Climate Adaptation

As the traditional stewards of the lands and waters of the Interior, Alaska Natives should be regarded as essential partners in the subsistence resource management decisions that directly impact their livelihoods and continued survival as a people. Unfortunately, neither Alaska Natives nor their unrivaled knowledge of the land are prioritized by state and federal management of fish and wildlife resources.

Climate Adaptation

Alaska Natives, like other Indigenous peoples, are uniquely vulnerable to the urgent challenge of climate change. Despite contributing little to greenhouse gas emissions, Indigenous peoples globally are suffering disproportionately from the consequences of climate change.48 The International Labor Organization has identified a combination of six characteristics shared by Indigenous peoples that places them in an extreme position of vulnerability to climate change, including their dependence upon and close relationships with their environments.49 In all regions of the world, Indigenous livelihoods and well-being are connected to natural resources that are at risk to environmental changes brought on by climate change, such as warming average temperatures and volatile precipitation patterns. As the climate continues to change, Indigenous ways of living off the land will become increasingly difficult to maintain, and traditional food sources could disappear entirely.

The threats to Indigenous subsistence traditions are particularly salient in Alaska, where climate change has become a fact of daily life for most

http://allianceforajustsociety.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/Survival-Denied2.pdf. 48 “Climate Change.” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2021. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/ climate-change.html. 49 International Labour Office. Indigenous peoples and climate change: From victims to change agents through decent work, 2017. http//www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/--gender/documents/publication/wcms_551189.pdf. 50 “New report highlights Alaska’s last five years of dramatic climate change.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2019. https://www.climate.gov/newsfeatures/understanding-climate/new-report-highlightsalaska%E2%80%99s-last-five-years-dramaticAlaska Natives. Alaska is warming faster than any other state in the country and twice as quickly as the global average.50 Alaska’s rapidly warming climate is causing a host of corresponding environmental changes, including accelerated rates of permafrost thaw, loss of coastal ice, glacial recession, coastal erosion, sea level rise, earlier spring snowmelt, more intense wildfires, and changing precipitation patterns.51 These changes impact all Alaskans, but the cumulative effects of climate change are particularly disruptive for Alaska Natives in the Interior who hunt, fish, and gather wild foods from the lands.

In a 2018 report titled “Living off the land: Environmental impacts to access in Interior Alaska,” researchers from the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks assembled more than 700 observations from 9 Interior Alaska communities documenting how climate change is impacting local hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering in the regions.52 Observers describe how thin ice, late freeze-up, and early-thaw conditions make trapping and hunting during winter more dangerous. More variable snow accumulation, early snowmelt, and rain during winter can complicate travel by snowmachine and dogsled to/from subsistence locations. Observers also report more sinkholes and flooding on trails, as well as increasing bank erosion along navigable rivers, which can damage or cut off travel routes to historic fishing sites and berry picking grounds. Facing these and other changes, Alaska Natives have been forced to adjust their subsistence activities and adapt to different conditions that often make it harder to access valuable subsistence resources.

climate#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Fourth%20Nat ional,of%20the%2020th%20century.&text=Without%20clim ate%20change%2C%20no%20more,in%20the%20past%20fi ve%20years 51 “Climate Change Impacts in the United States Chapter 22: Alaska.” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014. https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/downloads/low/NCA3_ Full_Report_22_Alaska_LowRes.pdf. 52 Cold, Helen S., Todd J. Brinkman, Caroline L. Brown, Krista M. Heeringa, Teresa, N. Hollingsworth, David L. Verbyla, and Dana R.N. Brown. Living off the Land: Environmental impacts to access in Interior Alaska, 2018. http://mapventure.org/environmental-impactsaccess/index.html.