The state’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) provided $3.2 billion to the 2023-2025 budget, generated by auctioning off emission allowances to businesses that produce greenhouse gases. Of this, $153 million was awarded to salmon recovery projects.
Washingtonians this November are being asked to vote to repeal the act, which would come at the expense of tribal projects that were green-lighted with the expectation the funding would continue.
“From warming salmon streams to eroding shorelines, Northwest tribes are on the front lines of the climate crisis,” said Suquamish Tribal Chair Leonard Forsman. “In 1854, our ancestral leader Chief Seattle said ‘every part of this soil is sacred to my people’ just before he signed our ancient lands over to the United States. With the CCA, we honor his vision and provide elders, children and other vulnerable people the means to withstand the impacts of global warming.”
Forsman is one of the tribal leaders who has joined a coalition to defeat this ballot measure, Initiative 2117.
“By defeating I-2117, we can defend progress on climate change, and protect the lands, cultures and traditional ways of our region for generations to come,” he said.
Above: Restoration of a historic oxbow on the Quillayute River is one of the projects being funded by the Climate Commitment Act. Photo: Nicole Rasmussen.
Being Frank: Repealing Climate Commitment Act comes at too high a cost
From NWIFC Chairman Ed Johnstone:
Washington voters will be asked this fall how much salmon recovery is worth.
How committed are they to supporting programs that reduce carbon pollution and help communities withstand the impacts of climate change?
The CCA was passed in 2021 to improve climate resiliency and health disparities across the state. It puts the burden of reducing carbon emissions on the biggest polluters, and everyone benefits because money from the auctions is reinvested into protecting and restoring our estuaries, marine shorelines, floodplains, forestlands and more.
CCA-funded projects improve the quality of life for every citizen in the Evergreen State and are essential to protecting the environment for our children’s future.
The eventual goal is to help Washington reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. In the meantime, funding is supporting tribal programs to mitigate flooding and sea level rise, as well as salmon habitat restoration work.
Climate funding supports tribal resiliency projects
For years, tribes in western Washington have been gathering data on how climate change affects their communities, but there hasn’t been much funding available to support implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies.
That changed with the federal Inflation Reduction Act and Washington state’s Climate Commitment Act in 2021, when funding became available to support tribes’ climate resiliency work.
“This funding supports a tribe’s ability to exercise their own self-determination and decide what is best for their community,” said Jennie Harlan, the Suquamish Tribe’s climate education and outreach coordinator.
The Suquamish Tribe developed a priority climate action plan by evaluating the tribe’s greenhouse gas emissions. The tribe determined five priorities to address, including installing ductless heat pumps into tribal members’ homes, making energy efficiency improvements to tribal buildings, electrifying the tribe’s fleet, providing an electric car sharing program for tribal members, and installing solar panels on tribal buildings.
The biggest thing that CCA funding has provided for tribes is staff capacity to develop and implement climate resiliency plans.
“Without the CCA funds, we’ll have all this information on the work we could do, but nobody to execute it,” said Annie Smaus, the Suquamish Tribe’s climate resilience specialist.
Other tribes, including Port Gamble S’Klallam, also have been putting CCA funding toward climate action planning, including assessing the tribe’s carbon footprint and determining key opportunities to reduce emissions, said Ben Harrison, the tribe’s environmental scientist.
“We are also working to evaluate the tribe’s forest and wetland areas for carbon storage potential through active management, including but not limited to understory planting and constructed wetlands,” he said.
Climate study strengthened with tribal knowledge
The Hoh Tribe is producing a climate change assessment combining the stories and knowledge of tribal members with hard data.
The tribe used Climate Commitment Act funding to hire recent University of Washington graduate Hannah Tennent on a one-year Hershman Fellowship through Washington Sea Grant.
Her role is to explore potential vulnerabilities and goals, adding to the work the tribe has been doing to battle and mitigate the effects of climate change, from protecting fish to moving sites vulnerable to flooding to higher ground.
“The tribe is already doing a lot in terms of climate change,” Tennent said.
While Tennent’s role in compiling climate measurements and projections is crucial to the assessment—which may help the tribe pursue grants and projects to mitigate climate change—another aspect excited her as well: The opportunity to interview tribal members, including elders, about their own knowledge, observations and history.
“I got to sit down with them and learn from them,” Tennent said. “It came across loud and clear how impactful the decline in fish is. There’s a huge economic decline, a decline in cultural resources, a change in availability of what people want to eat. It was striking how fast that decline was. People talk about, when they were young, catching 50-pound salmon—now they’re lucky to catch one that weighs in at 15 or 20 pounds.”
Climate Act boosts Quinault’s climate change fight
Thanks to funding from the state’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA), the Quinault Indian Nation’s mission to face climate change head-on has gained more momentum.
Quinault recently announced that it will use $13 million in funding toward moving the villages of Taholah and Queets out of the Olympic Coast’s flooding and tsunami zone. The funds will help make possible a new building to house child and elder services, an emergency shelter on safe ground in Queets, and a new water tank and pump house on higher ground in Taholah.
Climate change has sharply increased threats to the tribe through sea level rise and flooding. Tsunamis, which could be triggered by earthquakes, pose another danger to residents of Taholah and Queets.
“We’re at ground zero,” said Quinault President Guy Capoeman. “We see these changes.”