no sympathy from me .....you have to know its not good to build near water .....but stupid people never learn .......water is not and never has been your freind ....its does not discriminate ........skincolour
How the first federal climate relocation of a whole community stumbled
This article was produced in partnership with Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity and Type Investigations.
ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — A sliver is all of this islet that remains above water. What hasn’t slipped into the Gulf of Mexico shows the punishing effects of disastrous climate change: trees killed by saltwater, grasslands overtaken by bayous, empty wrecks that were once homes.
“Our house was here,” said Albert White Buffalo Naquin, pointing to the overrun marsh where his family lived. He is chief of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, and 98% of its ancestral land is below water.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the state $48.3 million in 2016 to resettle the tribe to higher ground, the first federally funded effort to move an entire community because of climate change. Officials saw a chance to create a model of wholesale voluntary relocation for a country that urgently needs to prepare for many more such projects.
Six years in, as the process of moving families to the new site gets underway, the situation at Isle de Jean Charles underscores how challenging this work will be — and how badly the country will fail the ever-growing number of people in harm’s way if it doesn’t figure out how to do it well.
Early missteps undermined trust and shifted who was eligible to participate, according to a year-long investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity and Type Investigations. The news organizations conducted interviews with dozens of tribal leaders, island residents, researchers and former and current government officials, and reviewed more than 2,000 government and tribal records.
Citizens of the United Houma Nation also live on the vanishing isle. When that tribe’s then-chief learned of the HUD funding, he pressed the state to include his people too. In the aftermath, Naquin and other leaders of the Jean Charles tribe contend the process disenfranchised them.
No comments:
Post a Comment