President Obama got an aerial view of one of these vulnerable communities, Kivalina, during his history-making trip to Alaska last year.
If the community of Shishmaref votes to relocate, it won’t necessarily mean that residents will simply pack up and move further inland.
Instead, it’s likely that a prolonged local, state and federal process will play out over who will pay for such a move, given that Shishmaref residents are not responsible for the vast majority of global warming pollutants that imperiled their homes and businesses.
According to a KTUU-TV report, Shishmaref mayor Harold Weyiouanna, said residents have been experiencing erosion since the 1980s.
“They did put a seawall or rock walls up, and it seems to be holding,” Weyiouanna told the station, “but we need more protection to protect the whole island.”
This is Shishmaref’s second vote on whether to relocate, having voted to move in 2002. Funding shortfalls and a lack of suitable land to move to helped doom the effort that time and may do so again.
In 2005, for example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated the cost of moving all the residents of Shishmaref to higher ground on the Alaskan mainland at $179 million, which, at the time, worked out to $300,000 per person.
The mayor told KTUU that much of the construction on needed infrastructure in the village stopped after that vote, despite population growth.
The town has expanded a sea wall as a stopgap measure until a relocation can take place, but not all critical infrastructure on the island is protected, including the airport.
“… We’ll just be a little further up. But what I love about this place is this is where I grew up, this is my home,” said Shishmaref Native Corporation General Manager Sara Tocktoo, in an interview with KTUU.
Tocktoo said she’s also considering the possibility of having room to grow if they move to the mainland.
“I’m gonna have to think hard about this, you know, because it’s gonna impact my children, it’s gonna impact my grandchildren,” Tocktoo said.
Shishmaref, Newtok and Kivalina have long been viewed as communities that are on the front lines of climate change. They, along with several other Alaskan villages, have elected to move but have not yet done so, for various reasons.
Other relocation plans
Despite the votes to relocate Alaskan communities, it appears that the first official climate refugees in the U.S. will be located about 4,000 miles to the southeast, in Louisiana.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced on January 21 that it is providing Louisiana with $93 million for climate resilience projects, including enabling the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians to “relocate to a resilient and historically significant community.”
This Louisiana community has seen 98 percent of their traditional lands disappear since 1955 due to the combination of sea level rise, land subsidence, oil and gas development and the related decline in sediment deposition from the Mississippi River.
A HUD official told Mashable at the time that this was the first time the department has ever funded a community’s relocation due specifically to climate change.
Depending on the Shisharef vote, it may not be the last.
Article Appeared @http://mashable.com/2016/08/16/shishmaref-alaska-votes-relocating-climate-change/#CIWToabPngqW