This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Coastal tribal communities in the Lower 48 live on the frontlines of climate adaptation, with some facing the daunting challenge of relocating altogether to safer inland places as sea levels rise. Between November 2022 and August 2023, a researcher from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) and one from the University of Washington conducted listening sessions with tribal leaders, citizens and employees from 13 Northwest coastal tribes, posing questions about the status of climate adaptation plans and the greatest obstacles the tribes are facing.
The listening sessions resulted in a report called Climate Adaptation Barriers and Needs Experienced by Northwest Coastal Tribes, which was released this month. The report paints a picture of tribal governments that are perfectly capable and entirely ready to do more for climate adaptation—if they weren’t drowning in all the grant paperwork necessary to make it happen. And funding doesn’t always match tribal needs. “There’s a lot of funding for plans, not a lot of funding for infrastructure, ever,” reads a quote from one participant.
Included in the report, which involved other partners and funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is an addendum calling for Northwest coastal tribes who missed out on the listening sessions to contribute their own comments to further this research.
High Country News spoke with project co-leads Amelia Marchand (Colville), senior tribal climate resilience liaison for ATNI, and Meade Krosby, senior scientist at UW’s climate impacts group, to learn more about their findings.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The report gives a window into how challenging it is to run a tribe in general: Without long-term funding, you can’t make long-term plans. You can only plan projects for the next year, or whatever length of time you know you can staff. But how does it apply specifically to something like climate adaptation?
Meade Krosby: Nothing in this report would be surprising to folks who work in tribal government. None of these are really new problems. What’s perhaps new is this additional challenge of accelerating climate impacts—and the urgency that requires—and how this is presenting barriers to them getting done what needs to get done pretty quickly to reduce risks to tribal communities.
Amelia Marchand: Tribal governments are oftentimes understaffed. That was a theme that did come through, and it’s one of the key findings. And a lot of times those responsibilities for climate planning or climate adaptation, or looking at climate vulnerabilities, are just an additional duty that people have that’s added on to their job description. That’s very challenging in and of itself. And so there’s a lot of different novel approaches that tribes have taken to try to piece together all of their needs. It’s—just as Meade said—because this climate crisis is accelerating every year, temperatures are getting worse. Drought conditions worsen, ocean acidification increases. All of these things are compounding at once.
Would you say that the urgency of the moment is part of the impetus for conducting the study?
MK: Yeah, absolutely. We didn’t want to just assume what the tribes needed or how we could be useful. We wanted to actually ask them, “How is this playing out for you? How is adaptation going?” to figure out where we might be useful where the levers are. It’s also timely, especially because—not just the urgency of seeing climate change right now—but also this really unprecedented state and federal investment in climate action. There’s suddenly so much money moving in Washington state: With the Climate Commitment Act that’s opened up millions of dollars that have been directed to tribal governments, and, at the federal level, with the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, there’s now funds that are becoming available. But how are they being directed? Is that working at this moment? We heard so much about how that model is not working. There are so many barriers to tribes to accessing the money that’s intended for them.
Some tribes on the coast are having to consider relocating as an act of climate adaptation. What’s happening on the ground? Do they have viable paths forward with community relocation?
AM: It’s still very case-by-case, and some of that really comes down to who their neighbors are. They don’t just have to move inland, but they have to move upland, at Shoalwater Bay. The challenge to do that is really rough, because of all the infrastructure that needs to get to the new location. Through the support of their tribal leadership, (they’ve been) going through the community education process of what needs to be done, and then starting to educate, literally educate, the federal government and state government entities about how this endeavor looks. It’s not gonna happen overnight. They’ve been planning this for a very long time, and elements are finally starting to come into place. Relocation as an adaptation measure comes down to survival. Sometimes it is the only choice.
“There’s so many lessons there” for communities that “are going to have to face these same issues in the coming years, and the tribes are doing it first.”
MK: Planning is pretty cheap. Implementation is really expensive. And so what is really extraordinary when you go out to the coast is to see that this is actually happening. That’s a huge sacrifice to have to make. There’s so many lessons there for other kinds of communities who are going to have to face these same issues in the coming years, and the tribes are doing it first. They’re really leading the way. They’ve been leading the way on climate mitigation and adaptation for so many years, but they’re doing it. Supporting that work and learning from that work is going to be really important for everybody in years to come.
AM: There’s so much that other government agencies can learn from this type of coordinated effort.
It’s striking that biologists are having to spend their days working as grant writers instead of biologists. What do your findings tell us about that?
AM: It’s important that people know how common that is. I would say that’s almost a cross-country/Indian Country issue. Passionate, dedicated, experienced staff members oftentimes want to retain their jobs. It is their responsibility to go find the funding to do it. The tribe itself may not be able to fund all the positions that they want to do all the jobs that they want. So it comes to grants and contracts with federal, state, nonprofit, and academic institutions, which makes it even more challenging because sometimes the priorities of those different outside funders are either in conflict [with] or completely disregard tribal priorities. It’s not just that biologists and other types of specialty staff are trying to fund their positions and the work that they’re doing, but they’re also trying to navigate ways to meet the needs and goals and priorities of their tribes.
That can totally change the scope of their work, and it takes away tribal agency, doesn’t it?
AM: Yes, it does.
MK: That came up a lot, this whole external funding model, especially around the different priorities of federal agencies and how narrowly [defined] some of these funding pots are. It just totally undermines self-determination.
Who has the power to dismantle these obstacles, and whose responsibility is it?
AM: By and large, it’s the responsibility of the federal government, which created these conditions in the first place. The bare minimum place to start is by saying, “Okay, this is actually what you, the federal government and all of your federal family are responsible for doing, and here’s how you’ve been derelict in your duties. Now, can you please step up to the plate and help us correct these issues?”
MK: There was another really great report that came out in February on the unmet needs of Alaska Native communities that are facing environmental threats. We tried not to make recommendations, because we didn’t want to speak for the tribes. But we did note that both that report and listening session participants noted the need for a coordinated federal government response—essentially so that the federal government is coordinating itself instead of the tribes having to navigate coordination with the federal government. The very next thing that our project is doing is partnering with legal scholars and policy experts to look at possible solutions.
AM: It’s important that people understand we’re not done with the project yet. This is just one outcome of the project thus far, and there’s still more to come.
