Who Moves, Who Stays, Who Decides: A Conversation with Climate-Displaced Leaders

People have always moved in response to environmental change. What is new is the scale, the speed, and the profound injustice of who bears the burden. Communities that contributed least to the climate crisis face the starkest choices about whether to stay, adapt, or leave, often without legal pathways, resources, or recognition. This session, co-hosted by Climate Refugees and Beyond Climate Collaborative, reframes climate mobility as a justice issue rather than a security threat or humanitarian afterthought. It centers the voices of those most affected: a panel featuring leaders and individuals with lived experience of climate displacement, joining in person and remotely, in conversation with a New York audience. Moderated by Amali Tower, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Refugees, the panel features Guerline Jozef, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance; Daniella Davi, Senior Advisor in the NYC Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice; and Dr. Isatis Marie Cintrón-Rodríguez, climate scientist at Columbia University. Panelists will speak to the realities of displacement and the fight for recognition, alongside where legal protections for climate migrants stand today, where courts and policymakers are beginning to move, and what a rights-based framework for climate mobility would actually require. The conversation will also confront immobility: the millions who assert their right to remain or lack the means to move at all, and whose claims to justice are too often invisible in migration discussions. This is an intimate in-person gathering, limited to 35 attendees, held inside Re.tangle: Climate Disrupt, a month-long exhibition at Field Projects Gallery in Chelsea. The show is built around a sonic loom, an ecofeminist social architecture designed to hold collective work on climate migration and environmental justice. Art reaches registers that legal and policy language cannot, and the installation transforms weaving, touch, and collective movement into sound, asking visitors to encounter displacement as something heard and felt rather than counted. Our aim is that, by situating a conversation about legal recognition within that work, we keep the people at the center of it in view. Rather than a standard panel, the session pairs this discussion with structured audience engagement, inviting attendees from law, policy, philanthropy, and advocacy to identify concrete openings for collaboration. Participants will leave with a clearer map of the legal and policy landscape, pathways to plug into ongoing work, and time to experience the installation itself. Please note: this session takes place within an active art installation, so capacity is limited to 35 people, with 10 seats available. Remaining attendees will be standing. Following the panel, all attendees are invited to stay, interact with the sonic loom, and experience the exhibition. This event has reached capacity. Signing up here adds you to the waitlist, and we will reach out directly if a spot opens. In the meantime, the artists are holding the exhibition opening the evening before at 6pm at Field Projects Gallery, and all are warmly encouraged to attend: https://www.retangle.net/about/retangle-no-3