Interior Department will give tribal nations $120 million to fight climate-related threats

The Biden administration will be allocating more than $120 million to tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate change, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. Indigenous peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by severe climate-related environmental threats, which have already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner of the U.S. “As these communities face the increasing threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events, our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience, addressing this reality with the urgency it demands, and ensuring that tribal leaders have the resources to prepare and keep their people safe is a cornerstone of this administration,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, said in a Wednesday press briefing. “By providing these resources for tribes to plan and implement climate risk, implement climate resilience programs in their own communities, we can better meet the needs of each community and support them in incorporating Indigenous knowledge when addressing climate change,” she said. The funding is the largest annual amount awarded through the Tribal Climate Resilience Annual Awards Program, which was established in 2011 to help tribes and tribal organizations respond to climate change. In 2022, the administration committed $135 million to 11 tribal nations to relocate infrastructure facing climate threats like wildfires, coastal erosion and extreme weather.