Stronger, Together: Expanding Climate Adaptation Technical Assistance for Frontline Alaska Native Communities

Recipient: Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium
Funding Amount: $74,950,045

Summary

Alaska is an underserved state on the front lines of climate change–related impacts that are altering the Arctic landscape and affecting every aspect of life in remote Alaska Native communities. The most effective way to increase preparedness and reduce exposure to negative impacts is to increase the region’s capacity to understand risk and develop and implement solutions.

This project envisions transforming Alaska Tribal climate adaptation activities from a state of very limited capacity to a thriving network of practitioners making rapid progress toward addressing extremely complex, long-term problems such as community relocation, behavioral health, and food sovereignty. The inspiration for this vision, and the foundation for achieving it, is based on the strength and resiliency of Alaska Native cultures. The project will serve nearly 100 Alaska Native communities and focus on three major adaptation actions: 1) establishing a community climate risk assessment program; 2) expanding statewide tribal adaptation technical assistance; and 3) networking and knowledge sharing.

Details

Establishing a Community Climate Risk Assessment Program
Lack of community-specific hazard data collection and analysis is a major barrier to adaptation activities in remote Alaska communities. This project will create a voluntary data and risk assessment program to help inform Alaska Native community decisions about protection-in-place, managed retreat, and relocation. The program will provide the best available science and engineering to communities, offer multidisciplinary technical expertise, develop and revise risk assessment standards, and institute community-specific, long-term resilience and cultural protection monitoring programs.

Expanding Statewide Tribal Adaptation Technical Assistance
This adaptation action will support approximately 49 new and existing full-time staff to provide direct technical assistance related to engineering, economics, planning, project management, contracting, surveying, geospatial analysis, construction, grant writing, and grant management.

Networking and Knowledge Sharing
To build and advance the community of Alaska Tribal climate adaptation practitioners, this project will support the development of new networking and knowledge sharing activities to enable participants to learn from community experiences, share lessons learned, break down silos, and resolve other divisions to address resilience challenges holistically. Efforts will include community and regional site visits, workshops, communications, and expanding the capacity of the Alaska Tribal Conference on Environmental Management (ATCEM) to focus on climate adaptation.

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For more information on the grant program funding this project, please visit the Inflation Reduction Act webpage. For more information on the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, visit the Office for Coastal Management’s resilience challenge webpage.