Reduce Your Risk

Communal drumming as a means of healing, Tyonek, AK.

Maintain cultural traditions

Preserving and passing down cultural traditions is even more critical in the context of climate change, which is altering the landscape that has provided important cultural and subsistence resources for millennia. Alaska Natives’ traditional relationship with their environment is an example of responsible environmental stewardship, which is a key component of climate adaptation.

Thriving cultures are resilient cultures. Expressing your cultural identity and continuing traditions through subsistence and culture camps, as well as storytelling and learning from Elders, are all ways to preserve tradition.

Adapting cultural traditions includes:

• documenting local and traditional knowledge
• trying new subsistence species
• developing new methods for traditional processes (including new ways of preserving fish or meat)

Harriat Kauffman of Tyonek at fish camp.

Keep subsistence alive

Keeping subsistence alive requires action at the individual and community level, with support from policy-makers and resource managers.

Individuals and communities can:

• Grow food to supplement subsistence with fresh, locally-produced, healthy food
• Learn about and apply food preservation techniques to make garden harvests last longer.
• Engage regulatory advisory committees (Alaska Boards of Fish and Board of Game and Federal Region Advisory Councils) by testifying at meetings to give recommendations and share concerns

Policy makers and resource managers can:

Collaborate and improve communication to adjust subsistence seasons and other regulations based on new species patterns and conditions

• Explore new or different management options
• Build more flexibility into policies and regulations, based off of input from local harvesters, in situations where rising temperatures are affecting the timing of seasons and species availability

Port Heiden farm. Chickens and eggs are sold locally.

Maintain community health

Community health is a critical component of reducing an area’s vulnerability to climate risks. Solutions can include:

• Maintaining homes to prevent fires and health impacts of poor indoor air conditions
• Improving sanitation, waste and wastewater systems, and waste management
• Implementing programs to reduce waste, reusing, recycling, and composting
• Enforcing land use standards and practices that maintain ecosystem health
• Increasing food safety outreach and testing efforts where there is increased risk of accumulating environmental toxins, such as in marine mammals or shellfish

A community’s ability to withstand and adapt to climate change impacts is determined in part by the state of its infrastructure.

Climate change in Alaska is already increasing natural hazards like coastal storms and flooding, which has led to several emergency disaster declarations in Arctic coastal villages.

Infrastructure improvements such as fortifying seawalls or clearing excess flammable material around communities can reduce some of these climate-related risks, saving money and reducing the burden of clean-up.

Kodiak wind turbines. Kodiak produces over 98% of its power from wind and hydropower.

Produce energy, reduce carbon

One basic solution that saves money while reducing a community’s carbon footprint is investing in energy efficiency and renewable energies. Communities that depend on diesel generators can focus on conserving energy and installing more efficient systems, while other communities with clean energy options (such as wind or solar) can seek funding and resources to switch to renewable power.

Energy audits and weatherization techniques are also options to save money and energy usage in residential and commercial buildings, which can aim to be energy-efficient or energy-neutral.

Improve housing to be more mobile and less impacted by permafrost thaw

Healthy, durable, sustainable housing that is appropriate for a community’s location is critical for maintaining or improving climate resilience.

Communities can work with organizations like the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center to improve adaptive technology to be portable, self-contained, easy to maintain and repair, have a low environmental impact, be easily and safely disposable, intuitive to use, climate appropriate, cost-effective, and draw upon traditional technologies.

At home, you can help by:

• Improving indoor air quality
• conducting energy efficiency retrofits
• Making weatherization improvements
• Encouraging funders to change standards to fund more sustainable and mobile infrastructure (e.g., change Indian Health Service infrastructure standards to allow innovative water infrastructure)