Pacific Northwest tribes affected by climate change but struggling to raise money to help them

SEATTLE– Coastal tribes in the Pacific Northwest are experiencing some of the most severe impacts of climate change — from rising sea levels to intense heat — but face a host of bureaucratic barriers to accessing government funding to help them adapt, according to a report released Monday.

Tribes are leaders in the fight against climate change in their region, but when they seek money for specific projects to address its impacts — such as relocating a village threatened by rising waters — they often can’t provide the matching funds that many grants require or the necessary staff or struggle with strict application requirements, according to the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative report. If they do get funding, it’s often a small amount that can only be used for very specific projects, when this work is often much more holistic, the report said.

“Trying to carry out projects by combining grants that have different requirements and conditions, without staffing capacity, is a challenge,” Robert Knapp, environmental planning manager for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington, said in the report.

The project, 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 such as coastal flooding and erosion, rising stream temperatures, declining snowpack, intense heat events and increased risk of wildfires.

In addition to funding challenges, respondents also described not having enough staff to adequately respond to climate change and sometimes being unable to collaborate with state and local governments and universities on this work due to their remote location. They also said it can be difficult to explain the impact climate change is having to people who do not live in their communities.

But as they work to restore salmon habitats affected by warming waters or relocate their homes, funding gaps and complications were key concerns.

One representative of an unnamed tribe featured in the report said he had been unable to hire a grant writer and had to rely on his biology department to navigate the maze of funding applications. Another spoke of relying on 15 different funders just to build a marina.

“This is a time of historic investment at the state and federal level in climate action, and tribal priorities really need to be considered when making decisions about how we’re going to direct this investment,” said Meade Krosby, lead author of the report. “We hope that this will help inform how this work is being done, how these funds are being targeted, so that they really respond to the barriers that tribes face and help remove some of those barriers so that tribes can do good work.”

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 threaten buildings or even entire villages.

The Quinault Indian Nation on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula has a plan to relocate its largest village. The multimillion-dollar effort has relied on a series of federal and state grants and the limitations they entail, Gary Morishima, Quinault’s natural resources technical adviser, said in the report.

Other tribes expressed concern about potentially competing with other tribal nations for funding when collaboration is such a vital part of the response to climate change. Tribal lands share borders and coastlines, and the impacts of climate change on those 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 all comes down to the federal government fulfilling its fiduciary responsibility to the tribes.

“The treaty is supposed to support, uplift and ensure that tribes maintain what they need to continue to exist,” he said. “And that’s one of the problems with not having a coordinated federal response because different federal agencies are doing different things.”

Millions of dollars have been earmarked for coastal tribes, and the report notes that much more is needed. The report references 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 to cover climate-related infrastructure needs.

Amid all the challenges, Pacific Northwest tribes remain leaders in climate adaptation and have much to teach other communities, Marchand said.

“Finding ways to make progress for their nations and communities a reality despite adversity is one of the most inspiring and hopeful stories of resilience,” she said.