US President Joe Biden’s administration has announced they will help fund the move of three tribal communities facing urgent threats from climate change.
As part of the package, the three tribes, located along coastal areas and rivers in the states of Alaska and Washington, will receive $75m (£62m) divided equally between them. The money will fund the move of key buildings and residential homes to higher ground, away from rising waters.
Mr Biden made the funding announcement at the White House during the Interior Department’s Tribal Nations Summit. He said the tribes receiving funding are “at risk of being washed away.” and that the money will help “move, in some cases, their entire communities back to safer ground.”
Those receiving the funding are Newtok Village and the Native Village of Napakiak in southwest Alaska, and the Quinault Indian Nation, located on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula.
All three of the communities have either suffered land erosion or are at a growing risk of flooding.
The Quinault nation said it will use the money to build a community centre, which will also serve as an emergency evacuation centre in case of natural disasters. The funds will help cover a quarter of the overall relocation project, they said.
In a press release, US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said: “Indigenous communities are facing unique and intensifying climate-related challenges that pose an existential threat to Tribal economies, infrastructure, lives and livelihoods.”
Eight more tribes will also receive at least $5m each to plan for relocation. In total, the US Interior Department will spend $135m to relocate the communities, which also include some communities in the states of Maine, Louisiana and Arizona.
The financial support is a move by the US government to help communities adapt to climate change by allowing them to relocate to safer ground, rather than paying for rebuilding efforts in case of damage suffered by climate change.
A similar relocation fund of $48m – the first of its kind in the US – was given out by the Obama administration in 2016 to the coastal village of Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, which lost the majority of its land to the Gulf of Mexico. Residents, however, only began the relocation process this year after some disagreement on where they should move.
Helping populations recover and move away from areas affected by climate change was a hot topic at COP27. A new funding arrangement on loss and damage was agreed upon for countries most affected by climate change, which was hailed as a historic moment. It is considered the most important climate advance since the Paris Agreement at COP 2015.
