House Natural Resources Committee Forum: Confronting a Rising Tide

The “Confronting a Rising Tide: The Climate Refugee Crisis" forum will examine current and future climate change-related migration, displacement and planned relocation efforts in the United States, its territories and freely associated states.

By the century’s end, millions of Americans could become climate refugees. A study of U.S. counties vulnerable to sea level rise warns that if the coasts are not protected, the movement of people could match the scale of the 20th-century “Great Migration” of African-Americans from the south to the northern states. In Alaska alone, climate change flooding and shoreline erosion already affects more than 180 villages, 31 of which are in “imminent” danger of becoming uninhabitable. In order to alleviate the most extreme consequences of climate change, Federal, state, local and tribal governments must take immediate steps to mitigate climate change, introduce appropriate adaptation strategies and limit the extent to which climate change exacerbates forced migration and displacement.

Special Remarks:

House Natural Resources Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva

Moderator:

Jeff Payne, Director of the Office for Coastal Management, NOAA

Panelists:

Honorable John M. Silk, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of the Marshall Islands

Traditional Chief Albert P. Naquin of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw

Esau Sinnok, Arctic Youth Ambassador, U.S Chairmanship of the Arctic Council

Colette Pichon Battle, Director/Attorney, Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy