A Northeast Safe and Thriving for All (NEST)

As national conversations grapple with climate migration, many have cast the Northeast and Rustbelt as future migratory havens. The Upper Northeast (a region spanning from Buffalo, NY through the Adirondacks, western MA, VT, NH, and ME) is no stranger to demographic change. However, past migrations have dispossessed land and livelihoods from Indigenous, Black, and low-income white people, even as they supported others’ economic expansion.

Today, the region’s spatial, socio-economic, and environment conditions reflect development paradigms that systematically have widened inequality among communities. This history, as well as emerging social science research, suggests that, absent systemic change, climate migration will further marginalize already disadvantaged groups.

The question is not whether this region can adapt to climate change, but rather how adaptation for existing and future in-migrants can help repair past and current inequities.

Here are the types of questions we addressed through this project:

• Should a community shift from septic systems to a larger wastewater treatment facility given growing flood risks or should households relocate from the floodplain?
• How much land use and zoning reform is needed to adjust for managed retreat and relocation housing given movements within and among communities?
• Should they prioritize farmland for agriculture, solar fields, or new and affordable housing?
• Should communities upzone main street and urban core areas for denser housing to accommodate new residents, or will this contravene historic preservation and affordable housing goals?
• Whose housing and infrastructure needs are prioritized?
• How will jobs and community culture change with new residents?
• Who should have voice in this process given that migrants may not be present year-round, be there in the future, or have yet moved to the region?

NOAA’s Climate Adaptation Partnership program is an applied research and engagement program that expands society’s regional capacity to adapt to climate impacts in the U.S. This one-year regional planning grant enabled a diverse group of more than a dozen experts to: (1) conduct literature and other knowledge reviews, (2) facilitate subregional engagement activities to deepen a two-way exchange of information, (3) convene a regional conference to consider opportunities for cross-state and multiscalar learning, and (4) develop a synthesis report for community decision-makers to support further climate migration planning.