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Storms hitting Alaska’s west coast this fall have drawn renewed attention to low-lying areas indigenous Villages are becoming increasingly vulnerable due to climate change – and questions have reemerged about their sustainability in a region prone to frequent floods, melting permafrost and erosion that is destroying the landscape.
The onset of winter has slowed emergency repair and cleanup work since two October storms, including the remnants of Typhoon Halong, hit dozens of communities. Some residents of the most affected villages, Kipnuk and Quigilingok, may be displaced for months and worried about what their future will hold.
Quigilingoc was already attempting relocation before the latest storm, but it could take decades, with no centralized coordination and little funding. walks by trump The administration’s cuts to funding aimed at better protecting communities against climate threats have added another layer of uncertainty.
Still, the hope is to give villages time to evaluate next steps by strengthening retrofitted infrastructure or putting pilings in place so homes can be elevated, said state emergency management director Brian Fisher.
“Where we can support increased flexibility to buy at that time, we’re going to do that,” he said.
Many Alaska Native villages threatened by climate change
Alaska is warming faster than the global average. A report released last year by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium found that 144 Native communities face threats from erosion, flooding, permafrost melting or a combination thereof.
Climate scientists say coastal populations are particularly vulnerable John Walsh Said. Less Arctic sea ice means more open water, allowing storm-driven waves to cause damage. Melting of permafrost invites more rapid coastal erosion. Waves hitting the permafrost bounce off a concrete wall like water, but when the permafrost melts, the loose soil flows away more easily, he said.
Wind and storm surge from the remains of Halong destroyed dozens of feet of shoreline at Quinhac, disrupting the culturally significant archaeological site. Quinhagak, like Kipnuk and Quigilingok, is near the Bering Sea.
Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, said pre-storm hurricanes have struck the Bering Sea coast north of the Pribilof Islands only four times since the 1970s. Three Among them are from 2022, starting with the remains of Merbok that year.
Fischer said the damage caused by pre-typhoon Halong was the worst he had seen in his nearly 30 years in emergency management. An estimated 700 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged. Some were swept away along with the people inside and swept for miles. Kipnuk and Quigilingok – no strangers to flooding and home to about 1,100 people – were devastated. One person died, and two are missing.
Options are limited and expensive
At-risk communities can reinforce existing infrastructure or strengthen shorelines; moving infrastructure to higher ground in an area known as managed retreat; Or move completely. According to the Health Consortium report, the $4.3 billion needed over 50 years to protect infrastructure in Indigenous communities from climate threats is significant, although this estimate extends to 2020. The report found that a lack of resources and coordination has hindered progress.
The report said that simply announcing plans to relocate could make a community ineligible for funding for new infrastructure at its existing site, and government policies could limit investment at the new site if people are not yet living there.
It took decades and an estimated $160 million for about 300 residents of Newtok in western Alaska to move 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) to their new village of Mertarvik. Newtok was one of the first Alaska Native communities to completely relocate, but others are considering or following suit. In Washington and Louisiana, climate change has been a driving force behind resettlement efforts by some tribes.
But in many villages, including Kipnuk and Quigilingok, “there’s not that kind of time,” said Sheryl Musgrove, director of the Alaska Climate Justice Program at the Alaska Institute for Justice. The two are among 10 tribal communities his group is working with as they make climate-adaptation decisions.
Kipnuk was planning evacuation strategies in place before the last storm, but hasn’t decided what to do now, he said.
Musgrove hopes that after this, there will be changes at the federal level to help communities in crisis. For example, there is no federal agency tasked with coordinating transfers. That leaves smaller communities trying to navigate myriad agencies and programs, Musgrove said.
“I think I’m really hopeful that this can be the beginning of a change because I think there’s been too much attention paid to what happened here,” he said.
Federal support is in question
With money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs created a voluntary community-driven resettlement program in 2022 and pledged $115 million to resettlement efforts for 11 tribes, including $25 million each for the Newtok and Napaquick. In Napaquiaq, most of the infrastructure is expected to be destroyed by 2030, and the community is moving away from the banks of the Kuskokwim River.
That’s not enough to move a village, and opportunities for additional funding are scattered across other agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Continued federal support is uncertain as the Trump administration cuts programs related to climate change and disaster resilience. In May Trump proposed cutting $617 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ tribal self-governance and community programs, but did not specify which programs.
The Interior Department said in an email that the new grant funding is “under review as part of a broader effort to improve federal spending accountability,” but that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is “helping tribes lay the groundwork for future implementation once funding pathways are clear.”
Other federal money that could have helped Alaska villages has already been cut. Newtok and Quigilingoc did not receive Federal Emergency Management Agency awards for relocation-related projects before the administration froze billions of dollars in unpaid grants in April.
Trump has also stopped approving state and tribal requests for hazard mitigation funding, a typical add-on that accompanies federal support after major disasters.
Even the data that villages need to assess how climate change is affecting them is at risk. The Trump administration has removed climate change-related information from government websites and fired scientists in charge of the country’s Congress-mandated climate assessment reports.
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Aun Anguera reported from San Diego.