“In 1959, he knew it was coming,” said Delbert Pungowiyi, a Yupik native of Savoonga, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea in an interview at the Wilson Center’s 8th Syymposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic on Naval and Maritime Operations. “He prepared me my whole life for this. It is a crisis.”

He told how his grandfather saw retreating ice sheets as signs that Earth was about to experience extreme changes. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s felt different. “I grew up with nine solid months of winter,” he said.  The whole Bering Sea used to be locked up with ice for hundreds of miles. Sometimes the men would go out on the ice, 15 miles or more for hunting. “Now, we have three months of ice,” he said. “To us it is not winter anymore, because there’s a lot of open water. “

The impacts of climate change are becoming apparent right now in the Arctic faster than anywhere else. A report from the Alaska Climate Research Center shows an average temperature rise of 4.0° Fahrenheit over the past six decades in Alaska. Over that time, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about .8° Celsius, according to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA. This rise in temperature makes the indigenous communities in Alaska uniquely vulnerable to the more extreme impacts of climate change.

The rapid temperature increases have differing impacts on the landscape of the Arctic, from permafrost melt in foundations, to coastal erosion and sea level-rise, to floods. Permafrost in some areas of the Arctic is melting so fast that forests are turning into ponds before scientists can measure the rate of permafrost melt. Coastal erosion in some Alaskan communities ate up 80 meters of land in one year. Other research shows that roads like Dempster Highway, the only connection from the south to the Arctic coast, will be vulnerable to regular washouts, times of intense precipitation, in the spring. And washouts will likely occur twice as often, causing heavy flows and floods.

Endangered Communities

Many Alaskan communities are facing relocation and reconstruction due to sea level rise that is leading to coastline erosion and flooding. According to a 2004 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 184 out of 213, or 86  percent of Alaska Native villages will experience some level of flooding and erosion as the impacts of climate change intensify. Coastal villages tend to be more susceptible to flooding and erosion, according to the report, because rising temperatures slow the formation of protective shore ice, leaving the villages vulnerable to storms in the fall.

Of the nine villages reviewed by the GAO, four were in imminent danger of erosion and flooding. Kivalina, one of the four villages in imminent danger, can no longer use its airstrip for evacuation as severe storms make it too dangerous and erosion threatens the airstrip. Newtok village at one point saw over 40 feet of coast eroded in just over two weeks. Savoonga, a community on the northern coast of Saint Lawrence Island, expects the main road, power lines, telephone and cable, a clinic, a church, and a commercial fish plant to be in danger of damage or loss in the next 10 to 15 years due to erosion. On January 1, 2017, Myron Kingeekuk, Mayor of Savoonga, reported power was out or disrupted to 18 homes, and two community buildings had sustained roof damage due to extreme storms. The erosion has made subsistence hunting more difficult for the Tribe of Savoonga.“We used to leave the boats on the beach, but we cannot do that anymore,” said Pungowiyi, the President of the Tribe of Savoonga. “We see the ocean rising. Our beaches are getting shorter.”

The effects of climate change could also endanger the Inuvik Tuktoyaktuk Highway, also known as the Dempster Highway, which is the first and only highway to reach the Arctic Ocean in Canada. The highway has helped improve access to healthcare, education, economic opportunities, and reduced cost of living, as goods are brought in by ground year-round. However, the year-round benefits that this road is bringing into the Northwest Territories may be in danger.

In 2016, heavy rains caused a washout on Dempster Highway that prevented vehicles from driving through. This drastic change comes to the Arctic, as many scientists acknowledge it as the fastest warming corner of the globe. Under a “business as usual” greenhouse gas emission trajectory, the region is projected to be 6.1°C warmer by 2099. Researchers suggest that the permafrost holding up buildings and roads will thaw downwards by 25 centimeters. That level of melting could destroy the Dempster Highway and endanger the only connection northern indigenous communities have to southern Canada and the goods, healthcare, and economic opportunities to which the highway provides access.

The melting permafrost is endangering the construction and maintenance of some airports and infrastructure, according to Mala Høy Kuko, the Minister for Nature, Energy, and Environment of Greenland. Thawing permafrost became a problem in 2013 for the Iqaluit airport, as asphalt sank into the melting ground. “The airport is built on a network of ice wedges and also, over the years, some small ponds and lakes have been covered, and the land has been reshaped quite a lot,” said Michel Allard, a surface geologist with the University of Laval who has studied permafrost in Iqaluit since 2010.

In addition, Greenland’s largest commercial airport, located in Kangerlussuaq, lies in an area where consistent permafrost melting means further construction and adaptation will be required. Runway extension projects at the Nuuk and Ilulissat airports and the construction of a new airport in Qaqortoq are set to be completed by 2030. The construction is a $250 million investment into the future of the Greenlandic people, and it is important that Greenlanders take geological precautions when extending their runways and building their new airport.

Planning for a More Resilient Future

To adapt or relocate in Alaska, the indigenous communities have created several different planning groups including the Newtok Planning Group and the Kivalina Inter-Agency Planning Group. Newtok village is one of the first villages to successfully plan for relocation as the sea-level rises and erosion from the Ningliq river intensifies. Residents have already begun to live with a sense of loss. “This is my home, and every single year the land slowly fades away, feet by feet,” a student from Newtok said in a story provided by the Newtok Planning Group.  The memories of Newtok will stay with them, the student said, but the land where they were made will not. The Newtok village will be relocated to Metarvik, a new townsite on nearby Nelson Island. A 6,000 square-foot community center and eight houses have been constructed with plans to adapt the community center so it can be used as a school and a generator building. The Newtok Planning Group aims to completely relocate its village by 2023.

However, not all Alaskan Native villages will be able to count on the same assistance in pursuing relocation. Sixty-four villages do not qualify for affordable housing and relocation assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program because they do not meet program criteria. Many unincorporated villages that need access to resources to adapt or relocate will be unable to obtain it, because their local authority is not recognized. These villages will need to work with the state government to become a recognized borough if they are to get help from different federal aid programs.

New technologies provide hope for arctic communities’ ability to adapt their infrastructure to new challenges. A new access road to the University of Alaska Fairbanks employs several techniques to help keep the permafrost below the road frozen solid. Grapefruit-sized rocks below the road allows air to circulate beneath the roadway. Gas-filled tubes with refrigerant that takes advantage of evaporation and condensation, allow heat to be sucked from the roadway—a process that super-cools permafrost through the winter. “A couple of methods used there have pretty much become tools in our toolbox when conditions are right and materials are available,” said Jeff Currey, the Department of Transportation Northern Region Materials Engineer. “I’d argue all the techniques there were successful.”

Canada leads the way in preparing budgets and policies for its massive arctic infrastructure challenge. Canada is investing $570 million into the Northwest Territories over 10 years for roads and other infrastructure. This is a part of the federal government’s 12-year, $180-billion Investing in Canada infrastructure plan. On December 20, 2016, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that a new Arctic Policy Framework would be developed in partnership with Indigenous communities to guide the Canadian government’s arctic involvement through 2030.

One important way to prevent infrastructure damage in the future, said Nettie La Belle-Hamer, Director of the Alaska Satellite Facility, is to change building codes. “One of the things that we need to do is not only update those codes, but stop thinking that they’re set in stone,” she said. “The building codes and how we handle permafrost needs to be dynamic with the research that’s being done.” Taking action based on this research will be a difficult task, she said, but we need to get better at that and we need to be faster.

Pungowiyi stressed the need to take urgent action to ensure his village survives. Our food security is facing its greatest threat now, he said. The subsistence harvest is the primary means of food security for his village, but it has become less plentiful as the ice has retreated. He also underscored the need to prepare for the effects of climate change. In an interview with KNOM, he said that climate change probably can’t be stopped, but we can get ready. “We’re not really prepared for catastrophic disasters,” he said. “We’re not on high ground itself. If we were hit by a tsunami, it would be devastating to the village itself. We don’t have an evacuation road/shelter. We’re pushing real hard for that,” he said. “We must prepare for disasters.”