Our Work

The Alaska Climate Justice Program works with Alaska Native Tribal communities to support Tribal sovereignty and human rights protections as the climate crisis causes the places where members of these communities live and love, and where they and their ancestors have lived for thousands of years, to become increasingly devastated by flooding, erosion, and permafrost thaw.

Remote western Alaska Native Tribal communities are on the frontlines of climate change. The Arctic regions of Alaska are warming four times faster than the global average. Remote regions of western Alaska are being hit particularly hard as unprecedented warming causes permafrost thaw, accelerating erosion, more frequent and severe flooding, sea level rise, and decreasing sea ice. Usteq, a Yup’ik word meaning catastrophic ground collapse caused by a combination of permafrost thaw, flooding, and erosion, is occurring at increasing rates. These climate change impacts damage homes, public buildings, power lines, water and sewer lines, and other critical public and private infrastructure across western Alaska’s remote communities, and threaten the health and safety of residents.

Seasonal natural disasters are worsening in western Alaska.

Seasonal extreme weather events are also worsening in western Alaska. In the fall and winter, intense storms from the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea devastate communities across Alaska. Typhoon Merbok, which hit western Alaska in September 2022, was the most newsworthy example in recent years. This typhoon, which was fueled by unusually warm Pacific waters, brought winds of up to 75 mph, high waves, and storm surge of up to 10 feet above mean sea level. The typhoon was life-threatening and caused severe wind, flood, and erosion damage to properties in remote western Alaska Native communities.

In the spring, during thaw out, runoff from snowmelt floods the rivers.

The previously frozen rivers simultaneously begin to break up, filling and damming the rivers. As a result, water collects above the ice jam and floods surrounding areas above, or below, the dam. Climate change is increasing both the frequency and severity of these events, as rising temperatures cause earlier spring ice breakup, more dynamic ice movement, and more extreme weather events. For example, in June 2023, snowmelt and ice jams caused flooding so severe that a federal disaster declaration was issued for vast reaches of western Alaska, including areas along the Kuskokwim River, such as Akiak, Akiachak, and Kwethluk.

The ice jams and flooding can also trigger extreme spring erosion events as the chunks of ice and flood waters encounter unstable riverbanks caused by permafrost thaw. Akiak has experienced repeated extreme erosion events in recent years. In the spring of 2019, Akiak lost 75-100 feet of riverbank along a one-mile stretch of the river in a single day. In 2022, the village lost 20-50 feet of riverbank along a 300-foot stretch of the river in a matter of hours.

Even in the summer, remote western Alaska villages are impacted by extreme weather events. Villages near the ocean are regularly inundated by flood waters during non-storm high water events. When these high-water events coincide with a storm, the results can be devastating. For example, an August 2024 storm caused severe flooding in the villages of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk, with flood levels that exceeded those caused by Typhoon Merbok. This severe flooding and the resulting damages prompted the Tribes in both of these villages to make a direct request to the U.S. President for a federal disaster declaration. Those requests were granted in January 2025, when the U.S. President issued major disaster declarations for both Kwigillingok and Kipnuk.

THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ARE CREATING A GROWING HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS.

The vast majority of residents in remote western Alaska villages are Alaska Native and practice a subsistence lifestyle both for food security, as store bought options are limited and expensive, and for cultural, social, and economic wellbeing, in continuation of their traditional ways of life. They contribute negligible amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and yet, they are experiencing the most extreme impacts of the climate crisis as their homes, public buildings, and other critical public and private infrastructure sink into the ground, collapse, fall into the river or ocean, and become inundated by flood waters. The result is a growing human rights crisis to which the federal government has failed to adequately respond.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS A TRUST RESPONSIBILiTY.

The federal government has a trust responsibility to protect the unique rights and well-being of Tribes and their members, while respecting Tribal sovereignty.

This trust responsibility includes the obligation to uphold the protection of Tribal lands, assets, and resources. In the context of climate change, the federal trust responsibility requires that the federal government take action to ensure that Tribes have access to the federal technical and financial resources they need to adapt to the impacts of climate change, protect the health and safety of Tribal community members, and protect Tribal and community infrastructure. The federal government has not been fulfilling this responsibility.

Historic and
ongoing barriers

Historic and ongoing barriers including the complexities of engaging with multiple federal agencies, cost-share requirements, benefit-cost analysis, complex application processes, competition for program access, and lack of language access – have prevented Alaska Native Tribes from accessing the technical and financial resources they need to adapt to the changing climate and protect the health and safety of community members and critical infrastructure.

The Alaska Climate Justice Program, housed within the Alaska Institute for Justice, seeks to advance climate justice by eliminating the barriers preventing equitable access by Alaska Native Tribes to the federal resources needed to adapt and become resilient to the impacts of climate change. We do so through a two-pronged approach. First, we work at the international and national policy level. We advocate for human rights protections and policy changes that will eliminate historic and ongoing barriers and increase Alaska Native Tribes’ access to federal technical and financial resources.

Second, we work on the ground and in partnership with Tribes. We believe that in order to identify and understand the barriers preventing Tribes from accessing federal resources, and the policy issues that need to be resolved in order to eliminate those barriers, we must work closely with the Tribes. To do this, we are currently working in partnership with ten Tribes across western Alaska - one in Norton Sound (Chinik Eskimo Community), eight in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (Akiachak, Akiak, Chevak, Kipnuk, Kwigillingok, Kwinhagak, Kwethluk, and Nunapitchuk), and one on the Alaska Peninsula (Nelson Lagoon).

We provide a range of services to these communities to aid in climate adaptation.

Partner Communities

Community Services

We provide a range of services to these Tribes and their communities to aid in climate adaptation, including the following:

Navigating the processes involved in climate adaptation and disaster recovery is complicated. The Alaska Climate Justice Program works closely with our Tribal partners to increase Tribal capacity to navigate these complex processes. We facilitate connections and ongoing communications between Tribes and federal and state government agencies with the technical and financial resources needed for climate adaptation, including FEMA, BIA, EPA, and NRCS. We facilitate meetings and collaborations among our Tribal partners for sharing of knowledge, experiences, and expertise. We provide support for Indigenous-led data collection to allow the Tribes to track the climate change impacts in their communities. We seek to ensure our Tribal partners have the tools and resources they need to adapt and keep their communities safe as they tackle the problems brought on by the climate crisis.
The Alaska Climate Justice Program coordinates regular workshops in collaboration with our partner Tribes to bring together the Tribes, federal and state agencies, and non-governmental organizations. These workshops function to share resources and information to deepen agencies' understanding of the serious climactic events impacting western Alaska, and to provide agencies an opportunity to share resources that might be helpful to our Tribal partners. In 2023, we held our most recent climate adaptation workshop that brought together 53 representatives from 21 different federal and state government agencies and consortium, along with 57 members of our 10 partner Tribal communities. During this event, the Tribal members shared with agency representatives their communities’ experiences and the barriers they face in obtaining resources. The workshop created stronger relationships between the Tribes and federal and state agencies, increased Tribal access to federal and state government resources, and improved the federal and state agencies’ processes, practices, and policies.
Policy advocacy is critical to overcoming the barriers preventing Alaska Native Tribes from accessing the financial and technical resources they need to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. By closely working with our Tribal partners, we are able to identify the barriers limiting Tribal access to critically needed resources. These barriers include the lack of translated materials, cost-share requirements, benefit-cost analysis, complex application processes, competition for program access, and the lack of interagency collaboration and centralized climate adaptation planning.
To facilitate Tribes’ abilities to overcome these barriers and access needed resources, the Alaska Climate Justice Program and our Tribal partners advocate with federal agencies to:
1. Develop parameters to determine when usteq damage meets the threshold of a natural catastrophe and merits an emergency or major disaster declaration;
2. Integrate Indigenous knowledge into community-based environmental monitoring to develop realistic models assessing current and future threats;
3. Establish a plan to provide Alaska Native language interpretation and translation services;
4. Integrate culturally and geographically appropriate criteria into federal programs to ensure Alaska Native communities have equitable access to funding for disaster relief, including funding for infrastructure damage to homes, subsistence gear, and fish camps;
5. Revise Benefit-Cost Analyses to account for non-economic benefits and costs in remote Alaska Native villages and standardize benefits and costs for community-wide relocation;
6. Remove non-federal cost share requirements for federal grant programs to increase eligibility;
7. Launch a community-driven relocation pilot project with the Native Villages of Nunapitchuk and Kwigillingok to protect community residents and create a framework for other community relocations.
8. Establish effective federal interagency collaboration.
More info coming soon.