Reimagining ‘Community’ Engagement: Lessons from Climate-related Planned Relocation

Climate Change Displacement Dialogue

Periodic climate-related migration caused by extreme weather events and newly uninhabitable territory is already occurring in Canada due to climate change impacts including coastal erosion, flooding, and wildfires. This dynamic will increase in coming years, resulting in sustained demand for federal, provincial, local, and Indigenous governments to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR), resettle displaced populations, relocate certain communities, and incur associated costs and economic losses. However, Canada should resist applying the logic of humanitarianism to domestic climate-disaster responses. For all their importance in saving human lives, humanitarian relief efforts are reactive, selectively applied according to national self-interest, (re)produce distinctions between self and other, and often suffer from inadequate resourcing and insufficient commitment. In Canada, applying humanitarian logic risks marginalizing rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities most vulnerable to climate-related extreme weather events. By contrast, the logic of sovereign responsibility insists upon an equitable and sustained provision of services by governments to support the safety and well-being of all citizens.

Speaker: Erica Bower, climate displacement researcher, Human Rights Watch

Register: yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Micaq34HT5Cg81xojI2iCg.