Reports + Publications
Returning Land, Reshaping Futures: Centering Indigenous Agency in Climate Migration
Spring 2025
The Climigration Network partnered with Hannah Teicher (Harvard Graduate School of Design) and students in her seminar on climate migration to research opportunities for Indigenous land reclamation and stewardship in the context of climate disruptions. In addition to Climigration Network leaders, the seminar benefited from conversations with lived and learned experts working on centering Indigenous agency in climate adaptation. The resulting report, “Returning Land, Reshaping Futures: Centering Indigenous Agency in Climate Migration,” reviews emerging work in the area and proposes directions for future research and collaboration.
While there is ample opportunity for existing Land Back coalitions to magnify their current efforts, the report also identifies possibilities for forging new coalitions. Escalating farmer retirement and agricultural land turnover presents a rare opportunity to align farmland transitions with Indigenous land return. Similarly, churches face declining congregations and are increasingly divesting of their landholdings. Some are seeking opportunities for the land to be used in environmentally and socially responsible ways. Forging coalitions with these institutions intimately involved with colonization and Indigenous land dispossession suggest pathways to reparative justice.
Innovations in buyouts: lessons from lived and learned experience
March 2025
The Climigration Network partnered with Anna Weber (NRDC), Shameika Hanson (TNC), and Carri Hulet (CH Consulting) on an article published in Frontiers: “Innovations in buyouts: Lessons from lived and learned experience.” This policy and practice review article summarizes the recommendations generated through the Innovations in Buyouts workshop series with buyout program practitioners and residents, as well as the methods used to design and facilitate the sessions and subsequent work done to implement the recommendations and develop a community of practice for better buyouts.
Best Practices for Voluntary Home Buyouts: Recommendations to NYS Office of Resilient Homes and Communities
November 2024
The Climigration Network partnered with a coalition of national experts in climate migration, housing buyouts, and climate adaptation, hosted by Rebuild by Design, to publish a white paper on “Best Practices for Voluntary Home Buyouts: Recommendations to NYS Office of Resilient Homes and Communities.”
The recommendations were developed in response to the passage of the 2022 $4.2B New York State Environmental Bond Act, which stipulates the creation of a dedicated state buyout program. They are intended to serve as both a compilation of best practices and reference points for buyout and climate relocation programs in general, and to identify opportunities for a NYS-funded buyout program to improve upon existing post-disaster buyout programs.
Partners included Rebuild by Design, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Buy-In Community Planning, the Climigration Network, ONE Architecture, and faculty experts at Cornell University and the University of Delaware.
Innovations in Buyouts Workshop Reports
2021-23
The Climigration Network partnered with NRDC, TNC, and CH Consulting to host two parallel workshop series to explore recommendations for better buyout programs. The first was among 30+ buyout program managers and agency staff from across the US; the second was a first-ever convening of 12 residents from across the US who had direct experience of a government-financed buyout of their home (both voluntary and mandatory).
Buyout program practitioners created a white paper “Innovating to Make Home Buyouts Faster, Easier, and Fairer (2022)” and complementary federal policy recommendations. Community members shared their experiences and recommendations in a report “Improving Home Buyouts - Lessons Learned from Experience (2023)” (in English and Spanish). Learn more about the workshops here.
Credit: Austin American-Statesman/USA TODAY Network
Uprooted: As the Climate Crisis Forces U.S. Residents to Relocate, a New Conversation Emerges
July 2022
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, with writer Alexandra Tempus, documented the collaborative efforts of the Climigration Network, the Anthropocene Alliance and its members from Go Austin/Vamos Austin and Rosewood Strong, and Buy-In Community Planning. The article explores how the coalition of community members and technical partners is building locally led, justice-centered approaches for adapting in-place and moving away from climate disaster.
The Great American Climate Migration Statement
2021
In 2021, leaders from 10 low-income, Black, and Latinx communities in the Climigration Network’s Grassroots Leader Community of Practice — convened with the Anthropocene Alliance — created “The Great American Climate Migration.” The statement draws from community leaders’ experiences to outline conditions necessary to guide the resettlement of some 30 million Americans over the next half-century due to climate change. Please read the statement, watch the testimonials from leaders, and share with your colleagues and friends.