Three Indigenous American tribes to get funding to manage ocean and coasts [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Sat 6 Apr 2024 10.00 EDT
This month, three Indigenous American tribes on the west and east coasts will collectively receive nearly $755,000 in federal funding to manage ocean and coastal problems, as well as engage in partnerships to offset the effects of climate crisis in their regions. The tribes’ projects will blend together Indigenous knowledge and scientific data to build innovative strategies around coastal resilience.
On Monday, the federal agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the US Department of Commerce announced that the Makah Tribe in Washington, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians in California and the Penobscot Nation in Maine will be individually awarded between $200,000 and $290,000 for their two-year projects. The funding comes from the Biden administration’s bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which provided Noaa with nearly $3bn to facilitate environmental stewardship, build climate-resilient coasts and support infrastructure around weather forecasting from 2022 to 2026.
Amid warming waters and sea level rise, tribal engagement “is critical to be able to really benefit from that knowledge and round out our perspectives of how to act together in managing oceans and coasts”, Betsy Nicholson, the north regional director for Noaa’s office for coastal management, told the Guardian. “Tribes have a long history that we do not have in terms of having been through some of these changes before, so it’s an incredibly meaningful relationship. It takes funds to have the capacity to maintain that participation.”
Noaa has engaged with Indigenous communities on coastal and ocean management for many years. This funding will allow the tribes to hire staff, attend convenings with state and federal governments and to incorporate their traditional ecological knowledge into infrastructure planning on the coast and in oceans.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/06/indigenous-american-tribes-funding-manage-ocean-coasts
Link to Department of Commerce/NOAA PRESS RELEASE - Biden-Harris Administration invests nearly $755,000 to support tribal nations’ engagement in regional ocean partnerships as part of Investing in America agenda
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