Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Zielinski explains how Native Americans in the Southwest are working to overcome challenges posed by climate change, especially drought. 

• How can funders support Native Americans' attempts to adapt to climate change? 

• Read one tribe's climate adaption plan


Around the world, indigenous peoples are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. That is true, too, in the United States. Coastal native villages in Alaska have already been inundated with water due to melting permafrost and erosion, and the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians of Louisiana recently announced plans to resettle on higher ground after losing 98 percent of their lands since 1950 to rising sea levels.

But leaving traditional lands is not an option for many Native Americans. In some ways, they have the same migration opportunities as anyone, but these peoples often have a profound relationship with the land and leaving it can mean losing traditional native culture, Derek Kauneckis, a political scientist at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, said.

Scientists are trying to identify how these tribes will be affected by climate change, and how they can not only adapt to that change but even thrive in the face of it, Kauneckis says.

For those tribes living in the American Southwest, that means dealing with warmer temperatures, longer droughts and decreasing water supplies, notes Maureen McCarthy, executive director of the Academy for the Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Native Waters on Arid Lands project, for instance, is bringing together researchers, native communities and government officials to address water issues for sustainable agriculture. Another project is looking more closely at issues faced by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in Nevada, which depends on water from the Truckee River.

Read the full article about Native American climate adoption by Sarah Zielinski at Smithsonian.