"Let’s clear up some misconceptions about global climate change,” Lara Whitely Binder, of the Climate Impacts Group, told tribal representatives gathered at a climate change adaptation training course.

Take weather versus climate.

Weather refers to day-to-day changes like temperature and precipitation in specific locations. Climate refers to the average of these variables over long time periods. Individual weather events do not prove, or disprove, climate change.

Earth’s climate is changing as a result of human practices – that fact is no longer in dispute. “We are not going to avoid the impacts,” emphasized Binder.

It will impact – and in some areas already is – the ecosystems of tribal communities who have relied on the bounty of land and sea for centuries to sustain them.

Their forests, rangelands, oceans, freshwater, agriculture, weather; even life itself.

Binder’s remarks kicked off the May 18 – 20 event at the Quinault Beach Resort in Ocean Shores, Wash., sponsored by the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals at Northern Arizona University in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Established in 1992, ITEP assists Indian tribes in management of their environmental resources through training and education.

Eighteen tribal representatives from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California and Maine were there to learn the how and why, and goals of adapting to climate change and ways to develop more climate resilient organizations, communities, economies and ecosystems.

Photo courtesy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Oil in open Gulf of Mexico waters set afire.

Binder outlined the fundamentals of adaptation.

Of the two ways to deal with climate change, mitigation reduces the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or by enhancing carbon sinks, which absorb more greenhouse gases than they emit. Adaptation is taking actions that minimize the impacts to people, communities and ecosystems of actual or anticipated climate change.

“Environmentalists didn’t like the notion of adaptation because it meant we wouldn’t work on stopping emissions,” Binder said. “The skeptics didn’t like it because it meant climate change exists.”

But some degree of climate disruption will occur regardless of future greenhouse gas emissions. Adapting to or coping with climate change will be necessary in certain regions and for certain socioeconomic and environmental systems.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 defined adaptation as the “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.”

Growing populations in areas vulnerable to extreme events may increase the need for adaptation. However, according to the IPCC, “adaptation alone is not expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change, and especially not over the long term as most impacts increase in magnitude.”

Put more simply, adaptation is taking action to minimize the impacts of actual or expected climate change. It is reducing the vulnerability of people and places to the effects of climate change. It is also embracing positive consequences of climate change.

There is anticipatory adaptation, or taking proactive steps to reduce climate change risks for individuals, communities, and ecosystems, and reactive adaptation, dealing with climate impacts after the fact.

Reactive adaptation alone may be “too little too late,” such as in the case of the loss of species. It may cost more than anticipatory adaptation, and it runs the risk of being short-sighted by focusing on the crisis at hand.

With a compelling Power Point presentation, Binder outlined what steps tribes need to take to implement adaptation measures. Keith Rose, EPA Region 10, discussed adaptation strategies and planning. Bob Hall, EPA Region 9, identified ecosystems that are affected by climate change.

Three tribal case studies, all located in western Washington, were presented by Larry Workman of the Quinault Nation, “Climate Change Impacts on the Quinault Indian Nation;” Bob Smith of the Hoh Tribe, “The Hoh Tribe-Moving A Community;” and Ed Knight of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, “Swinomish Climate Change Initiative.”

“Tribes are on the forefront of climate change, in respect to both degree of impacts and in initial efforts to respond to adaptation,” said Knight, senior planner and project coordinator.

As the Swinomish foresaw the destructive potential of climate change in 2008 their planners researched and completed a 90-page “Swinomish Climate Change Initiative Impact Assessment Technical Report,” which provides a comprehensive assessment of potential climate change effects, risk and vulnerability on Swinomish community, lands, and resources. The tribe is already moving aggressively with response and adaptation planning.

For upcoming ITEP climate change training courses for tribal professionals visit www4.nau.edu/itep.

ITEP’s Tribes & Climate Change Web site – www4.nau.edu/tribalclimatechange – includes information about climate change, impacts on tribes, audio files of elders, numerous resources and more.

To receive ITEP’s monthly Tribal Climate Change Newsletter with news items, resources, announcements about funding opportunities, conferences, training, and information relevant to tribal climate change issues, or to learn more about ITEP’s climate change efforts e-mail Sue Wotkyns, ITEP’s climate change program manager, at
Susan.Wotkyns@nau.edu.