This story is a partnership between Grist and Chicago Public Media, a public media company serving the Chicago metropolitan region.
Every single year, climate-driven disasters force millions of people to leave their homes, ripping away their sense of security and leaving them to face the daunting challenge of finding a new place to rebuild their lives. In the immediate aftermath of devastating floods, roaring wildfires, and prolonged droughts, these individuals become part of a rapidly growing population of people on the move who currently lack specific legal protections. Commonly referred to as climate migrants, most of these displaced individuals choose to move within the borders of their own countries, while others are forced to seek refuge across international boundaries, searching for safety wherever they can find it.
The hotter the planet grows, the higher this number of climate migrants is expected to climb in the coming decades. At the conservative end of current scientific projections, estimates point to at least 44 million people displaced internally across the globe by the year 2050. That kind of massive planetary churn is the exact equivalent of completely rehoming the entire population of Argentina. Despite the staggering scale of this impending crisis, very few states, regions, or nations are actively planning for this possibility.
Last fall, when Governor JB Pritzker signed the Climate Displacement Act into law, Illinois became the very first state in the country attempting to anticipate the complex ways in which climate-driven migration could fundamentally transform life for both its existing residents and the new arrivals who may eventually call the state home. The pioneering law established a specialized task force to investigate how domestic and international climate migration patterns could test Illinois’ critical infrastructure, public resources, and local communities. This first-of-its-kind legislation requires the newly formed team to publish two comprehensive reports over the course of a year, outlining the state’s long-term ability to address climate migration through at least 2050. If the Midwestern state manages to succeed in this ambitious endeavor, it could easily become a vital blueprint for how other states make room for vulnerable populations on the move.
There is just one major problem: only a year after introducing the much-lauded effort, state officials have largely abandoned it.
Lawmakers have already quietly pushed back reporting deadlines and have yet to even convene the task force, despite the fact that the very first report is scheduled to be published in December. Under the terms of the legislation, Governor Pritzker, the state’s top legislative leaders, and the heads of several Illinois state agencies were supposed to appoint members to the board no later than 90 days after the law officially went into effect. Yet, for over a full year, only a single appointment was made to the 17-seat task force, leaving the initiative dead in the water.
Journalists from WBEZ and Grist reached out to the various state officials who bear the responsibility of appointing members to the board, including Governor Pritzker, four key members of the Illinois General Assembly, and the directors of seven distinct state agencies. Besides the governor’s office, only Illinois Senate President Don Harmon responded to inquiries, quickly appointing state Senator Graciela Guzman, who represents Chicago, to the task force immediately after being contacted for comment.
“Governor Pritzker remains committed to fighting climate change and preparing Illinois for its impacts, including climate-related migration,” Andres Correa, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement provided to WBEZ and Grist. “This work is important, and the administration will continue working with lawmakers, state agencies, and stakeholders to establish a timeline and move the task force forward.”
Despite this reassurance, the governor’s office declined to provide a concrete estimate for when a functioning timeline would finally be available to the public.
“We haven’t received a clear answer,” said Guzman, a Chicago Democrat who originally introduced the Climate Displacement Act and was finally appointed to the task force last week, expressing frustration about the administrative delays plaguing the climate law she helped shepherd through the legislature last fall. “This has been two years in the making… I’m honored to serve on the Climate Displacement Task Force and ready to get to work.”
The text of the law clearly outlines what the mandated reports should address, but it notably fails to include any punitive consequences or accountability measures for failing to meet the statutory deadlines. The first report, which is due at the end of the year, requires the task force to compile the latest data and scientific findings to determine the sheer scale of climate migration expected within the United States and neighboring countries in the coming decades. The following report, which is due at the end of 2027, is supposed to assess how various state agencies and existing social programs will need to evolve in response to the growing wave of disaster-induced displacement.
Guzman, who was born to Salvadoran refugees in Los Angeles, originally introduced the bill in February 2025, just a month after 14 ferocious wildfires tore through southern California, scorching tens of thousands of homes and buildings in what went down as the state’s second- and third-most destructive fires in modern history.
“My family, like many families there, were having some really real conversations: If these wildfires were to encroach upon the valley where they lived, where would they go?” she recalled.
The answer, for many facing similar crises, could easily be Illinois.
The temperate Midwestern state is an undeniable agricultural powerhouse, strategically positioned adjacent to 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater supply. It is relatively safe from catastrophic hurricanes and sweeping wildfires, and it sits far enough inland that rising sea levels do not pose an immediate risk to its population centers. A recent analysis conducted by AlphaGeo, a specialized climate-risk modeling firm, even ranked Chicago as the most climate-resilient large city on the entire planet, citing these natural geographic advantages alongside its robust urban infrastructure.
Given these favorable conditions, Chicago, the state of Illinois, and the broader Midwest have frequently been billed in popular media as “climate havens”—a catch-all term for geographic destinations marketed as entirely insulated from the ravages of extreme weather. However, scientists and policy experts have pushed back vigorously on these marketing claims for years, countering that no such truly safe place actually exists on a warming planet. They argue that the fundamental nature of climate change is global, and rising temperatures will inevitably trigger cascading knock-on effects across all life on Earth—including the Midwest, which has already been visibly leaving its mark.
Over the past year alone, Chicago residents experienced significant and widespread urban flooding when the city’s massive deep-tunnel and reservoir system very nearly hit maximum capacity during torrential downpours. A record-breaking number of severe tornadoes, intense bouts of extreme heat, and heavy layers of Canadian wildfire smoke that dangerously spiked air quality levels for nearly a full week made the past summer unlike anything seen in recent memory.
“It’s all that anybody I’m around is talking about—just the incredible weather events that we have had in our state,” Guzman said. “It’s really laying bare why this kind of planning is important.”
Whether Chicago ultimately deserves the title of climate haven or not, Guzman emphasizes that the new law represents a vital opportunity for the state to take stock of its existing resources and proactively plan for a potential influx of new residents. Such planning could eventually translate into targeted investments in affordable housing or innovative job training programs. But before any of those long-term infrastructure changes can happen, the state desperately needs a reliable roadmap.
Illinois remains the only state in the country with an explicit statutory mandate to prepare for widespread population shifts driven by climate change. However, other states have slowly begun enacting or at least seriously considering their own climate-related relocation strategies. Maine has successfully incorporated climate migration into its broader statewide resilience planning efforts. Meanwhile, lawmakers in California, Hawaii, and New Jersey have introduced legislation aimed at protecting coastal communities vulnerable to rising sea levels and organizing buyouts for some of the most at-risk properties.
Earlier this year, Alaska lawmakers passed a comprehensive law pledging to provide direct state assistance to the low-lying, remote coastal communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok as they struggle to relocate in the devastating aftermath of Typhoon Halong.
In the broader Midwest, the city of Cincinnati is also actively preparing for newcomers seeking long-term climate refuge. Earlier this year, city officials widely circulated a detailed blueprint designed to accommodate upwards of 500,000 new residents by the year 2050. Notably, the Cincinnati plan does not market the city as “climate-proof.” Instead, it outlines practical ways to improve the overall quality of life for all residents by steadily increasing the availability of affordable housing and investing heavily in public transportation—an approach remarkably similar to the goals laid out in the Illinois proposal.
Despite these scattered efforts across the country, Illinois still has a very long road ahead of it, according to Bryan Jones, a geographer and professor at Baruch College in New York City who has worked extensively on landmark climate displacement and relocation reports.
“It’s a daunting task, and the state of Illinois needs to recognize that,” Jones said.
Part of the underlying challenge is that the term “climate migrant” is still relatively new in public policy circles, and it currently lacks any universally agreed-upon definition. Furthermore, climate refugees have zero formal legal recognition under international law. Most modern-day legal protections for refugees are still strictly based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, which intentionally restricted the definition to individuals who are persecuted specifically for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Attempting to model climate change and human migration independently is already a complex scientific endeavor, and trying to account for both variables simultaneously compounds the difficulty. Migration alone is a deeply complicated phenomenon driven by a massive array of factors ranging from economic prospects and family ties to gender dynamics and endemic poverty, making it exceptionally difficult to project accurately even before adding the accelerating pressures of global climate change.
Nevertheless, Jones argues that state officials in Illinois can successfully build upon existing academic research by clearly identifying what makes Illinois unique—such as its vast agricultural sector and major metropolitan infrastructure—and modeling how those assets could realistically influence future migration patterns. The work, he acknowledges, will undeniably be time-consuming, but climate change is already actively altering migration routes, and the single best way to limit social disruptions is to plan for them before a crisis forces the issue.
“It would be of tremendous service and certainly help to get the conversation started where there’s been limited conversation in this country, to this point,” Jones said.