When Benetick Kabua Maddison moved to the United States from the Marshall Islands at age six, it was in part due to the effects of global warming: Floods damaged his Pacific Island home and his family wished for better opportunities elsewhere.
Two decades later, having settled in Springdale in northwest Arkansas — a haven for Marshallese immigrants — Maddison is once again part of a community shaken by the wild climate that grows harsher as the planet warms.
The city of about 87,000 is facing extreme cold and heat, flash floods and the aftermath of a rare and devastating tornado that swept through the region in March.
“The community was unprepared when the tornado hit,” the 27-year-old says, reminding families struggling to cope with the devastation of collapsed roofs and broken car windows. “Climate change is something that’s not going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month — it’s already here.”
From California to New York, parts of the US that are seeing an influx of climate migrants have begun to look to the newly displaced for lessons to become resilient to more frequent disasters fueled by rising temperatures.
Maddison is executive director of the Marshallese Education Initiative, a non-profit organization that seeks to improve emergency response and communication on climate-related issues, among other cultural awareness efforts.
“Part of what we’ve done is educating the community, especially young people, about climate change. It’s already impacting our country, our islands,” says Maddison. These lessons are being taught across the country — including in Buffalo, New York, where Asian and African immigrants brought vertical farming techniques that better withstand high levels of heat and other climate impacts.
“Our immigrants and refugees really are able to grow an incredible amount of food on a 10 x 10 meter plot,” says Rahwa Ghirmatzion, executive director of PUSH Buffalo, a social justice advocacy group.
“They are able to harvest three to four times in a season and they do it using a lot of recycled materials — it’s a sight to behold.” Ghirmatzion was born in Eritrea in 1976, and his family fled during the civil war.
While many cite political instability as a reason for leaving their home countries, Ghirmatzion says climate stresses like heat waves and drought — and ripple effects on food supplies and civil strife — are another important factor.
unlikely connections
Further south along the US Gulf Coast, the nonprofit Resilience Force has an immigrant-led workforce that responds to extreme weather and disasters by rebuilding homes for people who have been internally displaced by hurricanes or floods.
Many of its workers are migrants from Honduras who fled after the impacts of climate change, such as worsening hurricanes and drought, also damaged the local economy. The group’s founder, Saket Soni, is from New Delhi, India, and says his efforts have managed to change even the most suspicious residents.
This has led to “unlikely” links between Hondurans and people who may have never spoken to an immigrant before or seen them as a threat or “undesirable in the community”, Soni adds.
These organizations are operating against a backdrop of increasing pressures that exacerbate climate-related displacement, which is only likely to worsen in the future with rising global temperatures.
More than 1 billion people worldwide are at risk of being uprooted by 2050 due to natural disasters, which could spur more migration to developed nations such as the US, a 2020 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace has concluded.
The Climate Justice Collaboration, an initiative of the National Partnership for New Americans, is one of the groups working to ensure that immigrants are at the forefront of preparations to alleviate this type of disruption.
Organizations strive to ensure, for example, that early warning systems are posted in multiple languages ​​and that there is a “just transition” for migrant workers in the fossil fuel industry, according to NPNA’s Stephanie Teatro.
“We’ve seen what’s possible when governments and communities see migration as a solution and that we can do extraordinary things to welcome people,” she says, referring to the goodwill towards people fleeing the Ukrainian War.
‘They are the visionaries’
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, activists in California are urging authorities to increase funding for so-called “resilience centers,” which can help prepare locations for impacts through immigrant-led initiatives.
The approach bolsters respected local organizations, such as a church or community center, to help neighborhoods prepare for crises — hurricanes, heat waves, pandemics or riots — as well as respond to and recover from them.
The state recently allocated at least $100 million to resilience centers, with strong contributions from Asian immigrants and climate justice groups like the Asia Pacific Environmental Network (Apen).
That funding could support the development of 10 to 20 projects across the state to provide, for example, new solar panels and battery supplies or emergency response services, proponents say.
It’s vital for immigrant and refugee communities to “feel that these places are safe, that they are the visionaries of the design of these facilities,” says Amee Raval, director of policy and research at Apen.
‘And what are they for them’
In Arkansas, Marshallese immigrants have settled for decades due to a number of factors, including climate change, but gaps still exist in terms of health equity, housing opportunities and emergency warning systems during weather-related disasters.
For his part, Maddison plans to eventually return to the Marshall Islands to pursue a political career in a place where he believes officials are less likely to ignore climate preparedness. In the meantime, he intends to continue raising awareness of the issues affecting his community in Arkansas, whether on a “local, national or even international” level.
“Because these problems are happening to us.”
