SEATTLE– Pacific Northwest coastal tribes face some of the harshest effects of climate change – from rising seas to extreme heat – but face a series of bureaucratic barriers to accessing government funds designed to help them adapt, a report released on Monday concluded.
Tribes are leaders in combating climate change in their region, but when seeking money for specific projects that address its repercussions, such as relocating a village threatened by rising waters, they are often unable to provide the matching funds that many grants require. or necessary personnel or face stringent enforcement requirements, according to the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative report. If they do get funding, it is often a small amount that can only be used for very specific projects, when this work is typically much more holistic, the report concluded.
“Trying to do projects by putting together grants that have different requirements and conditions without staffing capacity is challenging,” Robert Knapp, environmental planning manager for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington, said in the report.
The collaboration, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spent two years holding listening sessions with 13 tribes along the Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Communities face significant challenges from flooding and coastal erosion, increasing stream temperatures, decreasing snowpack, severe heat events, and increased wildfire risk.
In addition to funding challenges, interviewees also described not having enough staff to adequately respond to climate change, as well as sometimes not being able to partner with state and local governments and universities on this work due to their remote locations. They also said it can be difficult to explain the impact climate change is having on people who don’t live in their communities.
But as they work to restore salmon habitats affected by warming waters or relocate their homes, funding gaps and complications have been top of mind.
A representative of an anonymous tribe in the report said it was unable to hire a grant writer and had to rely on its biology department to navigate the maze of funding applications. Another talked about relying on 15 separate financiers just to build a marina.
“This is a moment of historic state and federal investment in climate action, and tribal priorities really need to be considered when making decisions about how we direct that investment,” said Meade Krosby, senior author of the report. “We hope this helps inform how this work is being done, how these funds are being directed, so that they really respond to the barriers that tribes face and help remove some of those barriers so that tribes can do the good work. done.”
Most of the tribes included in the report had completed publicly available reports on the impacts of climate change, and some had developed detailed plans for relocation as rising waters threatened buildings, or even entire villages.
THE Quinault Indian Nationon Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, has a plan to relocate its largest village. The multimillion-dollar effort relied on a series of federal and state grants and the restrictions that come with them, Gary Morishima, natural resources technical consultant at Quinault, explained in the report.
Other tribes have raised concerns about competing with other tribal nations for funding when collaboration is such a vital part of the climate change response. Tribal lands share borders and coastlines, and the impacts of climate change on these lands do not stop at any border, the report noted.
Amelia Marchand, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and another author of the report, explained that it is up to the federal government to fulfill its trust responsibility to the tribes.
“The treaty must support, uplift and ensure that what tribes need to continue to exist is maintained,” she said. “And that’s one of the problems with not having this coordinated federal response because different federal agencies are doing different things.”
Millions of dollars have been allocated to coastal tribes and the report says much more is needed. The report referenced a 2020 Bureau of Indian Affairs report that estimated tribes in the lower 48 states would need $1.9 billion over the next half-century for climate change-related infrastructure needs. .
Amid all the challenges, Pacific Northwest tribes are still leaders in climate adaptation and have much to teach other communities, Marchand said.
“Finding ways to make progress happen for your nations and communities, despite these odds, is one of the most inspiring and hopeful stories of resilience,” she said.
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