AFE Virtual Technical Session: Disaster Resilience: Tribal Coalitions & Other Solutions

This presentation is a follow-up to the November 2020 AFE presentation (Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons Learned from Rural Alaska Disaster Resilience Projects). In the three years since the 2020 AFE presentation I have worked on building tribal coalitions to respond to environmental threats (i.e. a regional response), among other initiatives to improve disaster resilience efforts at a community level. What is noteworthy is that the federal government has long used tribal organizations to carry out programs, projects and activities in tribal settings including housing (HUD), health care (IHS), and social service, education, and many other tribal programming (BIA). However the Stafford Act only recognizes States and Tribes as entities that can work directly with the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). In other words, tribal organizations are not recognized by FEMA as an agent of tribes to work directly with the agency on disaster resilience. Consequently, regional solutions to environmental threats are not readily envisioned and advanced with an obvious loss of economy of scale solutions. Therefore, it falls on a tribe or a municipality to take lead in coordinating agencies and stakeholders in a multi-jurisdictional setting to develop effective disaster resilience solutions. Local capacity is tested. This presentation will include how a disaster resilience coalition can simulate a federally recognized tribal organization. The presentation will include discussion of the only multi-tribal FEMA approved Hazard Mitigation Plan in the country (to date) – the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians (a coalition of five tribes in central California) in addressing wildfires; the Unit 4 Disaster Resilience efforts (Akiak, Akiachak, Kwethluk, and Tuluksak) in addressing riverine erosion and flooding; and preliminary discussions a number of the Olympic Peninsula tribes are having for a collective response to the Cascadia fault earthquake/tsunami.
Presenter: Joel Neimeyer