This story is a partnership between Grist and Chicago Public Media, a public media company serving the Chicago metropolitan region.
Every single year, climate-related disasters force millions of individuals to leave their homes, scattering communities and uprooting lives. In the immediate aftermath of devastating floods, raging wildfires, and crippling droughts, these displaced populations face the immense challenge of finding a secure place to rebuild their lives. They represent a rapidly growing population of people on the move who currently lack specific legal protections, a group commonly referred to as climate migrants. While the vast majority of these individuals move internally within their own countries in search of safety, others are forced to seek refuge across international borders.
The hotter the planet grows, the higher the number of climate migrants is expected to climb in the coming decades. At the most conservative end of 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 reality, very few regions, states, or municipalities are actively planning for this possibility.
Last fall, when Governor JB Pritzker signed the landmark Climate Displacement Act, Illinois became the only state in the entire country attempting to anticipate the complex ways in which climate-driven migration could fundamentally transform life for both its existing residents and the newcomers who may arrive in the future. The groundbreaking law established a dedicated task force to investigate how domestic and international climate migration patterns could test Illinois’ infrastructure, public resources, and local residents. 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, it could easily become a vital blueprint for how other states across the nation make room for vulnerable migrants.
However, only a year after introducing this visionary effort, state officials have largely abandoned it.
Lawmakers have quietly pushed back crucial reporting deadlines and have yet to formally convene the task force, even though the first major report is already due this coming December.
Governor Pritzker, the state’s top legislative leaders, and the heads of several Illinois state agencies were legally supposed to appoint members to the oversight board no later than 90 days after the legislation went into effect. Yet, for over a year, only a single appointment was made to fill the 17-seat task force.
When reporters from WBEZ and Grist reached out to the state officials directly responsible for appointing the board—including Governor Pritzker, four key members of the Illinois General Assembly, and the directors of seven distinct state agencies—the response was overwhelmingly absent. Besides the governor’s office, only Illinois Senate President Don Harmon responded by appointing state Senator Graciela Guzman, who represents Chicago, to the task force after being contacted for press 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 formal statement 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 failed to provide any concrete estimate for when a functioning timeline would finally be available.
“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 just last week, addressing the bureaucratic 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 underlying legislation clearly outlines what the mandated reports should address, but crucially, it does not include legal penalties or consequences for failing to meet the statutory deadlines. The first report, due at the very end of the year, requires the task force to compile the latest empirical 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, due at the end of 2027, is supposed to assess how state agencies and existing social programs will need to evolve in response to 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 destructive wildfires tore through southern California, scorching tens of thousands of homes and buildings in 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, could be Illinois.
The temperate Midwestern state is an undisputed agricultural powerhouse, sitting adjacent to roughly 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater supply, remaining relatively safe from hurricanes and wildfires, and situated far enough inland that rising sea levels do not pose an immediate risk. A recent analysis conducted by AlphaGeo, a specialized climate-risk modeling firm, even ranked Chicago as the most climate-resilient big city on the planet, explicitly citing these natural geographical advantages alongside its robust urban infrastructure.
Given these favorable conditions, Chicago, the state of Illinois, and the broader Midwest have frequently been billed as “climate havens,” a popular marketing term for destinations perceived as insulated from extreme weather. But scientists and policy experts have pushed back vigorously on these claims for years, countering that no such place truly 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 on all life on Earth—including the Midwest, which has increasingly felt the heavy mark of climate disruption.
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 reached its absolute capacity. Furthermore, a record-breaking number of tornadoes, bouts of extreme heat, and dense 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 is a true climate haven or not, she maintains that the law represents a vital opportunity for the state to thoroughly understand its natural and economic resources and plan proactively for a potential influx of new residents, which could involve building much-needed affordable housing or establishing new job training programs. But before any of those substantive measures can happen, the state desperately needs a functional roadmap.
Illinois is currently the only state with an explicit legislative mandate to prepare for population shifts driven directly by climate change. However, other states have slowly begun enacting or at least considering various forms of climate-related relocation. Maine has successfully incorporated climate migration into its broader statewide resilience planning efforts. Meanwhile, lawmakers in California, Hawaii, and New Jersey have introduced legislation to begin planning for the protection of vulnerable coastal communities and to orchestrate buyouts for some of the most at-risk properties in the path of rising seas.
Earlier this year, Alaska lawmakers passed a law pledging direct financial and logistical assistance to help the low-lying, indigenous coastal communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok relocate in the devastating, chaotic aftermath of Typhoon Halong.
Within the Midwest itself, the city of Cincinnati is also actively preparing for newcomers seeking climate refuge. Earlier this year, city officials circulated a comprehensive blueprint designed to accommodate upwards of 500,000 new residents by the year 2050. Notably, the 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 increasing the availability of affordable housing and investing heavily in public transportation—an approach remarkably similar to Illinois’ stalled proposal.
Despite these scattered efforts elsewhere, Illinois still has an exceptionally long road ahead of it, according to Byran 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 overarching 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 no formal legal recognition under international law. Most modern-day legal protections for refugees are still strictly based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, which explicitly restricted the definition to individuals fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Modeling climate change and human migration independently is already a complex scientific undertaking without even trying to account for the two interacting forces together. Migration on its own is an intricate phenomenon driven by a wide array of factors ranging from economic prospects and family ties to gender dynamics and endemic poverty, making it notoriously difficult to project even before adding the systemic pressures of climate change.
However, Jones emphasized that Illinois officials can build upon existing academic research by identifying what makes Illinois distinct—such as its vast agricultural sector and major metropolitan economic hub—and modeling how those factors could realistically influence future migration patterns. The work, he acknowledged, will be time-consuming and difficult, but climate change is already actively altering migration patterns, and the best way to limit social and economic disruptions is to plan for them ahead of time.
“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.