits. A “climate haven” is, therefore, a place of refuge for migrants fleeing adverse conditions elsewhere, because it offers favorable conditions for human life now and for the foreseeable future. Previous analyses of the projected movement of the “human climate niche” and other environmental factors are particularly useful in identifying where “climate havens” may occur, or be placed, most naturally. “Climate havens” are characterized by a favorable outlook in regard to environmental factors, like those discussed previously, such as being within the projected shift of the “human climate niche.” Favorable projected conditions in relation to extreme heat and humidity, sea level rise, wildfires, drought, flooding, and extreme weather events are also key to a place’s status as a “climate haven.” In addition, factors related to economic outlook like crop yields and the anticipated cost of damages suffered as a result of climate change are also critical to determining a place’s resilience. A “climate haven” is also characterized by reliable access to vital natural resources, chief among them being fresh water, but the ability to sustain agricultural activities is also important. Essentially, a “climate haven” is a place where human life will be able to continue with relative ease through the changes ascribed to climate change, comfortably and safely, with relatively low risks to human health and safety and to physical property. But another critical element of determining a place’s resilience is connected to the strength of the local government and community. This can be understood as the resilience of the existing infrastructure of a place, both in the more traditional sense of the word and in a broader sense that includes the informal and social qualities and strengths of a community.224 It’s important that the local government be engaged in both mitigation and adaptation measures in connection to climate change, understanding that some change will affect almost every place on earth. It’s also critical that the local government be engaged in efforts to reduce a city’s contributions to the underlying causes

223 Lanchester, John. The Wall: A Novel. W.W. Norton & Company, 2020. 224 Kaufman, Lisbeth. “What Is a Climate Haven? And Why I’m Moving to One.” Climate Conscious, Medium, 4 May 2021, medium.com/climate-conscious/what-is-a-climate-haven-4f0efa2c7cbe.

The Great Lakes Green Belt

of climate change.225 This is important because, as Aaron Mair, previously the president of the Sierra Club, points out, “[m]igration in and of itself does not solve a chronic problem or chronic risk.”226 Sustainability and the reduction of a city’s carbon footprint must be central to how a “climate haven” approaches every decision that it makes, or it will likely fail to maintain its status as one.

5.3 TRANSFORMING POST-INDUSTRIAL AMERICA INTO A “CLIMATE HAVEN” In the case of the United States of America, the portion of the country that represents the area expected to be least negatively affected by climate change coincides with the region that has, for decades, been referred to as the “Rust Belt.” For this reason, the region presents the greatest opportunity to act as a “climate haven” for the country and perhaps beyond. Taking the concept of a “climate haven” further, though, the idea of a “Green Belt” envisions a unique regional approach that applies the same logic to a wider context. This proposal aims to reenvision the so-called “Rust Belt” as a region not of depopulation and decline, but one of renewal, repopulation, and revitalization. This optimistic outlook requires that the region collectively embrace the role of “climate haven” by welcoming environmental migrants and providing the kind of infrastructure needed to support the integration of an influx of people into this new society. It envisions a region notorious for being stuck in the past, now decidedly looking forward. Due to the overlap of post-industrial America and the nation’s emerging “Green Belt,” the development of “climate havens” in the United States will simultaneously involve the revitalization of post-industrial urban landscapes. These built environments, though, often possess characteristics that must be amended in order to support their rebirth and ensure that they can support an influx of new citizens. Much of the industrial urban landscape, once home to inner-city factories and warehouses, sites of manufacturing, are not suited for residential or commercial use in their current form. Many also, after years of disuse, have fallen into disrepair and decay. So, one of the first steps required is the assessment, clean-up, and subsequent rehabilitation of these lands and properties. Due to the risks of industrial contamination to land and water, the federal government has long supported these local initiatives, and therefore will likely play a critical role in any remediation efforts. In addition, in order to repurpose disused properties, industrial or otherwise, and also correct a legacy of racialized policies, each of these cities will need to undergo a process of rezoning, whereby the city reexamines how land can and should be used, and what restrictions on land, property, and building should be enforced. This process should be undergone with care and precision though, because it is important to create opportunities for individuals and small businesses while preventing private developers from taking control of the city’s trajectory, which could lead to less optimal results. For those that have remained in this region and the cities that comprise it, there is a very real concern over the gentrification that often accompanies the redevelopment of post-industrial landscapes. In the coastal cities that have largely already undergone this transformation in some form, having already evolved beyond deindustrialization and earlier trends like the suburbanization that accompanied “white flight,” gentrification has plagued their revitalization and redevelopment efforts. In many cases, long-standing residents that remained 225 Summers, J. Kevin, et al. “Development of a Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI): An Assessment of Resilience to Acute Meteorological Events and Selected Natural Hazards.” EPA, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 16 Oct. 2017, cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report. cfm?Lab=NHEERL&amp;dirEntryId=337914. 226 De Socio, Mike. “The Problem With ‘Climate Havens.’” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg, 19 Apr. 2021, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-19/there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-climate-haven.

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven” have been priced out of many neighborhoods as large swaths of these cities have become the playgrounds of the wealthy. This has the potential to create the conditions for conflict and risk the ultimately unsuccessful redevelopment of these landscapes. The American “Rust Belt” has much to learn from the previous failures and successes of these cities that have already undergone many of these changes.

5.3.1 ZONING AND LAND USE To overcome these challenges and ensure a community focused revitalization that will enable the region to become the “climate haven” that it should, a more mixed-use approach of regenerative zoning should be pursued. As architect Larry Kearns writes, Most zoning laws born in the modern era segregate uses and, in some cases, even regulate minimum sizes of buildings. These laws exaggerate exclusivity. Some cities like Minneapolis are starting to reverse their exclusionary zoning laws, noting that they pose hurdles to creating the neighborhoods they want. Neighborhoods built as monocultures aren’t producing the diversity that modern cities or its constituents need to reach their potential. One of the primary benefits of a contemporary city is its ability to innovate from the diverse ideas that collide within its footprint. A city engineered for monocultures makes leveraging that diversity difficult.227 If done right, progressive zoning has the potential to stimulate innovation while protecting long-time residents and preventing development that prioritizes profits over communities. Similarly, Hans Park, a Designer and Architect for UNHCR Innovation, writes that There is little doubt that cities will have to be more innovative in how they address the causes of climate change, social unrest, poverty, and other challenges. Truly innovative solutions come from places that are diverse and where empathy, readiness to change and openness are part of the culture – not merely a talking point or something never acted upon. To stay relevant and a source for good, urban citizens and governments need to learn to build a culture of innovation. A good place to start is to learn how the forcibly placed use innovative processes to build communities in an effective, efficient and human-centered way. Any other way of building a city will not be innovative, environmentally-friendly or socially-sustainable.228 In both cases, Kearns and Park each celebrate diversity as key to innovation in the urban context, suggesting another important byproduct of environmental migration to the Great Lakes Green Belt. Innovation will be critical in addressing one of the key challenges facing America’s post-industrial cities, that of vacant properties, which represent an imposing challenge for municipal governments with limited resources. As the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research explains, “Vacant and abandoned properties are linked to increased rates of crime (particularly arson) and declining property values. The maintenance or demolition of vacant properties is a huge expense

227 Kearns, Larry. “Regenerative Zoning.” Wheeler Kearns Architects, Wheeler Kearns Architects, 16 Sept. 2019, wkarch.com/100002165/regenerative-zoning/. 228 Park, Hans. “The Power of Cities.” UNHCR Innovation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 25 Nov. 2016, www.unhcr.org/innovation/the-power-of-cities/.

100 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

for many cities.”229 But these properties must be reframed as an opportunity. Success will require strategies of adaptive reuse and historic renovation, of rethinking how buildings are used and inhabited, both existing and as yet unbuilt. It will also involve the promotion of a redensification of these cities that have steadily dedensified over decades. And it will require significant investment into the upgrading and expansion of existing physical infrastructure, which will likely involve significant investment from the federal government, but there is reason to believe in 2021 that funding for exactly these types of projects may be forthcoming. Land banks also offer a vital tool for these cities to shape how they are redeveloped. As described by Dan Kildee and Amy Hovey, co-founders of the Center for Community Progress, “[l]and banks are not financial institutions. They are public or community-owned entities created for a single purpose: to acquire, manage, maintain, and repurpose vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed properties–the worst abandoned houses, forgotten buildings, and empty lots.”230 And as Kelly Leilani Main and Greg Lindsay explain, “[o]ne tool legacy cities have wielded to preserve future affordability is land banks and land trusts, using public money to acquire and insulate properties against market appreciation.”231 In this way, land banks offer cities and communities an important mechanism for redeveloping America’s post-industrial cities without relying on private developers to define what is needed and where. Importantly, it places power in the hands of members of the public in shaping the direction of the cities they call home.

5.3.2 A MODEL FOR THE COOPERATIVE REVITALIZATION OF VACANT PROPERTIES There are examples from Europe of towns seeking to revitalize and repopulate through the sale and reinhabitation of abandoned and vacant properties at extremely low costs in order to attract new residents and investment. This phenomenon has largely centered in Italy and is commonly referred to as a one Euro house program, though many properties do end up selling for somewhat more than that. This model offers a framework that could be similarly applied across America’s post-industrial cities, with some adjustments. The program consists of the preliminary purchase of a property for a very low price, in some cases as little as one Euro, but the exact amount may depend in part on the condition, availability, and demand. Importantly, these low prices come with conditions, though. Buyers must commit to renovating properties within a given amount of time, often somewhere around three to five years. Until renovations are completed, the buyer submits a security deposit that is returned only upon completion of renovation work. Unfortunately, though, at least in earlier iterations of the program, few conditions have generally been placed requiring that the property be eventually used as a primary residence, which has resulted in many being primarily vacation homes that are only occupied for certain portions of the year, for as little as one to two months. In certain cases there have also been examples of buyers purchasing numerous properties and subsequently renting them out, commonly as short-term vacation rentals.

229 Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&amp;R). “Vacant and Abandoned Properties: Turning Liabilities Into Assets: HUD USER.” Vacant and Abandoned Properties: Turning Liabilities Into Assets | HUD USER, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2014, www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter14/highlight1.html. 230 Kildee, Dan, and Amy Hovey. “NSP Toolkits: Land Banking 101: What Is a Land Bank?” Center for Community Progress, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Neighborhood Stabilization Program, Sept. 2010, files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/ LandBankingBasics.pdf. 231 Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www.fastcompany. com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-of-our-climate-strategy.

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Fig. 34: Top 100 Cities in the United States by Population in 1950 Source: United States Census Bureau

An improved version of this model could take the form of a more cooperative approach that enforces additional conditions that would require buyers to participate in the community and the further revitalization and development of the surrounding built environment more fully. Buying a property should enter the buyer into a community cooperative that collects funds that go towards this work. Additional conditions could include that buyers should be limited to one property and that it should, within a period of time, be taken up as the owner’s primary residence. Finally, some restriction on how soon after initial purchase a property can be resold should be in place to prevent serial abuse of the program or so-called “flipping” of properties. Programs like this should be considered as a viable pathway to rehabilitating and expanding the affordable housing supplies in post-industrial cities across the country. To support prospective buyers, cities should engage with and support organizations that are established to provide potential buyers with the tools to secure financing and complete the work needed to establish the stable conditions for habitation.

5.4 METHODOLOGY A regional approach like this, though, will require focused early investments and accupunctural interventions in order to demonstrate the strategy’s viability and to stimulate broader engagement. In order to initiate this, an analysis of which cities in the region should be prioritized was undertaken that concluded in the selection of sixteen cities across the American “Rust Belt” that represent significant promise as “climate havens” and as post-industrial urban centers wellpositioned to benefit and benefit from environmental migration. To determine this selection, cities across the United States of America were considered from a variety of perspectives with a focus on establishing which cities would form a strong foundation as anchor points for the Great Lakes Green Belt.

101

102 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

First, as shown in Figure 30, to understand which cities possess the history and legacy to form the foundation of a renaissance, the nation’s top 100 largest cities in 1950 by population were considered. 1950 represents the period following World War II when industrial America reached its peak contribution to the nation’s economy and a time in which the nation’s population centers were most strongly connected to where manufacturing and industry jobs were focused. Each of these cities held, in 1950, a population of at least 100,000 people. Second, of these cities, an analysis was completed to understand how the total population of each has changed over the past sixty to seventy years. To do this, cities were separated into those that have experienced an overall increase or decline in population since their peak in the 1950s or 1960s to their estimated current population as of 2019. Those that saw an increase, as depicted in Figure 32, were eliminated on the basis that they do not possess a population gap that needs to be addressed. Those that saw a decline in population from a peak in either 1950 or 1960, depending on the city, to 2019 were prioritized. Those that saw a decline of only 0% to 25%, as illustrated in Figure 33, were eliminated, because the present gap may be insufficient to warrant focused attention. Cities with more than a 25% decline in population over the past sixty to seventy years, though, as shown in Figure 34, were selected on the basis of possessing a sizable enough population gap to represent an opportunity. It should also be noted that cities selected all showed a steady downward trajectory over this period of time, suggesting that no major recovery, at least in regards to population, has been experienced. Cities that were 25% smaller than they were in 1950 or 1960, but have seen meaningful growth in recent decades were disqualified. In addition, cities that had seen a meaningful decline in population but had also seen a simultaneous reduction in their overall land area were also disqualified, as dedensification within the bounds of the city is also key to a city’s potential for growth. Cities demonstrating a more than 25% decline in population and no significant reduction in land area since their peak size represent a major opportunity, as they suggest a carrying capacity far greater than their current populations meet. Not only does this suggest space and infrastructure to grow, but it suggests that a city may actually need to increase its population in order to operate efficiently and effectively. Cities currently operating well below the population that they once held often struggle to meet the needs of those that remain and are almost always underfunded as a result of an insufficient tax base, which stretches available resources beyond the city’s needs. For example, to illustrate the types of cities that meet this criteria, Detroit, Michigan, the quintessential “Rust Belt’ city, saw a decline in its city population from more than 1.8 million232 in 1950 to less than 700,000 in 2019,233 marking a reduction of the population by nearly 1.2 million and representing a decline of nearly 64% since it’s peak. During that time, the land area of the city has not been reduced to correspond with its shrinking population, in fact it has remained essentially the same for the past 70 years at around 360 square kilometers ( just under 140 square miles).234 This means that the population density has dropped dramatically, while property vacancy rates have soared. At its peak in 1950, the population density of Detroit was over 13,000 people per square mile, but as of 2019, it had fallen below 4,000 people per square mile. For comparison, 232 Gibson, Campbell. “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990.” Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places, The United States Census Bureau, June 1998, www.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demo/POPtwps0027.html. 233 US Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-total-citiesand-towns.html. 234 U.S. Census Bureau. “United States Summary: 2010 Population and Housing Unit Counts 2010 Census of Population and Housing.” The United States Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, Sept. 2012, www.census.gov/library/ publications/2012/dec/cph-2.html.

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Fig. 35: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Categorized by Change in Population from 1950 to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

Fig. 36: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Greater than 0% Increase in Population from 1950 to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

| 103

104 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 37: Top 100 Cities in 1950, 0% to 25% Decline in Population from 1950 to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

Fig. 38: Top 100 Cities in 1950, Greater than 25% Decline in Population from 1950 to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Fig. 39: Cities With Declining Population Within the “Human Climate Niche” Source: United States Census Bureau, Chi Xu et al., PNAS

according to the last published 2010 national census, the population densities of New York City and Los Angeles, the nation’s two largest cities, were over 25,000 people per square mile and over 7,000 people per square mile respectively in 2010.235 While at its peak in 1950, Detroit was the fifth largest city in the United States,236 as of 2019 it had dropped to 24th.237 Of those cities that have experienced a sizable decline in population over the past sixty to seventy years, an analysis was undertaken to project which represent the greatest resilience against climate change over the coming century. Those that fell outside of the projected “human climate niche” in 2070 were disqualified. As is illustrated in Figure 35, this resulted in the further elimination of cities in the South and Northeast, which fall outside of the projected “human climate niche.” In addition, each of the remaining cities was considered based on the previously discussed six environmental factors of temperature, humidity, sea level rise, wildfires, crop yields, and economic damages. To further verify the resilience of each city, each was assigned a score on a scale of one to ten based on the risks associated with each of these climatic factors. Cities with two or more scores above five in any category were disqualified. Finally, an average of the six scores was taken for each city and any city with an average score above four was also disqualified. 235 Ibid. 236 Gibson, Campbell. “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990.” Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places, The United States Census Bureau, June 1998, www.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demo/POPtwps0027.html. 237 US Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-total-citiesand-towns.html.

| 105

106 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

By considering temperature, humidity, sea level rise, wildfires, crop yields, and economic damages all together and at the county level across the continental United States, a more complete and detailed cross-sectional understanding of climate change and its anticipated effects on the country can be established. The results indicated a final selection of cities with favorable climate conditions for long-term development. The results of this analysis are illustrated in Figures 36 through 41. The result is a selection of cities, all located within the projected “human climate niche” and also within the Great Lakes Region with good access to fresh water for the future. Each city also demonstrates a low risk of experiencing serious negative effects from climate change more broadly, which positions each well as a potential “climate haven.” As a result of this analysis, as illustrated by Figure 42, sixteen cities were selected to form the foundation of the Great Lakes Green Belt, all traditionally understood to be situated both within the Great Lakes Region and the American “Rust Belt.” When taken together, the selected cities have experienced a cumulative decline in total population from 10,176,506 at their peaks in 1950 to 1960 to only 5,769,046 in 2019. At one point, many of these cities were nearly twice their current size by population, which means that they have already demonstrated the capacity to house many more than they do now. Simultaneously, the area covered by these cities has almost never declined along with population decline, so this change has been marked by significant dedensification. This transformation represents a decline of 4,407,460 or -43.31%, which means that all told, these cities have seen their cumulative population nearly halved over the past sixty to seventy years. The deficit also represents a cumulative population larger than that of Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest city and one roughly equivalent to half the total population of New York City, the nation’s largest.238

238 Ibid.

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Fig. 40: Number of Weeks Per Year Above 35°C (95°F) in the United State by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

Fig. 41: Days Per Year With High Wet Bulb Temperatures in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

| 107

108 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 42: Sea Level Rise: Percentage of Property Below High Tide in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

Fig. 43: Average Number of Very Large Wildfires in the United States Per Year (2040-2071) Source: United States Forest Service, ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Fig. 44: Percentage Change in Farm Crop Yields in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

Fig. 45: Economic Climate Damages as a Percentage of GDP in the United States by County (2040-2060) Source: ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

| 109

110

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Extreme Temperatures (1-10)

Extreme Heat and Humidity (1-10)

Summit County, OH

Erie County, NY

Canton

Stark County, OH

Chicago

Cook County, IL

Cincinnati

Hamilton County, OH

Cleveland

Cuyahoga County, OH

Dayton

Montgomery County, OH

Detroit

Wayne County, MI

Erie

Erie County, PA

Flint

Genesee County, MI

Gary

Lake County, IN

Pittsburgh

Allegheny County, PA

Rochester

Monroe County, NY

Scranton

Lackawanna County, PA

Syracuse

Onondaga County, NY

Youngstown

Mahoning County, OH

Austin

Travis County, TX

Houston

Harris County, TX

Kansas City

Wyandotte County, KS

Miami

Miami-Dade County, FL

New Orleans

Orleans Parish, LA

Phoenix

Maricopa County, AZ

St. Louis

St. Louis County, MO

City

State

County

Akron

Buffalo

Fig. 46: Combined Climate Risk Analysis by City Source: United States Forest Service, ProPublica, Rhodium Group, New York Times Magazine

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

Farm Crop Yields (1-10)

Sea Level Rise (1-10)

Large Wildfires (1-10)

Economic Damages (1-10)

Total Impact (6-60)

Average Score (1-10)

2.67

3.33

3.17

2.83

3.67

2.83

2.17

2.67

3.33

2.83

2.67

2.83

2.67

4.83

5.50

4.33

5.83

4.33

5.50

4.17

111

112

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Fig. 47: The Great Lakes Green Belt Source: Chi Xu et al., PNAS, US Census Bureau, Brendan Jennings, Emily S. Thompson, Kirsten M. de Beurs

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

113

114

The Great Lakes Green Belt

GAP 92,754

2019 197,497

1960 290,351

1950 580,132

-31%

AKRON, OH

1950 116,912

1950 3,620,986

-40%

1950 914,808

-40%

-58%

CLEVELAND, OH

GAP 121,925

1960 262,332

GAP 533,799

2019 381,009

CINCINNATI, OH

2019 140,407

-26%

CHICAGO, IL

GAP 200,058

1950 503,998

GAP 926,986

2019 2,693,976

CANTON, OH

2019 303,940

-56%

BUFFALO, NY

GAP 46,465

2019 70,447

GAP 324,848

2019 255,284

-46%

DAYTON, OH Fig. 48: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Population Decline from Peak to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

GAP 1,179,537

2019 670,031

1950 1,849,568

DETROIT, MI

-64%

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

GAP 42,932

2019 95,508

1960 138,440

GAP 101,402

2019 95,538

1960 196,940

-31%

ERIE, PA

FLINT, MI

GAP 103,441

2019 74,879

1960 178,320

1950 676,806

-58%

1950 125,536

-38%

SYRACUSE, NY

-39%

SCRANTON, PA

GAP 78,256

1950 220,583

GAP 48,883

2019 76,653

ROCHESTER, NY

2019 142,327

-56%

PITTSBURGH, PA

GAP 126,793

1950 332,488

GAP 376,520

2019 300,286

GARY, IN

2019 205,695

-51%

-35%

GAP 102,861

2019 65,469

1950 168,330

YOUNGSTOWN, OH

-61%

115

116

The Great Lakes Green Belt

GAP 4,407,460

2019 5,769,046

PEAK 10,176,506

-43%

GREAT LAKES GREEN BELT Fig. 49: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Combined Population Decline from Peak to 2019 Source: United States Census Bureau

New York City

Great Lakes Green Belt Gap

Los Angeles

8.3 million people

4.4 million people

4.0 million people

Fig. 50: Great Lakes Green Belt Cities, Combined Population Decline from Peak to 2019, Compared to New York City and Los Angeles Source: United States Census Bureau

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

117

118

The Great Lakes Green Belt

AKRON, OH

DAYTON, OH

CANTON, OH

PITTSBURGH, PA

ERIE, PA

BUFFALO, NY

Fig. 51: Urban Property Vacancy by Block Source: United States Census Bureau: American Community Survey

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

SYRACUSE, NY

YOUNGSTOWN, OH

ROCHESTER, NY

SCRANTON, PA

FLINT, MI Fig. 52: Urban Property Vacancy by Block Source: United States Census Bureau: American Community Survey

119

120 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

CHICAGO, IL / GARY, IN

CINCINNATI, OH

DETROIT, MI

CLEVELAND, OH

Fig. 53: Urban Property Vacancy by Block Source: United States Census Bureau: American Community Survey

5.0 Envisioning An American “Climate Haven”

121

122 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

References

Affolter-Caine, Britany, and John C. Austin. “The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.” Brookings, Brookings Institution , 1 Oct. 2006, www.brookings.edu/research/the-vital-center-a-federal-state-compact-to-renewthe-great-lakes-region/. Alim, Abdullahi. “The West’s Obsession With ‘Good Refugees’ Is Bad Policy.” Foreign Policy, 3 Apr. 2021, foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/03/west-refugee-system-somaliadadaab-ty-mccormick-review/. Austin, John C. “The Nation’s Freshwater Coast Is a Key Fulcrum for Rust Belt Revival.” Brookings, Brookings Institution, 31 May 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/theavenue/2018/05/31/the-nations-freshwater-coast-is-a-key-fulcrum-for-rust-beltrevival/. BBC News. “Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe Explained in Seven Charts.” BBC News, BBC, 4 Mar. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911. BBC News. “People Smuggler ‘Built Fake Russia-Finland Border Posts’.” BBC News, BBC, 4 Dec. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50666436. Bilbao, Tatiana, and Ayesha S. Ghosh. “Where Is the Border?” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 17 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-the-border/325748/where-is-theborder/. Blank, Lew. “United States–Canada Border Slash.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 19 Sept. 2016, www.atlasobscura.com/places/uscanada-border-slash. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Seventeenth Parallel.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 20 July 1998, www.britannica.com/topic/ seventeenth-parallel. Broderstad, Else Grete. “The Promises and Challenges of Indigenous SelfDetermination.” International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis, vol. 66, no. 4, 2011, pp. 893–907., doi:10.1177/002070201106600416. Central Intelligence Agency. “Country Comparisons—Area.” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/area/countrycomparison. Clemens, Michael A. “Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 3, 2011, pp. 83–106., doi:10.1257/ jep.25.3.83. Culotta, Elizabeth. “People on the Move: The Science of Migrations.” Science, 19 May 2017, doi:10.1126/science.aan6884. De Socio, Mike. “The Problem With ‘Climate Havens.’” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg, 19 Apr. 2021, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-19/there-s-no-such-thing-asa-climate-haven. Dun, Olivia, and François Gemenne. Defining ‘Environmental Migration’, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www.fmreview.org/climatechange/dun-gemenne. The Economist. “The Future of Jobs: The Onrushing Wave.” The Economist, The Economist Group Limited, 18 Jan. 2014, www.economist.com/news/ briefing/21594264-previous-technological-innovation-has-always-delivered-morelong-run-employment-not-less. Egan, Timothy. “The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.”

References The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 May 2021, www.nytimes. com/2021/05/14/opinion/water-hoover-dam-climate-change.html. Environmental Protection Agency. “Facts and Figures about the Great Lakes.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 6 Apr. 2021, www.epa.gov/greatlakes/facts-andfigures-about-great-lakes. Ferrari, Marco, et al. Italian Limes, Studio Folder, 2016, italianlimes.net/project.html. Ferris, Elizabeth. “When Refugee Displacement Drags on, Is Self-Reliance the Answer?” Brookings, Brookings, 19 June 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-fromchaos/2018/06/19/when-refugee-displacement-drags-on-is-self-reliance-theanswer/. Fornalé, Elisa, and Curtis F Doebbler. “UNHCR and Protection and Assistance for the Victims of Climate Change.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 183, no. 4, 9 Nov. 2016, pp. 329–335., doi:10.1111/geoj.12193. Frey, William H. “What the 2020 Census Will Reveal about America: Stagnating Growth, an Aging Population, and Youthful Diversity.” Brookings, Brookings Institution, 11 Jan. 2021, www.brookings.edu/research/what-the-2020-census-will-reveal-aboutamerica-stagnating-growth-an-aging-population-and-youthful-diversity/. Fulton, William, et al. “The Urban Sun Belt: An Overview.” The Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University, 2020, kinder.rice.edu/research/urban-sun-belt-overview. Gibson, Campbell. “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990.” Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places, The United States Census Bureau, June 1998, www.census.gov/library/ working-papers/1998/demo/POP-twps0027.html. Global Detroit. “Our Story.” Global Detroit, 1 Apr. 2020, globaldetroitmi.org/our-story/. Green, Sarah. “A Sense of Border.” A Companion to Border Studies, 5 Dec. 2012, pp. 573–592., doi:10.1002/9781118255223.ch33. Groundwater, Ben. “Border Force: The World’s Toughest Customs and Immigration.” Traveller, 30 Nov. 2016, www.traveller.com.au/border-force-the-worlds-toughestcustoms-and-immigration-gt0zi3. Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West: A Novel. Riverhead Books, 2018. Hartley, Emma. “How Astronaut Chris Hadfield Showed Berlin’s Ongoing Struggle for Unification.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Apr. 2013, www. theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/apr/21/astronaut-chris-hadfield-berlin-divide. Hartshorne, Richard. “The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 29, no. 3, Sept. 1939, pp. 173–412., doi:10.2307/2561063. Hirata, Alexander J. “Postcolonialism and the Marshallese Diaspora: Structural Violence and Health in the Marshallese Community in Springdale, Arkansas.” University of San Francisco, 2015. Interboro Partners. “Improve Your Lot! Introducing The New Suburbanism.” Interboro Partners, Interboro Partners, pp. 238–255, www.dropbox.com/s/hf0xscydcmz7gm1/ Interboro_Improve%20Your%20Lot_01.pdf. Iweriebor, Ehiedu E. G. The Colonization of Africa, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, 2011, exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/ essay-colonization-of-africa.html. Jacobs, Frank. “A Not-So-Straight Story.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Nov. 2011, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/a-not-so-straight-story/. Kallick, David, and Steve Tobocman. “Do Immigrants Present an Untapped Opportunity to Revitalize Communities?” Welcoming Economies Global Network (WE Network), Welcoming Economies Global Network and Fiscal Policy Institute, 2016, www. weglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WE_Distressed-HousingReport_H.pdf. Kamal, Baher. “Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050.” Inter Press Service, 21 Aug. 2017, www.ipsnews.net/2017/08/climate-migrants-might-reach-one-billionby-2050/. Katz, Lily. “Nearly Half of Americans Who Plan to Move Say Natural Disasters, Extreme Temperatures Factored Into Their Decision to Relocate: Survey.” Redfin Real Estate News, 5 Apr. 2021, www.redfin.com/news/climate-change-migration-survey/.

| 123

124 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Kaufman, Lisbeth. “What Is a Climate Haven? And Why I’m Moving to One.” Climate Conscious, Medium, 4 May 2021, medium.com/climate-conscious/what-is-aclimate-haven-4f0efa2c7cbe. Kearns, Larry. “Regenerative Zoning.” Wheeler Kearns Architects, Wheeler Kearns Architects, 16 Sept. 2019, wkarch.com/100002165/regenerative-zoning/. Keating, Joshua. “Why a Pacific Islander Community in Arkansas Became a COVID Hot Spot.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 15 Sept. 2020, slate.com/technology/2020/09/ marshallese-covid-arkansas.html. Keshavarz, Mahmoud, and Shahram Khosravi. “The Magic of Borders.” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 13 May 2020, www.e-flux.com/architecture/at-theborder/325755/the-magic-of-borders/. Kildee, Dan, and Amy Hovey. “NSP Toolkits: Land Banking 101: What Is a Land Bank?” Center for Community Progress, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Neighborhood Stabilization Program, Sept. 2010, files.hudexchange. info/resources/documents/LandBankingBasics.pdf. Kimmelman, Michael. “Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2017, www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2017/02/17/world/americas/mexico-city-sinking.html. Koerth, Maggie. “Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 19 Sept. 2019, fivethirtyeight.com/features/ heres-the-best-place-to-move-if-youre-worried-about-climate-change/. Kolmannskog, Vikram, and Lisetta Trebbi. “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: a Multi-Track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps.” International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, no. 879, 2010, pp. 713–730., doi:10.1017/ s1816383110000500. Kulish, Nicholas. “What It Costs to Be Smuggled Across the U.S. Border.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2018/06/30/world/smuggling-illegal-immigration-costs.html. Lanchester, John, and The Guardian. “John Lanchester: ‘Walls Were Coming down around the World – Now They Are Springing up’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 Jan. 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/11/john-lanchesterinterview-the-wall. Lanchester, John. The Wall: A Novel. W.W. Norton &amp; Company, 2020. Lantto, Patrik. “Borders, Citizenship and Change: the Case of the Sami People, 1751– 2008.” Citizenship Studies, vol. 14, no. 5, 27 Oct. 2010, pp. 543–556., doi:10.1080/13 621025.2010.506709. Lever, W. F. “Deindustrialisation and the Reality of the Post-Industrial City.” Urban Studies, vol. 28, no. 6, 1 Dec. 1991, pp. 983–999., doi:10.1080/00420989120081161. Lombraña, Laura Millan, and Sam Dodge. “Whatever Climate Change Does to the World, Cities Will Be Hit Hardest.” Bloomberg Green + CityLab, Bloomberg, 19 Apr. 2021, www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-cities-climate-victims/. Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html. Lustgarten, Abrahm. “How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/ magazine/russia-climate-migration-crisis.html. Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html. Main, Kelly Leilani, and Greg Lindsay. “Why the Great Lakes Need to Be the Center of Our Climate Strategy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 9 June 2021, www. fastcompany.com/90645098/why-we-need-to-make-the-great-lakes-the-center-ofour-climate-strategy. Manjoo, Farhad. “There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-bordersimmigration.html. Mayer, Benoît. “The Arbitrary Project of Protecting Environmental Migrants.” Advances

References in Global Change Research, vol. 61, 17 Dec. 2015, pp. 189–200., doi:10.1007/978-3319-25796-9_12. Migration Policy Institute (MPI). “U.S. Annual Refugee Resettlement Ceilings and Number of Refugees Admitted, 1980-Present.” Migration Policy Institute (MPI), 7 May 2021, www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/us-annual-refugeeresettlement-ceilings-and-number-refugees-admitted-united. Milly, Paul, and Krista Dunne. “Atmospheric Warming, Loss of Snow Cover, and Declining Colorado River Flow.” United States Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov/missionareas/water-resources/science/atmospheric-warming-loss-snow-cover-anddeclining-colorado. Milman, Oliver, and Mae Ryan. “Lives in the Balance: Climate Change and the Marshall Islands.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Sept. 2016, www. theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/15/marshall-islands-climate-changespringdale-arkansas. Narea, Nicole. “The Census Shows the US Needs to Increase Immigration - by a Lot.” Vox, Vox Media, 6 May 2021, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22411236/ immigration-census-population-growth. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office for Coastal Management . “NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy: Regional and State Profiles.” NOAA Reports on the U.S. Marine Economy, Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast, 2020, coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/training/econreport. html. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Is Sea Level Rising?” NOAA’s National Ocean Service, US Department of Commerce, 26 Feb. 2021, oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html. New American Economy Research Fund. “Refugee Workers on the Frontlines and as Essential Workers.” New American Economy Research Fund, New American Economy, 23 Apr. 2020, research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/refugee-onthe-frontlines-covid-19/. Nowrasteh, Alex. “The Conservative Case for Immigration Tariffs.” Competitive Enterprise Institute, 7 Feb. 2012, cei.org/studies/the-conservative-case-for-immigration-tariffs/. “Number of Refugees to Europe Surges to Record 1.3 Million in 2015.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center, 2 Aug. 2016, www. pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/number-of-refugees-to-europe-surges-torecord-1-3-million-in-2015/. Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&amp;R). “Vacant and Abandoned Properties: Turning Liabilities Into Assets: HUD USER.” Vacant and Abandoned Properties: Turning Liabilities Into Assets | HUD USER, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2014, www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/ winter14/highlight1.html. Oliver-Smith, Anthony. “DEBATING ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION: SOCIETY, NATURE AND POPULATION DISPLACEMENT IN CLIMATE CHANGE.” Journal of International Development, vol. 24, no. 8, 2012, pp. 1058–1070., doi:10.1002/jid.2887. Park, Hans. “The Power of Cities.” UNHCR Innovation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 25 Nov. 2016, www.unhcr.org/innovation/the-power-of-cities/. Park, Hans. “The Power of Cities.” UNHCR Innovation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 25 Nov. 2016, www.unhcr.org/innovation/the-power-of-cities/. Perruchoud, Richard, and Jillyanne Redpath-Cross. Glossary on Migration. International Organization for Migration, 2011. Peters, Adele. “Refugees Will Revitalize The Economy–If We Let Them.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 15 Mar. 2016, www.fastcompany.com/3056324/refugees-willrevitalize-the-economy-if-we-let-them. Petersen-Smith, Khury. “Progressives Should Support Open Borders - With No Apology.” Foreign Policy In Focus, 21 Feb. 2019, fpif.org/progressives-should-support-openborders-with-no-apology/. Pierre-louis, Kendra. “Want to Escape Global Warming? These Cities Promise Cool Relief.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes. com/2019/04/15/climate/climate-migration-duluth.html. Po, Calvin. “Inscribing Borders on Bodies.” e-Flux Architecture, e-Flux, 21 Apr. 2021,

| 125

126 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

www.e-flux.com/architecture/exhausted/388000/inscribing-borders-on-bodies/. Radford, Jynnah, and Phillip Connor. “Canada Now Leads the World in Refugee Resettlement, Surpassing the U.S.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 19 June 2019, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/19/canada-now-leads-theworld-in-refugee-resettlement-surpassing-the-u-s/. “The Refugee Act.” OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, U.S. Department of Health &amp; Human Services, 29 Aug. 2012, www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/policy-guidance/ refugee-act. Rhodium Group. Rhodium Group, 2018, rhg.com/. Richter, Felix. “Infographic: China Is the World’s Manufacturing Superpower.” Statista Infographics, 4 May 2021, www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-byshare-of-global-manufacturing-output/. Robinson, Caleb, et al. “Modeling Migration Patterns in the USA under Sea Level Rise.” PLOS ONE, vol. 15, no. 1, 22 Jan. 2020, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227436. Rossi, Marcello. “Some Northern Cities Could Be Reborn as ‘Climate Havens’ “ Yale Climate Connections.” Yale Climate Connections, Yale School of the Environment , 7 Aug. 2019, yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/08/some-northern-cities-could-bereborn-as-climate-havens/. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 1991, pp. 83–99., doi:10.1353/dsp.1991.0004. Selingo, Jeffrey J. “Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/ factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html. Shaw, Al, et al. “New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 15 Sept. 2020, projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/. Shendruk, Amanda. “Welcome to Leeside, the US’s First Climate Haven.” Quartz, Quartz, qz.com/1891446/welcome-to-leeside-the-uss-first-climate-haven/. Southern Border Communities Coalition. “The U.S.-Mexico Border Region at a Glance Border Lens: A Border Research Project.” Southern Border Communities Coalition, Alliance San Diego, 11 Sept. 2020, www.southernborder.org/border_lens_ southern_border_region_at_a_glance. Spector, Ronald H. “Vietnam War.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 July 2021, www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War. Stavropoulou, Maria. Drowned in Definitions?, Forced Migration Review, Oct. 2008, www. fmreview.org/climatechange/stavropoulou. Storlazzi, Curt. “Low-Lying Areas of Tropical Pacific Islands.” Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, United States Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov/centers/pcmsc/ science/low-lying-areas-tropical-pacific-islands. Summers, J. Kevin, et al. “Development of a Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI): An Assessment of Resilience to Acute Meteorological Events and Selected Natural Hazards.” EPA, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 16 Oct. 2017, cfpub.epa.gov/ si/si_public_record_report.cfm?Lab=NHEERL&amp;dirEntryId=337914. Tabarrok, Alex. “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders-Completely.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 Oct. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/getrid-borders-completely/409501/. Talbot, Ian, and Gurharpal Singh. The Partition of India. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Tavernise, Sabrina, and Robert Gebeloff. “U.S. Population Over Last Decade Grew at Slowest Rate Since 1930s.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Apr. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/us-census-numbers.html. Thomas-Corr, Johanna. “The Wall by John Lanchester Review – Dystopian Fable for Our Time.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Jan. 2019, www.theguardian. com/books/2019/jan/15/the-wall-by-john-lanchester-review. U.S. Census Bureau. “United States Summary: 2010 Population and Housing Unit Counts 2010 Census of Population and Housing.” The United States Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, Sept. 2012, www.census.gov/library/publications/2012/dec/cph-2.html.

References U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Southwest Land Border Encounters (By Component).” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, 9 June 2021, www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-borderencounters-by-component. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Southwest Land Border Encounters.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, 9 June 2021, www.cbp. gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters. UN DESA Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “68% Of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas by 2050, Says UN.” United Nations, United Nations, 16 May 2018, www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html. Union of Concerned Scientists. “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 18 June 2018, www.ucsusa.org/resources/underwater. United Nations General Assembly. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations, United Nations, 10 Dec. 1948, www.un.org/en/about-us/universaldeclaration-of-human-rights. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr. org/en-us/comprehensive-refugee-response-framework-crrf.html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1951, www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Global Compact on Refugees – Booklet.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2018, www. unhcr.org/5c658aed4. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www. unhcr.org/new-york-declaration-for-refugees-and-migrants.html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Refugee Statistics.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ download/?url=M9KpTS. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Refugee Statistics.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 18 June 2021, www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Part II - Global Compact on Refugees.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2018, www.unhcr.org/en-us/excom/ unhcrannual/5ba3a5d44/report-united-nations-high-commissioner-refugees-part-iiglobal-compact.html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Resettlement.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/resettlement.html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Urban Refugees.” UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/urban-refugees. html. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “What Is a Refugee?” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/en-us/what-is-a-refugee.html. United States Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/ demo/popest/2010s-total-cities-and-towns.html. United States, Congress, “Refugee Act of 1980: Conference Report to Accompany S. 643.” S.643 - Refugee Act of 1979. www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/senatebill/643. US Census Bureau. “City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2019.” The United States Census Bureau, 20 Apr. 2021, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/ popest/2010s-total-cities-and-towns.html. Van Vuuren, Detlef P., et al. “The Representative Concentration Pathways: an Overview.” Climatic Change, vol. 109, no. 1-2, 2011, pp. 5–31., doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0148-z.

| 127

128 |

The Great Lakes Green Belt

Walker, Connor. “The Impact of Homelands upon Diasporas.” Modern Diasporas in International Politics, 1986, pp. 16–46. Weatherhead, Madeleine, and What Works Cities. “Phoenix Is Ready for More Rapid Growth.” What Works Cities, Medium, 29 June 2020, medium.com/what-workscities-certification/phoenix-is-ready-for-more-rapid-growth-286121eb6cea. Wernick, Adam. “Climate Change Is Contributing to the Migration of Central American Refugees.” The World, PRX, 15 July 2018, www.pri.org/stories/2018-07-15/climatechange-contributing-migration-central-american-refugees. Wheeler, William. “How Not to Design a World Without Borders.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 July 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/ how-not-to-design-a-world-without-borders/374563/. The World Bank. “GDP (Current US$) Data.” The World Bank Data, The World Bank, 2017, data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2017&amp;most_recent_ value_desc=true&amp;start=1960&amp;year_high_desc=true. World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files. Xu, Chi, et al. “Future of the Human Climate Niche.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, no. 21, 4 May 2020, pp. 11350–11355., doi:10.1073/ pnas.1910114117. Yetikyel, Gia. “Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead Hits Lowest Water Level Since 1930s.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 18 June 2021, www. smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hoover-dams-lake-mead-hits-lowest-water-level1930s-180978022/. Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. “India-Pakistan Partition 1947 and Forced Migration.” The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, 4 Feb. 2013, doi:10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm285.

References

| 129