Preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change are critical to the wellbeing of tribal communities that rely on natural resources to sustain their families, communities, traditional ways of life, and cultural identities. Recognizing this, efforts across the country are underway to support and enhance the capacity of tribes to prepare for climate change risks. However, due to staffing, technical, and financial limitations, many tribes continue to experience difficulty initiating and completing the critical first step of the climate adaptation planning process: a “climate change vulnerability assessment”, i.e., a structured assessment of the specific potential impacts of climate change that the tribe may be exposed to, the tribe’s sensitivity to those impacts, and the tribe’s capacity to adapt to those impacts.
The goal of this project was to: 1) make the vulnerability assessment process more accessible to tribal staff by providing online guidance materials targeted to tribal needs and capacities; 2) address the demand for climate data at a scale relevant to tribal decision-making by providing localized climate data and climate change summaries for tribes; and 3) support tribal staff through the vulnerability assessment process via workshops and webinars to provide training on the use of project resources and datasets, and by staffing a Tribal Climate Technical Support Desk to provide rapid response to relevant queries. These activities will promote the ability of tribal communities to respond to climate-related threats, enhancing tribal and regional resilience to change.
