A US Tribes Uphill Battle Against Climate Change
Pacific Beach, United States
Photography by Stephanie Keith. Reporting by Valerie Volcovici.
Updated today
For several years, Fawn Sharp (pictured below) has seen her tribe on the coastline of Washington state lurch from crisis to crisis: rising sea levels have flooded the Quinault Indian Nation’s main village, and its staple sockeye salmon in nearby rivers have all but disappeared – a direct hit to the tribe’s finances and culture.
Now Sharp, the 49-year-old president of the Quinault, plans to move the tribe to higher ground, restore the fishery, and diversify its economy – projects that are foundering, she says, because of a lack of federal money to help Native Americans adapt to climate change.
The Quinault’s struggles reflect the broader challenges of Native Americans, who are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because their tribes are tied to reservation land and rely on natural resources for subsistence and trade, according to the National Climate Assessment report written by federal agencies.
Southwestern tribes such as the Navajo Nation face acute water shortages as the Colorado River dries up. Northern tribes including the Bar River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are losing access to wild rice and walleye due to warming in Lake Superior, which has heated faster than any other U.S. body of water.
PHOTO EDITING MARIKA KOCHIASHVILI; TEXT EDITING RICHARD VALDMANIS AND BRIAN THEVENOT; LAYOUT JULIA DALRYMPLE
https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/a-us-tribes-uphill-battle-against-climate-change