Graham Lee Brewer
The Associated Press
The U.S. Department of the Interior is allocating more than $120 million to more than 100 tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate change, officials announced Thursday, March 14.
The funding — the largest ever awarded under the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Annual Awards Programs — is designed to help tribal nations with 146 projects to adapt to climate threats, including relocating infrastructure.
It will go to 102 tribes and nine tribal organizations, stretching from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to California, Florida and the northeastern United States.
Indigenous peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by severe climate-related environmental threats, which have already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner of the U.S.
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“As these communities face the increasing threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events, our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience, addressing this reality with the urgency it demands, and ensuring that tribal leaders have the resources to prepare and keep their people safe is a cornerstone of this administration,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, said in a Wednesday press briefing.
Indigenous peoples represent 5 percent of the world’s population, but they safeguard 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, according to Amnesty International.
In the U.S., federal and state governments are relying more on the traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples to minimize the ravages of climate change, and Haaland said ensuring that trend continues is critical to protecting the environment.
“By providing these resources for tribes to plan and implement climate risk, implement climate resilience programs in their own communities, we can better meet the needs of each community and support them in incorporating Indigenous knowledge when addressing climate change,” she said.
The department has adopted a policy on implementing Indigenous knowledge, said Assistant Secretary of the Interior Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.
“We are also investing in tribes’ ability to use their knowledge to solve these problems and address these challenges close to home,” he said.
The funding will come from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which draws from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and annual appropriations.
The funding is the largest annual amount awarded through the Tribal Climate Resilience Annual Awards Program, which was established in 2011 to help tribes and tribal organizations respond to climate change. It will go toward the planning and implementation projects for climate adaptation, community-led relocation, ocean management, and habitat restoration.
The injection of federal funding is part of Biden’s commitment to working with tribal nations, said Tom Perez, a senior adviser to the president. He said it underscores the administration’s recognition that in the past the U.S. has left too many communities behind.
“We will not allow that to happen in the future,” he said.
In 2022, the administration committed $135 million to 11 tribal nations to relocate infrastructure facing climate threats such as wildfires, coastal erosion and extreme weather. It could cost up to $5 billion over the next 50 years to address climate-related relocation needs in tribal communities, according to a 2020 Bureau of Indian Affairs study.
