Amelia Schafer
ICT
Tribes are at risk of losing $1.5 billion in climate-project funding previously promised to them through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 as a result of cuts made in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a new study has revealed.
A months-long research project from the Brookings Institution released Feb. 5 identified the potential loss of $1.5 billion in climate funding, warning this loss could risk compromising tribal energy infrastructure and risks an increase of resource-extraction reliance. The Brookings Institution is an independent, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The One Big Beautiful Act predominately targeted changes made in the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022. The Inflation Reduction Act previously authorized $433 billion in new spending for clean energy, community resilience, housing, infrastructure and economic development projects.
If fully implemented, the Inflation Reduction Act would have allocated $4.2 billion in federal investments to Indian Country. However, Brookings identified that only $2 billion in grants, direct payments and cooperative agreements has been dispersed to tribal governments, tribal colleges and universities, individuals living on tribal lands and Native enterprises at the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
Researchers said they did not identify names of tribes affected by this potential loss or specific projects in an effort to protect tribal data sovereignty.
The Trump administration has taken several actions to claw back climate funding and cancel outstanding climate-focused grants. One major fund entirely eradicated is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, one of the largest funding streams headed to Indian Country.
The Big Beautiful Bill has rescinded a total of $27 million in funding towards climate-focused projects nationwide.
This loss of funding means tribes who were expecting project payments or had already begun construction for previously authorized projects will no longer receive their grant monies. As a result, the government will violate several treaty and trust obligations to tribal nations, citizens and communities as existing funding is inadequate, researchers said. Several treaties protect the right for tribes to access natural resources, such as fisheries, and protect tribal lands from significant degradation, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Several projects involve tribal response to coastal erosion, researchers said. In many places of the United States such as the northwest, east coast and gulf coast, coastal erosion is destroying tribal lands to the point where some tribes have begun to acquire more land and move entirely.
“There will be fewer opportunities for that type of work moving forward,” said Robert Maxim, Mashpee Wamoanoag and a research fellow at Brookings. “For me, coming from a coastal tribe, that feels really personal in a lot of ways.”
Several projects where ground was already broken and construction had begun in anticipation of authorized funding will now have to halt. These projects will likely be stuck in limbo for the foreseeable future if tribal leaders can’t identify alternative funding, Maxim said.
As a result, tribes will continue to have to live with existing funding deficits that the Inflation Reduction Act had attempted to resolve, said Glencora Haskins, a research associate and applied research manager at Brookings.
“These problems compound over time, degrading infrastructure, lack of clean water, contaminated soil,” Haskins said. “Those things don’t just stay in place. They worsen and worse and worsen.”
Researchers identified the federal government has authorized approximately $2 billion in federal funding to Indian Country since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. If grants would have grown at the same, previous rate, tribes should have received $3.5 billion in funding.
“Instead, that remaining $1.5 billion is never going to reach Indian Country,” Maxim said.
The One Big Beautiful Act did protect access to several programs serving tribal nations, researchers said.
The vast majority of climate funding that tribes receive does not come from tribal-specific programming, Maxim said. Only 15 percent climate program funds used by tribes come from programs specifically targeted towards Indian Country. The majority of funding obtained by tribes previously came from programs like the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, not tribal specific funds.
“So I think it’s a really important thing to remember that, again, even though the tribal-specific programs were protected in this bill, that’s actually just a small portion of climate change
funding that tribes have received in recent years,” Maxim said.
Potential barriers to accessing SNAP and Medicaid
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added several new stipulations for obtaining Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid benefits. However, Alaska Natives, American Indians, urban Natives and California Native people are exempt from all new eligibility requirements, according to the National Council of Urban Indian Health.
While the exemptions give slight relief, Native people will face another barrier.
The bill requires states to use a process called ex-parte verification, or automatic verification. Through this process, states need to take every step possible to identify whether someone is exempt from work requirements without requiring that individual to submit additional paperwork, if possible.
But many state databases don’t include information like tribal enrollment, so the burden of proof is likely to fall on Indigenous people, Maxim said.
Tribal citizens and descendants with expired ID cards or paperwork may need to travel long distances to their tribal government offices to obtain new or renewed identification. Some tribal governments require these documents be obtained in person.
In some cases, obtaining documentation can also be costly aside from the actual cost of traveling to the tribal office.
“What we’re talking about here is a [potential] lapse in nutrition assistance or laps in health insurance for weeks or even months in some cases,” Maxim said. “When we’re talking about things like nutrition assistance or health insurance, a gap in coverage of several weeks or potentially more can be potentially devastating for people. I mean, if you don’t have adequate budgets for food, if you don’t have health insurance, if you have major medical issues, that can be a real problem.”
Exemption efforts don’t always come through either, Haskins said. Immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, states began disenrolling Medicaid recipients, many of whom were Native American.
“The data shows is Native people were disenrolled from Medicaid at a higher rate than any other group,” Haskins said. “So it’s very possible that you’re going to see similar trends with the impact of these work requirements where Native people, who are disproportionately enrolled in both SNAP and Medicaid, are likely to be affected in pretty significant ways, even though they are legally exempted from these new work requirements.”
Now that the study is published, researchers said they hope to get the attention of congressional members and plan to recommend steps that Congress and states can take.
“I think that there’s conversations that hopefully can happen on the state level as well with different state Medicaid and nutrition assistance offices,” Maxim said. “I think there’s a lot for tribes to do to continue to advocate for the protection of benefits that Native people are legally entitled to under our trusted treaty applications.”