“…a new report, released (May 3) by the Center for Progressive Reform, lays out other ways for indigenous communities to buy land as their homes buckle from melting permafrost or are swallowed by rising seas. One of the report’s three authors, Loyola University law professor Robert R.M. Verchick, said he hopes that the analysis achieves two things:

• That communities confronted by seemingly insurmountable odds against moving realize others have succeeded. “They are finding ways to have important conversations in their communities about their future. And they’re finding ways though the law, through their own governmental management systems,” Verchick said. “They’re finding ways of moving communities and governing communities in ways that will make them safer.”
• That the report serves as a wake-up call to political leaders who scoff at climate change and the prospect of it affecting more Americans. “We are talking about a future where tens of thousands of people are going to be relocating, and yet we have no uniform strategy,” Verchick said. “And that’s a conversation we’re almost not having at all in the Unites States right now.”