38 of 80: Project Drawdown’s ranking of forest protection as a solution to climate change.
39 of 80: Project Drawdown’s ranking of Indigenous land management as a solution to climate change.
Twenty-six percent of human-created carbon emissions return to the earth through natural processes. Yet ecosystem degradation threatens the natural systems that move carbon from the atmosphere into living plants and soils. Devastated ecosystems are devastated homelands. When the environment suffers, people suffer.
For residents of Southeast Alaska, our greatest role in the global fight against climate change is to protect our land, including the Tongass National Forest, and the Indigenous tribes who have served as ecosystem stewards since time immemorial. We must preserve the carbon sinks that naturally perform carbon sequestration in order to preserve a habitable planet. We also must elevate those who have been the fiercest advocates for these important ecosystems, Alaska Native tribes.
Project Drawdown lists forest protection as the 38th of 80 most effective solutions to averting climate change. Right on its heels is Indigenous land management, coming in as the 39th solution. Indigenous peoples’ land management is an effective means to preventing climate chaos because Indigenous practices are relevant to local ecosystems and resiliency. When Indigenous people lose land rights and are separated from land management, deforestation and land degradation follows.
“When we talk about the Tongass, we are people of the Tongass,” Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson says. “From seed to canoe, we have watched these forests grow,” he says, referring to the trees used to create traditional watercraft. After 10,000 years, “we still have that lifestyle, that diet, we still fish in our traditional areas.”
The 16.8 million-acre Tongass National Forest sequesters more carbon than any other national forest. As one of the world’s last remaining temperate rain forests, its very existence provides critical climate-related services to the planet.
Yet unsustainable logging practices promulgated by businesses, the state, and federal forestry managers have harmed the health of the Tongass and the health of Alaska Natives.
Take, for instance, what occurred in Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island during Richard’s tenure as mayor of the village. Loggers clear cut areas of the Tongass surrounding the village. The loggers followed the law and left the required buffer of standing trees surrounding streams. But a windstorm devastated the exposed trees, causing the destruction of the watershed and Kasaan’s municipal water source.
“We were on a boiled-water notice for a year,” related Richard, now President of the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (aka Tlingit and Haida).
Accepted Western forestry practices did not protect the forest, the watershed, or the people of Kasaan. “To respect your resources you must respect yourself. When you have a toxic view of yourself and everything else, that is how we manage the resources. A healthy forest means healthy people,” says Richard.
A new partnership between Tlingit and Haida and the US Forest Service embraces Indigenous forest management practices. The new Indigenous Guardians program, modeled after First Nations/ federal government co-management instituted decades ago in Canada, assures that partner entities will have a recognized role in the management of the Tongass National Forest.
“We will be working hand in hand on forest management at all levels,” explains Richard. “Taking our traditional and ecological knowledge and integrating that in the management system will create a forest that will produce for generations.”
The new Indigenous Guardians program includes watershed restoration, monitoring of cultural sites, and subsistence planning. It provides funding for tribal science, aspires towards ground-up policy making, and will enhance the health and economies of tribal communities.
Moreover, the climate-related implications of this program are also promising. According to Project Drawdown, community-managed forests increased carbon storage by 2 tons per acre per year.
Healthy forests support healthy communities. A healthy Tongass supports the very ability of our planet to sustain human life as we know it. With Indigenous people leading forest use and forest protection efforts, there’s hope the Tongass can sustain us for the next 10,000 years, as well.