National Tribal Air Association

The NTAA recently developed a document entitled “Impacts of Climate Change on US Tribes.”   This document was created pursuant to a request made by Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy, USEPA, Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) during a conference call held on November 23, 2009. This call, co-sponsored by the USEPA and the National Tribal Air Association, brought together OAR officials and representatives of over 65 Tribal Nations to discuss the real and pressing impacts of climate change currently faced by Tribes.

This document is not intended to be a comprehensive study of the impacts of climate change on Tribes. Instead, it is a compilation of comments and papers received from Tribes pursuant to Assistant Administrator McCarthy’s request.

The focus of the document is on climate change impacts currently experienced by Tribes. The comments have been grouped by geographic region. Other concerns regarding potential impacts have also been noted throughout the document. For more information on these concerns, please see the attached documents.

As Tribes have been directly experiencing the effects of climate change for a long time, they have put a great deal of thought into what steps need to be taken to address these issues. A summary of these recommendations is included at the end of the document.

As the Environmental Protection Agency may want to follow up directly with the participating Tribes to get more information on these issues, a Table of Contacts has been provided, and all of the reports have been cross referenced.

This document was taken to Copenhagen, Denmark by AA Gina McCarthy and NTEC Senior Policy Analyst Bob Gruenig.  It was used during Mr. Gruenig’s presentation at the COP15 meetings held in December 2009.

The full document and attachments may be viewed here:  Impacts of Climate Change on US Tribes (285.95 kB), Tribal Climate Change Impacts - Attachments