Fleeing climate change
In one of the most dreaded science-fiction scenarios, entire communities are forced to abandon their homes because rising sea levels, droughts, and storm surges, driven by climate change, endanger their lives. It’s already happening in Alaska, where warmer temperatures are melting permafrost, eroding the state’s northern coastline and causing severe and rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, which leaves villages unprotected from forces of nature. To explore climate change and population displacement in Alaska, the Gazette interviewed Robin Bronen, a human rights attorney, senior research scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and co-founder and executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice. Bronen came to Harvard for a conference on climate change displacement sponsored by the International Human Rights Clinic, the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic. GAZETTE: You were an immigration attorney for many years. How did you become interested in climate change? BRONEN: I have lived...