Alaskan village votes on whether to relocate because of climate change

The residents of an Alaskan coastal village have begun voting on whether to relocate because of rising sea levels.

If they vote to move, the village of Shishmaref, just north of the Bering Strait, and its population of 650 people, could be the first in the US to do so because of climate change.

The village would be relocated at an estimated cost of $180m to a new location less threatened by rising waters and melting sea ice. Where it would move would be decided later in a town meeting, according to the city clerk’s office.

The results of the vote will be announced on Wednesday, the city clerk said.

The sea ice used to protect Shishmaref, which is built on a barrier island and largely inhabited by members of the Inupiat Inuit tribe. But now that the ice is melting, the village is in peril from encroaching waves, especially as the permafrost on which it is built is thawing, and crumbling beneath the mostly prefabricated houses. Barricades and sea walls have had little effect.

“Over the past 35 years, we’ve lost 2,500 to 3,000 feet of land to coastal erosion,” wrote Esau Sinnok, a Shishmaref native and Arctic Youth Ambassador, in an essay for the Department of the Interior in 2015.

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“To put this in perspective: I was born in 1997, and since then, Shishmaref has lost about 100 feet,” he continued. “In the past 15 years, we had to move 13 houses – including my dear grandma Edna’s house – from one end of the island to the other because of this loss of land.”

“Within the next two decades, the whole island will erode away completely.”

Shishmaref is not the only town facing a global warming-linked crisis. According to a study by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), 31 villages face “imminent threats” from flooding and coastal erosion.

At least 12 of those have begun exploring relocation, including Shishmaref, but the report also said that federal funds were limited and unavailable to some of those communities. In February 2015, Sally Jewell, the secretary of the interior, announced $8m in funding for “projects that promote tribal climate change adaption” in Alaska.