The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are forging a new relationship to address environmental threats to Alaska's most rural and vulnerable communities.
At a press conference in Anchorage on Oct. 16, the two organizations announced $74.9 million in federal grant funding – the single largest climate change-related grant to Alaska ever.
ANTHC Interim CEO Natasha Singh said that climate change impacts in Alaska Native villages are a public health emergency.
“Food security, housing security, infrastructure maintenance and construction and all facets are all affected by changing climate,” Singh said.
Singh said that a one-time infusion of funding through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is a meaningful acknowledgment of what Alaska’s tribes are experiencing on the ground in hundreds of rural communities.
“We have no choice but to look at these issues in a holistic manner,” Singh said. “And now tribes will lead the state on climate issues in the way it should be led, with local Indigenous knowledge at the forefront of how we interact, partner, and strategize in addressing these health challenges.”
The money is meant to help improve how tribes manage and respond to a myriad of challenges like permafrost degradation, severe coastal erosion, and high rates of flooding – climate change-driven natural disasters that are forcing many communities to consider full relocations.
“One of the things that we are hoping to do is develop risk assessments that are community based,” said Jainey K. Bavishi, NOAA’s Deputy Administrator. “[...] and the hiring of people in positions that actually specialize in this work […] will help to boost capacity in this region.”
According to an ANTHC spokesperson, the money is supposed to add at least 20 employees to ANTHC’s staff and will create more than 60 positions within tribal communities statewide to focus on local climate issues.
Jackie Cataliña Schaeffer directs ANTHC’s Climate Initiatives Program. Back in January, her team released a scathing report detailing the inability of federal agencies to adequately address the havoc a changing climate wreaks on some of Alaska's most vulnerable and rural communities. She called NOAA’s investment “transformational.”
“The work we are doing is unique because we are taking a very traditional lens and also taking a very public health lens,” Schaeffer said. She said that the funding will provide individual communities with increased “access to tools and resources, as well as technical assistance so that they can make informed decisions when it comes […] to climate impacts.”
ANTHC applied for the money through NOAA’s Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, a competitive federal program that will provide more than half a billion dollars to address climate impacts in communities nationwide.
