Briana Edmo
Program Officer, Stewarding Native Lands
Navajo, Blackfeet, Shoshone-Bannock
First Nations’ Climate Initiative invests in Native-led stewardship to increase local adaptative capacity to respond to climate change, creating the potential for transformative change for our Earth.
Native communities have cultivated and relied on traditional knowledge over thousands of years. This knowledge has shaped biodiversity and supported subsistence lifeways that are distinctively integrated with ecosystems. Traditional knowledge has guided climate adaptation. However, the increasing pace of climate change, combined with diminished access and control over their ancestral lands and waters, have left many Native communities highly exposed to wildfire, drought, warming temperatures, flooding and other effects of extreme weather.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that climate change affects Indigenous peoples more severely and earlier than other populations, because tribal subsistence and cultural practices are dependent on healthy ecosystems.
Centered on addressing the ongoing and anticipated impacts of climate change, First Nations’ Climate Initiative provides Tribes and Native communities with resources to increase their adaptative capacity and disaster preparedness. The initiative invests in Native-led strategies rooted in traditional knowledge that support carbon sequestration, healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, and traditional lifeways.
This initiative is made possible thanks to generous contributions from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Waverley Street Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund, and many anonymous donors.
