While it’s tempting to imagine the majestic Ents stalking Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, this migration is the more subtle result of seeds dispersing by way of wind, animals and water. Indeed, the movement of tree species echoes other migratory patterns that are also influenced by a warming planet.  

The movement of trees is not new. Scientists have long tracked how these shifts occur, describing them as proof of the resilience of species. But they are happening more quickly because of temperature changes in the planet. One pattern observed is the move away from heat. Some move to higher altitudes, others to areas with more moisture. A new study published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation paints a more nuanced picture, finding that both climate and anthropogenic factors have to do with tree movement. Between 2000 and 2020, 42% of treelines shifted upslope, while 25% shifted downslope. “The rate of treeline shifts was strongly influenced by anthropogenic disturbances,” the study found, in particular from fires.  

Unsurprisingly, trees are short on speed. They simply may not be able to migrate quickly enough to keep up with the pace of environmental changes. Some scientists are calling for “assisted migration” as a way to help smooth out the adaptation process. In Canada, the practice is taking root. The provinces of British Columbia and Alberta have extended seed transfer zones 200 metres higher for most species, and in B.C., planting of the western larch is now permitted outside of its previous range.  

Assisted migration is not without risks or controversy, and some scientists consider it another example of human meddling. New species may become invasive in a new ecosystem, or they may be ill-equipped to adapt to local soil conditions and sun exposure. “The idea that humans can help fill the gap between the ability of species to migrate and the rate of change in climate conditions is increasingly being considered and debated as a possible management option,” Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources stated in a 2025 briefing note.  

The post Trees are migrating in response to climate change appeared first on Corporate Knights.

There’s no tangible evidence that caribou have memory the way humans have memory, but researchers, such as biologist Anne Gunn, have observed tundra caribou change migration routes based on past experiences. If a route is too icy and foraging is difficult, for instance, older female caribou – who lead the herd – may remember a different, less icy path they used a previous year.  

“The average cow lives, say, 15 years, and she will have learned [routes] from her mother, because when she was a yearling, she will have followed her mother, who would have followed her mother,” Gunn says. “So there’s collective memory. They learn from each other.” 

As the barren-ground caribou population declines – with the Bathurst herd in particular thinning out by 98% – the risk of caribou losing their collective memory increases. The key to retaining that memory, beyond ensuring the population doesn’t go extinct, is making sure those migration routes stay accessible to caribou, Gunn says. But infrastructure initiatives in the Canadian Arctic, such as the proposed 400-kilometre all-season road from the Northwest Territories to Nunavut, are poised to cut through a significant portion of caribou migration range, blocking the routes these animals have crossed for millennia. 

“We know that caribou, especially barren-ground migratory caribou, really do not like crossing roads,” says Elie Gurarie, professor of wildlife ecology at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York.  

Researchers have a good sense of how caribou might react to the all-season road based on their behaviour on smaller roads linking the Diavik and Ekati diamond mines in the Northwest Territories to Yellowknife. These mining roads are not open to the public, with traffic increasing seasonally along with mining activity. 

Data from GPS-collared caribou – collected by the Northwest Territories’ Department of Environment and Climate Change – have recorded caribou crowding along the sides of these roads when traffic is active, unable to cross and roam their natural range. “Caribou are just remarkably successful in the Arctic,” Gurarie says. “The environment is really harsh and not very protected. I think the key to that success is that collective memory, their sociality and their freedom to move.”  

Barren-ground caribou have extremely variable migratory routes, so it’s not as simple as making sure one path is free for them to use. They need a lot of space to roam. When it came to the diamond mine roads, one solution, Gunn says, was to close these roads for a few hours each day during the high migratory season.  

The proposed all-season road, however, is much bigger than the mining roads. It’s part of the $40-billion Arctic Economic and Security Corridor linking mines, military operations and communities under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s nation-building projects list, which allows it to be fast-tracked through the approval process. A portion of the road, called the Grays Bay Road and Port project, cuts right through the dwindling Bathurst herd’s migratory range.   

If we don’t look after the herd well enough when they’re declining, and we lose most or all of a herd, all that collective memory of the landscape is lost.

— Anne Gunn, biologist

But there are three ways the impact of the road on caribou can be mitigated, Gurarie says. The government could collaborate with researchers and local Indigenous wildlife monitoring groups – including the North Slave Métis Alliance, Tlicho Ekwǫ̀ Nàxoèhdee K’è and Yellowknives Dene First Nation – to map a route least intrusive on the caribou range. The road itself could be designed to make crossings easier, such as with lower embankments, so that the animals don’t have to climb anything to make it through. And the roads could be closed for dedicated periods when migration activity is highest.  

With the project still in its infancy, the fate of the caribou can still be changed. As their natural habitat becomes ever more fragmented – spurred by industrial operations and a warming climate that affects the vegetation they need – caribou populations, and the memory they rely on, are on a precipice.  

 “If we don’t look after the herd well enough when they’re declining, and we lose most or all of a herd, all that collective memory of the landscape is lost,” Gunn says. “But the herds are still there, and there are still knowledgeable individuals among the caribou there. So, not letting a herd go extinct is really important.” 

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist. 

The post How researchers are working to preserve caribou collective memory and migratory routes appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Shortly after entering the ocean, they were moving along the sand when Peterson looked up and saw a white shark passing a few metres away. “One half of me was like, ‘Yes, jackpot,’” Peterson says. “And the other half was like, ‘Oh crap.’”

The animal disappeared into the murk, and then reappeared – first, her dark eyes and toothy smile, and then the rest of her muscular body – moving straight toward them. Peterson grabbed the harness of the other diver, a tourist from the United States, and pulled him to the bottom, where they waited, maintaining eye contact. The shark approached repeatedly, coming so close they could almost have reached out and touched her, before veering off each time (cutting off their exit, Peterson later realized). “This shark was investigating us,” Peterson says. “It was trying to figure out if we were food.”

After three passes, the shark decided they weren’t and disappeared into the gloom. Peterson and the other diver quickly surfaced and swam to shore, where they told the people swimming to get out of the water. With the danger passed, Peterson was exhilarated to have encountered an apex predator in her natural environment. “I was thrilled,” he says. “[It was] such a rare and special occurrence.”

Speaking with a biologist afterward, Peterson discovered it wasn’t as rare as he thought; in fact, he was about the 10th diver in the area to have reported an encounter with a white shark in the past three years.

Across the region, it’s not just divers noticing a change. There’s been a notable uptick in the number of people reporting white sharks along Canada’s Atlantic coast over the past decade. For a long time, white sharks were so rarely documented that scientists thought occasional sightings were just fringe members of a more southerly population. Now, they appear in Atlantic Canadian waters in the summer with a regularity that suggests a recurring seasonal population in the thousands.

“Atlantic Canada is the new white-shark population on the planet, at the moment,” says Nigel Hussey, professor of movement and trophic ecology at the University of Windsor. While there is some uncertainty as to the extent to which white sharks are moving in, scientists say that all signs point to a local population that’s growing, as white sharks recover from overexploitation and move northward because of warming waters.

That increasing presence elicits complex feelings in the region. White sharks have an almost unparalleled ability to inspire fear – yet sharks also have the potential to bring new benefits to the region: in research opportunities, in economic activity and in healthy ecosystems. But experts note that some white-shark prep work is also required, especially in a region billed as “Canada’s ocean playground” by one province’s licence plate.

“It’s very exciting, but also there is some degree of challenge for [Canada] to start generating the data to manage it, because it’s an endangered species . . . and to manage the risk of negative human–shark interactions,” Hussey says.

A shark sector is born

Ocean shorelines exert a magnetic pull for vacationers around the world; coastal and maritime tourism represents a significant portion of the global tourist economy, generating approximately US$3 trillion in 2025. Shark- and ray-based tourism is an increasing share of this, producing about US$314 million annually from activities such as diving, fishing and boat tours, according to one 2013 study. Shark tourism takes place in dozens of countries, and in some cases, researchers suggest that it has the potential to contribute more to gross domestic product than fishing.

In Atlantic Canada, this activity is still in its infancy.

The first company to offer cage diving tours began operating on Nova Scotia’s south shore roughly three years ago. In starting the business, marine biologist Neil Hammerschlag was inspired by his master’s degree in South Africa decades before, where he ran cage diving tours to fund his research. After an academic career in the United States, he began looking for a way to return to Canada and, seeing the increasing number of shark sightings in Nova Scotia, recognized a chance to return to his roots: “I thought, why not kind of use this idea of combining cage diving and the public’s interest in sharks with science, and essentially came up with this concept for Atlantic Shark Expeditions, which is cage diving to support science.”

Hammerschlag says it took a few seasons, but Atlantic Shark Expeditions has managed to dial in its formula. In 2025, they saw white sharks on every expedition and identified 109 different individuals, tagging six sharks with satellite tags. The company has taken hundreds of people on white-shark expeditions, many of whom describe being motivated by the desire to participate in research or to see sharks up close. “Interestingly, it’s not thrill-seekers at all,” he says.

Hammerschlag’s operation came up against some local opposition initially. Local surfers and other ocean recreationalists raised concerns that its approach would make human–shark conflict more likely. Some of that concern was fuelled by rumour. People had heard that the company was throwing fresh chunks of fish in the water, a practice known as chumming, meant to draw the species in. Hammerschlag denies this, though the company does use tuna and seal blubber as bait. It also lowers waterproof speakers into the water to produce a low-frequency sound attractive to sharks. Hammerschlag acknowledges that some people have concerns about changing shark behaviour, but he says their own research doesn’t support the idea that bait causes sharks to hang around. Of the 109 sharks they saw, most they saw only once. “If they’re being habituated, you would expect to see the same ones day in and day out, right? But you don’t. You see completely different ones. They’re moving through.”

Researchers in other jurisdictions where shark tourism is more established have drawn similar conclusions. Studies of wildlife tourism in Mexico and Australia found no long-term habituation from baiting, though that didn’t stop Mexico from banning white-shark tourism on Guadalupe Island in 2023, citing bad practices in the industry that had sometimes proved deadly – for the sharks.

This reflects the broader reality: there were 12 confirmed fatalities from shark encounters worldwide in 2025, and there were 65 “unprovoked” attacks, including one in Nova Scotia, where a white shark bit through a paddleboard at a beach near Halifax (the paddler was unharmed). That pales in comparison to the number of sharks killed by humans, which exceeds 100 million a year.

Despite these stark figures, sharks are nonetheless often perceived as remorseless killers and humans their defenceless victims – a narrative whose strength demonstrates just how deep-seated (and culturally reinforced) our fear of them is. In Atlantic Canada, scientists warn, a lack of familiarity and preparation has the potential to drive conflict.

Nigel Hussey, who runs a field research station tracking sharks on Nova Scotia’s southshore, says that everywhere else in the world where there are significant white shark populations, there are programs to mitigate the interactions with people that will inevitably occur. Yet in Atlantic Canada, these are so far lacking.

Sharks are not interested in people, Hussey says, but because they spend most of their time in the same part of the ocean that we do, conflict can arise. “We’re certainly at a point, and have been for a while now, where [Nova Scotia] needs to acknowledge white sharks are here and they’re here in numbers,” he says. Without the right data and preparation, there’s a risk of a negative encounter, he says, which could in turn be negative for shark conservation.

Steve Crawford, professor of integrative biology at the University of Guelph, points out that visitors may not understand that white sharks are now part of 

the environment in Atlantic Canada. For several years, Crawford says, he’s been advocating for white-shark signage and accompanying trauma kits at popular coastal destinations in the region, as beaches in Maine and Massachusetts have done. “To date, not a single government agency anywhere in Atlantic Canada has made the responsible decision to provide this kind of risk-management signage.”

Getting the opportunity right

Increasing numbers of sharks are not only a source of risk – they’re also a draw.

In other shark hot spots, such as Australia and South Africa, sizable industries have arisen out of people’s desire to interact with sharks; a 2017 study found that shark-diving tourism contributed $25.5 million (AUD) annually to Australia’s regional economy. While research suggests that activities like cage diving have minimal behavioural impact, the context of that research is that it happened in jurisdictions that have navigated a learning curve to establish effective regulations, Hussey says.

Cage diving isn’t the only appeal. White sharks have the potential to fuel a range of economic activity, from scientific research and tourism to wildlife documentary production. “There is a whole economic ecosystem around white sharks that could be very positive in Nova Scotia, but we all acknowledge . . . we need regulations in place,” Hussey says.

It’s worth doing the work to get this right, scientists say, because as white sharks become more established in the region, opportunities to get close could help dispel fear of the unfamiliar.

In mid-summer of last year, Geraldine Fernandez was on an outing on the Atlantic Shark Expeditions vessel, as part of a research project she was doing with Dalhousie University’s Future of Marine Ecosystems lab. It was a day like any other: some guests were enjoying the ocean in the cage, and Fernandez was standing atop the cage, dipping a tool she uses for estimating shark length in the water.

A blue shark glided past, only to suddenly disappear; seconds later, a large white shark swam into view. Fernandez says he was more than four metres long and beautifully coloured, but what was most striking was his gracefulness. The shark was not interested in the bait but spent “what felt like forever” calmly observing the people in the cage and poking his head out of the water (a behaviour called spy-hopping) to look at the people on the boat. “He was soaking it all in with all the guests,” she says. “He was not afraid. We were not afraid. It was an absolutely incredible experience.”

Seeing the people there respond with delight and curiosity to an animal that’s so often maligned was a deeply fulfilling experience, Fernandez says. It’s an example of how, if managed correctly, the increasing presence of sharks in Atlantic Canadian waters can serve as a reminder about what is, after all, the shark’s environment: when we go in the ocean, we’re not alone. And we wouldn’t want to be.

Moira Donovan is an award-winning journalist based in Nova Scotia, specializing in the environment and climate change.

The post There’s a new apex predator in Atlantic Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Some of the biggest impacts are being felt in the Prairies. In Manitoba, authorities recently issued evacuation orders for 15,000 people, mostly in the province’s north. Many evacuees are brought to larger cities like Winnipeg, overwhelming hotels and emergency housing.

In Canada, climate-driven migration is often imagined as a distant threat that affects others in the world. But these evacuations foreshadow a future where internal displacement becomes a regular feature of Canadian life – and where cities must rethink how they plan for disruption.

Events like the 88,000-person evacuation from Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 2016 and the destruction of Lytton, B.C., in 2021 show how quickly rural populations can be displaced.

Manitoba’s evacuations are among the largest in recent memory, and many evacuated communities are remote and poorly connected to infrastructure. For them, evacuation may soon become an annual reality.

At the University of Hong Kong’s District Development Unit research lab (DDU), we develop architectural and urban strategies for rapidly urbanizing regions in the Global South, where settlements are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. We’ve seen how post-disaster migration reshapes cities. These shifts are predictable in places where infrastructure and governance haven’t kept pace with climate volatility.

Rural-to-urban climate migration

Across Canada, services and infrastructure are already under stress. Housing is increasingly unaffordable, including in rural areas. Many rural regions, especially those with large Indigenous populations, struggle to access basic services.

Though these areas are home to 18% of the population, they are served by only 8% of Canada’s physicians. More than one-quarter of rural school districts report closures or consolidations due to underfunding. These structural weaknesses form the backdrop to a slow-moving crisis – one that climate events are accelerating.

Elsewhere in the world, disasters regularly drive rural-to-urban migration and permanent urban change. In countries like Nepal and the Philippines – where our lab works – these movements are often rapid, informal and far beyond the scope of traditional planning.

In Kathmandu, the 2015 earthquake struck a city already marked by informal housing and fragile services. It accelerated a haphazard urban transformation characterized by uncontrolled sprawl, unsafe informal construction and overstretched infrastructure.

In the Philippines, typhoon recovery is often driven by necessity, with residents rebuilding informally. This results in growing slums and increasing vulnerability to future disasters.

These dynamics create new urban landscapes. In some cases, local governments are taking the lead, for example, by establishing local evacuation centres in the Philippines.

Elsewhere, informal encampments, home extensions and land occupations take hold. These are responses that reflect not only survival, but governance: provisional infrastructures are built through necessity, negotiation and collective care.

Canada’s climate urbanism

Canada is not exempt from these dynamics. When disaster strikes, evacuees often seek refuge in cities, where better public infrastructure offers some stability. As climate change fuels ever-larger wildfires, this trend will grow, with smaller urban centres absorbing more people fleeing climate-stressed regions.

Yet policy remains far behind. There is no national framework for climate-induced displacement. Canada’s immigration and housing policies have no category for internal climate migration. Disaster response remains reactive, coordinated mainly by municipalities and provinces through short-term tools like 211 or temporary shelters.

Interjurisdictional planning is minimal. Municipal climate plans rarely anticipate population surges or extended pressure on housing. Displacement is still treated as an occasional event, not as an enduring part of Canadian urban life.

Canada must begin to learn from places already living this future.

In Taiwan, civic centres double as emergency shelters, equipped with backup power, water tanks and seismic isolation systems. In Japan, disaster-prevention parks embed solar lighting, cooking stations and toilets into public green spaces. And in Mongolia, our lab has developed incremental urban strategies for Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts – clustering growth, infrastructure and housing to adapt to rapid, uncertain settlement patterns.

These examples reflect a model of urbanism in which emergency response and long-term development are not separate, but part of a continuous, negotiated process.

What Canada can do

Canada’s geography, governance and urban forms demand their own set of protocols and prototypes. While lessons from elsewhere can guide us, they cannot be copied wholesale. This means it is vital to develop a national framework for internal climate migration that integrates climate displacement into the National Housing Strategy.

All orders of governments should focus on developing multi-use resilience infrastructure, such as community centres and schools equipped for emergency response, and advancing adaptive housing policies that can expand or contract with demand.

Canada once helped shape global thinking on the transformation of urban areas. The 1976 United Nations Habitat Conference in Vancouver, catalyzed by the efforts of architects and planners, called for new models of settlement and development grounded in equity, participation and awareness of our planet’s limits.

Nearly 50 years later, that unfinished legacy has a new urgency. Today, climate displacement calls for a shift in how architects engage with the built environment – moving toward coordinated action with communities, policymakers and allied fields, and embracing models of practice that move beyond the traditional role of service provider – to actively initiate change.

Architects must engage not only with buildings, but with the frameworks that govern land, infrastructure and migration itself. This means challenging the professional neutrality that too often aligns design with extractive systems, and instead welcoming practices capable of working across institutions, jurisdictions and communities.

A national summit could mark the beginning of this shift by creating a forum to discuss climate migration and design the tools, policies and partnerships that will shape its outcomes.

The question is not whether climate movement will occur, but whether we will be prepared to meet it with intention, care and foresight.

Kent Mundle is a senior researcher and lecturer in architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

This article was first published by The Conversation. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

The post What Canada can learn from the Global South on climate change migration appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The consequences of climate change are far from an abstract concept for island nations in the Pacific Ocean. In Kiribati, rising sea levels are already threatening to displace residents as eroding land has contributed to a worsening housing crisis and overcrowding. Internal relocation isn’t really an option for many on these islands. And yet, the international community has largely failed to address the issue of climate migration in a proactive way, experts say.

Canada and other high-income countries have a moral obligation to develop plans to accept and resettle climate migrants, critics say, since we’re responsible for much of the greenhouse gas that led to the current crisis. Climate-induced displacement is expected to rise in coming years as natural disasters become more destructive and more frequent. The World Bank estimates that climate change could displace up to 216 million people within their own countries by 2050. In 2020, 30 million people were displaced by severe storms, floods and wildfires, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

While most of the current displacement is happening within countries, a growing number of migrants are predicted to seek shelter in other countries, as the situations in their homelands deteriorate further. In sub-Saharan Africa, where rising temperatures are already squeezing farmers, researchers expect most farmland will become unsuitable for growing crops by the end of this century. And drought-induced crop failure is already compounding the migrant crisis in Central America.

High-income nations have a lot to gain economically and socially from being proactive about climate migrants. As birth rates continue to decline and populations age, Western countries such as Canada and the U.S. already lean on immigration to avoid labour shortages. Now that legal advocates say Canada should start officially welcoming climate migrants, some suggest that those fleeing the fallout from the climate crisis could help fill the green growth areas in our economy as the country transitions away from fossil fuels.

We first have to step back and try to stop the displacement before it happens.

—Yvonne Su, York University

Robert McLeman, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, says the federal government could create special programs to settle climate migrants. “At the government level, we need to have an open discussion about how Canada’s migration program fits into a world where things are being increasingly disrupted because of climate change.”

For those from countries that already have large diaspora communities in Canada, McLeman says, such as India and the Philippines, the federal government could widen existing programs that allow people to sponsor immediate family members to include others from their home countries. And it could create special open-ended employment visas for migrants from smaller island nations (with weaker connections to Canada), so they could come to Canada and remit the money they earn back home. Not only would this make it easier for them to settle in Canada if they choose to stay, but these remittances sent from wealthy countries are a key part in building resilience and adaptability in home communities, McLeman says.

Immigration levels have sagged during the pandemic, as the government failed to hit its target for the number of immigrants it aimed to welcome to Canada in 2020. The federal government had planned for 341,000 immigrants in 2020 but saw only 185,000 arrive; it more than doubled its 2021 goal as a result. The 2022 target is 411,000 people, but it isn’t clear how and if climate migrants will factor into this number. A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) did not answer questions about whether climate migrants are being considered in current or future immigration targets but said in an emailed statement that immigration levels for “2022–24 will be tabled in Parliament in due course.”

Currently, around one in 26 workers in Canada is employed in a green job, according to ECO Canada, and that number is expected to rise. The non-profit projects that there will be 173,000 net job openings in the environmental sector by 2025 because of growth and retirement. And analysts expect there will be labour shortages in a variety of green jobs, including senior government managers, public environmental health inspectors and urban planners. “It’s a great sector for them to work in, given what they’re escaping from,” says Yvonne Su, an assistant professor in York University’s Department of Equity Studies and a member of the Centre for Refugee Studies.

A pathway for resettlement

It’s hard to tell how many climate migrants have already come to Canada because there are often multiple interconnected factors, such as conflict and food insecurity, that push people out of their home countries. And someone who is displaced by climate change alone doesn’t fit into the Geneva Convention definition of a conventional refugee that is used in Canadian law. To meet this definition, a migrant must be outside their origin country and unable or unwilling to return “by reason of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” Aviva Basman, the president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), says these factors can often be secondary impacts of climate change.

The effects of climate change can often lead to scarcity of resources, violence, and persecution of a specific ethnic group. “However, climate migration is much broader than that and is going to impact a lot more people than would fit into the legal definition of ‘convention refugee,’” Basman says.

In November, CARL called on the federal government to implement more proactive policies and guidelines when it comes to climate migration. The organization released a paper outlining proposed changes that include creating what’s called a new “public policy class” for climate migrants that “would permit Canada a great deal of flexibility in adapting to the needs of such migrants.” The group also wants to see the federal government adopt a new “protected persons” status for climate refugees that would exempt them from having to prove “personalized risk,” given the generalized risk they experience from the climate crisis. This would also allow Canada to resettle people displaced by climate change who aren’t in the country yet.

We need to have a discussion about how Canada’s migration program fits into a world increasingly disrupted
by climate change.

—Robert McLeman, Wilfrid Laurier University

“At this point, while there’s still time to create a thoughtful policy response, we think that Canada should show international leadership by creating a comprehensive climate migration policy and specific programs,” says Basman.

Sean Fraser, Canada’s federal immigration minister, declined a request for an interview, and the spokesperson for IRCC did not answer a question on whether the federal government will consider granting protected-persons status to climate migrants. In the emailed statement, the spokesperson said the federal government “recognizes that climate change has broad implications on health, agriculture, economy, trade, infrastructure, displacement of people and migration. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consistently monitors the implications of climate change on migration and displacement patterns and flows, including work by international bodies.”

In its paper, CARL points to a 2020 decision by the UN Human Rights Committee that established an international obligation not to send people back to places where their lives will be at risk because of climate change. The complainant in the case is a man from Kiribati who travelled with his family to New Zealand, where they sought asylum as climate refugees. Ioane Teitiota and his family were deported after a lengthy court battle and were ultimately unsuccessful in gaining asylum, as the committee found Teitiota’s risk wasn’t “imminent” enough. But Basman says the committee’s ruling was a watershed decision that should serve as a wake-up call for Canada.

“Now is really the time for Canada to create a thoughtful and comprehensive policy response,” she says.

Help them at home

In addition to the economic benefits of welcoming climate migrants to settle in Canada, their very presence in the country could help raise awareness of the urgency of the issue, says McLeman. This could increase support for strong climate policies.

“It’s abstract, but when people recognize that their friends, their neighbours, people in their community have lived through these types of experiences, and are able to share those stories, I hope that it draws our attention to it,” he says.

Hundreds of millions of people are expected to be displaced if the planet continues on its current trajectory and warms 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. While it is important for high-income countries to have proactive plans to welcome climate migrants, Su says, those nations should also do more to combat the climate crisis, and prevent disasters. “We first have to take a step back and try to stop the displacement before it happens.”

Strong climate action could blunt the worst impacts of climate change and stop the displacement of climate migrants in the first place, experts say. But in the absence of meaningful action, adaptation (including proactive migration plans) and resilience must be top priorities for the international community.

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