In August 2020, National Public Radio’s Ted Talk broadcast an episode entitled “Our Relationship with Water” in which Colette Pichon Battle who is an attorney turned climate activist who grew up in Bayou Liberty just north of New Orleans.[1] She says she was thrown into her new role because rising sea levels, flooding and other climate factors are threatening the land that has been in her family for generations. Pichon-Battle says “’I work at the community level to make sure that black folks, poor folks and native folks are part of thia climate conversation’” including to communicate the policy and science of climate change to her neighbors and that the scientific community and policy makers listen to the traditional knowledge that the community can provide about the area.[2]
After Hurrican Katrina caused a tidal surge from the Gulf that swept her entire community into Lake Pontchartrain, she found that the surge was caused by sea level rise and the absence of barrier islands, now gone because of oil and gas drilling, which use to block such surges. Once she realized that hurricans like Katrina and likely worse are her to stay and in looking at flood maps of Lousiana she realized that her community along with other African American, Native American and impoverished communities would likely simply disappear before the end of the century. Quechon-Battle, notes that she was invited to the Whitehouse during the Obama administration to talk with the Federal Emergency Management Service, the agency primarily responsible for assisting communities with disaster and hazard mitigation preparedness in relation to flooding and other natural events, about how her community could obtain assistance to prepare for future flooding events. She says that during this conversation “the FEMA administrator said ‘I understand what your saying, but the FEMA regulations are’nt ment for the most vulnerable communities.’ The disaster assistance process for this country are ment for the middle class.” Despite the double take she made when she heard this statement she firmly believes that “This was an honest comment from FEMA. This is what you realize when you recognize that you recognize that the structures that are in place right now are absolutely not meant for me.”[3]
Arctic Native communities which have been experiencing increased permafrost melt, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, flooding and erosion that may make current residences and settlements uninhabitable in the near future, no all to well about competition for limited federal disaster and hazard mitigation funding to defend against the inevitable march of climate change. In addition to what communities like Quechon-Battle’s experienced when approaching FEMA for help, in many cases, agencies require cost-benefit analysis, plans, environmental analysis, or other measures above and beyond analysis or strategies contained in Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) or other plans before such communities qualify to apply for funds. Similarly, because standard arctic community HMPs do not contain a detailed cost-benefit analysis of natural hazards affecting water resources, such communities cannot obtain high rankings that larger cities can to qualify for competitive funding or other federal or state assistance needed to address such impacts. Finally, the villages cannot afford to hire consultants or even staff to conduct climate adaption planning on behalf of such communities to include more meaningful consideration of economic impacts and risks associated with coastal water resource management resiliency strategies, in order to move beyond the planning phase and into on the ground project implementation.
There is a need, therefore, to conduct economic risk-benefit and environmental analysis and otherwise close the gap between Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental funding and technical assistance programs such so that North Bering Sea communities can implement on-the-ground projects that will address the Villages’ climate-related coastal water resources management challenges.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899845219/our-relationship-with-water.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.