House Hearing Highlights Multiple Barriers to Accessing Tribal Climate Funding | Article

Tribes face several challenges in applying to, accessing, and deploying federal climate resilience funds.
Tribal members and experts provided some solutions to this challenge during a House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis hearing:
- Improve access to technical assistance for funding applications.
- Remove bureaucratic barriers to accessing assistance.
- Improve interagency coordination on climate adaptation funding goals in consultation with tribes.
- Extend time horizons of climate grants from one or two years to multiple years.

Tribal communities in the United States face monumental challenges due to climate change, but also offer unique insight into climate solutions. However, incorporating tribal voices into federal climate and environmental governance decisions, and opening access to federal climate resilience funding so solutions can be realized, are ongoing policy concerns.

In November, which was Native American Heritage Month, federal policymakers in the executive and legislative branches highlighted opportunities to improve cooperation between tribal nations and the federal government.

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis held a hearing on November 18 called Tribal Voices, Tribal Wisdom, Strategies for the Climate Crisis to discuss key climate issues and solutions for tribes. The Biden-Harris Administration also hosted the White House Tribal Nations Summit earlier that week, which included a "Climate Change Impacts and Solutions" panel. An article covering that panel can be found here.

Funding Access and Technical Assistance

During the Select Committee hearing, witnesses praised the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58)—which includes approximately $15 billion for tribe-specific funding across issue areas—but also described obstacles to accessing federal funds more broadly, including a lack of technical assistance.

Large-scale renewable energy projects, in particular, can take a tremendous amount of time and staff power for environmental impact reviews and market analysis. More complicated incentive structures, such as tax credits, require even more institutional knowledge that can be difficult for tribes to access.

“With plummeting costs of [renewable energy] technologies, federal support—such as technical and financial assistance—can be more impactful and more meaningful,” Pilar Thomas, former deputy director for the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs at the U.S. Department of Energy, observed.

Multiple witnesses also noted that processes to receive funding should be directly between tribes and federal agencies. Projects on tribal lands often have to go through state governments to apply for and receive federal funding, increasing the amount of development work for tribal governments.

Holistic Climate Action and Tribal Consultation

Climate funding also tends to be technology-, species-, or place-specific, which makes it difficult for tribes to address climate change across sectors, ecosystems, and communities.

In order to meet climate concerns more holistically, tribes must patch together the various funding opportunities between nine agencies and 75 federal programs, which can be a daunting task. Speakers urged cross-agency coordination on climate funding activities in consultation with tribes.

“The big opportunity for the administration is how do we better coordinate amongst ourselves,” said Thomas. “Part of that really should start with asking the tribes who are trying to develop projects, ‘What do you need from us? And what can we do from the federal government perspective to support that effort?’”

Fawn Sharp speaks at a House hearing. Photo Credit: House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

Tribal consultation is especially critical in matters concerning relocation or climate migration. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes $130 million for tribal community relocation projects. Yet, Fawn Sharp, the president of the National Congress of American Indians and vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation, noted that the federal government has not yet established a program or framework for relocation.

Sharp urged Congressional legislators to “promote the need for full and meaningful consultation on the development of a Tribal Community Relocation Program at Department of the Interior (DOI) to ensure tribal priorities on relocation funding are identified and the priorities are incorporated into the program’s implementation process.”

Funding Timelines

The DOI’s Tribal Climate Resiliency Program (TCRP) was mentioned as a promising source of funding for climate projects, having so far granted more than 700 awards totaling over $60 million. But panelists said that in TCRP and other programs, time horizons of one to two years for many funding opportunities make long-term climate adaptation planning difficult and drain resources needed for grant management and application.

“Climate resiliency projects are multi-year, if not multi-generational,” said Sharp, “so it's critically important that we do have a reliable and steady source of revenues.”

Multi-year funding options would also reduce tribes' vulnerability to rapidly changing political winds, notes Casey Thornbrugh, tribal climate science liaison to DOI’s Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers. According to Thornbrugh, “opportunities available this year may not be available next, hobbling a consistent or long-term climate change adaptation plan.”

As the panel concluded, witnesses underlined the magnitude of the climate crisis for tribal communities, reiterating the need to support the inclusion of tribal perspectives in decision-making processes. “When I worked with indigenous peoples all over the world [at the COP26 international climate negotiations], it's very clear we do manage 80 percent of the world's biodiversity,” said Sharp. “Only with us at the table [can we] bring that timeless knowledge to restore balance to this planet."

Authors: Valerie Nguyen and Amber Todoroff

Further reading: Federal Grant Process is Another Hurdle for Communities Facing Coastal Threats