Published in a 2-part series in The Mammoth Times on February 17th and March 3rd, 2022
As the year 2022 begins and we find ourselves no longer just anticipating, but experiencing the impacts of climate change, many are left wondering what, exactly, has changed in our way of life and how we might envision the future. Looking ahead, the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe is planning projects that address this question, including a climate change impacts report and a climate change adaptation plan. The report will document the specific impacts climate change is making on the Tribe, and the plan will lay out adaptation strategies for the future. Some of those impacts include the low, ecologically-compromised level of Mono Lake, and increased drought. Adaptation strategies include changes in energy sources. Other groups, such as the Mono County government, are similarly reckoning with the question of how climate change might change both the environment and ways of life in the region.
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) will support the Tribe in writing its impact report. OEHHA researches and presents climate change indicators in periodic reports describing how California’s climate is changing and how these changes are affecting the state. Indicators are scientifically-based measurements that track trends in various aspects of climate change. In 2018, the office prioritized working with Tribes to document the impacts of climate change on California Tribes. Several Eastern Sierra Tribes participated in the round of impact reports that will be released in spring 2022, greatly adding to the “picture in time of climate change” the reports provide, according to Laurie Monserrat, Tribal Liaison at OEHHA. She explained their significance by saying, “I can use Western science and document a hundred years, but when we talk to the Tribes we can document thousands of years in the past.”
In writing the climate adaptation plan, the Tribe will be supported by the Climate Change and Health Equity Section of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), which is currently modifying its toolkit for local health departments to “advance health and equity outcomes through climate adaptation and mitigation (greenhouse gas reduction).” The team is using a five-step framework that includes identifying the scope of climate impacts, estimating the burden of health outcomes due to these impacts, identifying “suitable health interventions,” implementing a health adaptation plan, and later evaluating the process, with the goal to “prevent and reduce health effects associated with a changing climate,” according to a written statement from the department.
The Kutzadika’a Tribe will officially publish their climate change impacts report in OEHHA’s next round of reports, likely sometime around 2024, says Dean Tonenna, a member of the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe who has been active in the planning process. “Once you’ve identified the impacts [of climate change], the thought is is that the Tribe would use this information as kind of a starting point—‘this is what we know and now that we recognize this, how are we going to adapt to these impacts so that we have a plan, we have a strategy, in place for moving forward with this?’ he said. “We don’t want to just take it one day at a time. While today it might be really smoky, or tomorrow we might find that our well is dry, we don’t want to be reactionary to these events, we want to plan for potential scenarios.”
Using the information documented in the impacts report, the Tribe will develop its adaptation plan. Tonenna cited renewable energy sources as one essential part of this planning for the future. “What will our future generations have to do in order to heat their home?” he asked. “I think for most of the world it’s going to be renewable energy, and having thought through that process with the climate adaptation plan, it will help the Tribe to recognize that we need to learn about renewable energy…. And start planning based on what we learn from the impact analysis, and start to construct strategies.”
Planning like this, CDPH said, should include both working to slow the impacts of climate change, and learning how to mitigate and lessen the health impacts that are already underway and will grow in the future. “While action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, Tribes can simultaneously prepare their governments and communities for the impacts that have not been prevented and make the most of limited funding and staff capacity,” the department wrote.
With this in mind, the five-step framework includes developing a health adaptation plan through addressing “tribal health impacts, gaps in critical public health functions/services, and a plan for enhancing adaptive capacity in the jurisdiction.” Adaptive capacity is the ability to act collectively in the face of the threats posed by climate change.
This means that a thorough tribal health adaptation plan must address the way that climate change causes specific and detrimental health impacts on tribal members. “This is in part because of Tribal communities’ close ties and reliance on ecosystem goods and services. Sustaining cultural practices and traditional lifeways associated with health, medicine, and sustenance is often core to Tribal adaptation processes,” the department wrote. In order to sustain these cultural practices and traditional lifeways, Tribes like the Kutzadika’a have identified securing ownership over or access to their ancestral lands as a key adaptation strategy.
Jocelyn Sheltraw, the chairwoman of the Mono Lake Indian Cultural Preservation Association, the Tribe’s non-profit, sees the bigger picture and the role the Tribe has in preserving tribal culture and the land that sustains all. “The essence and identity of the Kutzadika’a Tribe is inextricably bound to our ancestral land. For thousands of years our people have been the stewards and guardians of the Mono Lake-Yosemite region, ensuring that man co-exists in harmony with the flora and fauna,” she said. “This balance of nature has been disrupted for over a century and it is now more urgent than ever to regain our custodianship in order to restore and preserve this great land and its natural ecosystem for generations to come.”
Preserving the land and its ecosystem also necessitates better understanding the way climate is impacting it right now. One of the adverse climate impacts that the climate change report (another piece of the tribe’s work, produced in partnership with OEHHA) will cover is drought and reduced precipitation. These changes result in worsening air quality due to thousands of acres of exposed Mono Lake lakebed, and deteriorating conditions for the ecosystems the lake sustains, especially those with cultural value such as a lower abundance of kutsavi, a traditional food, according to Charlotte Lange, chairwoman of the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe. Pine nut growth is also changing due to climate change. “Under a changing climate where it’s drier and warmer, the pinion woodlands could shrink in size,” said Tonenna. “These vegetation communities, they’ve expanded and they’ve contracted over time with changing climates, it’s just that the people [tribal members], we can’t rely on that long term change to meet our needs. It would be the people who would be hurt or suffering the most with changes to the climate.” Other impacts were identified in a listening session with OEHHA that took place over Zoom on August 5th and 6th, 2020. These include species like mountain lions moving to lower elevations, drought and fires exposing cultural artifacts and leaving them more vulnerable to looting, and the loss of gathering areas and culturally-important plants and animals (such as those described above).
In addition, CDPH listed extreme heat as another pressing climate concern for the Tribe. “There are projected to be as many as 40 days of extreme heat each year in Mono County by the middle of this century (2040-2060), up from a present annual average of only ten days over 90°F,” the department wrote in a statement. “Populations with the greatest risk of health impacts from extreme heat are due to physical vulnerabilities and/or lack of resources to prepare or respond to heat.”
Another Tribe in the region, Big Pine Nümü, (the Tribe’s preferred name, Nümü translates to “the people”) similarly laid out a large number of staggering changes to their lifestyle and culture that are being brought about by climate change in their own report, shared by OEHHA with permission of the tribal council. Such impacts include the projected increase in high wind leading to soil erosion and difficulty for native plants to grow, the erosion of petroglyphs and pictographs, a decrease in the abundance of foods with cultural significance, and changes in the territory of predators. In one such example of the way that climate change impacts alter culture, the report reads that “Food such as Taboose (Cyperus esculentus), a plant that grows a small nut-like tuber, was once so prevalent that a person could walk through miles of plants within arms distance. Taboose is now only found in spaces in the backcountry around Big Pine and can no longer serve as a supplementary food to an adult’s diet without depleting the plant population severely.”
In OEHHA’s notes from the listening session, shared with permission of the Tribal Councils, members of the Bishop Paiute Tribe shared observations that an increase in water temperatures has led to a decrease in native desert fish, like Owens pupfish, Owens speckled Dace, Owens tui chub, Toikona tui chub, and Owens sucker. These fish are culturally important to the Paiute people, participants in the listening session said. In the Northern County, the Antelope Valley Indian Community noted a decrease in native food species including jack rabbits, cottontail rabbits, and quail, meaning that “not enough traditional foods are available.”
Documenting climate change impacts such as these together a fuller picture of devastation. “I hope it brings a new lens to climate change, so that people understand the impacts more fully, and are willing to take action to stop it,” said Monserrat. “You can’t separate the impacts of climate change from the impacts on culture. It’s just so entwined,” she added.
The Mono County government is making a similar effort to adapt to the impacts of climate change. In 2014, the county published a Resource Efficiency Plan which outlines “The county’s “Path toward creating more sustainable, healthy, and livable communities” after receiving a Sustainable Communities Planning Grant from the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) in 2012. The report reads that “The strategies outlined in this plan will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and provide energy, fuel, water, and monetary savings while improving the quality of life for residents in Mono County.” The efficiency plan was officially adopted into the county’s General Plan in 2015, according to Wendy Sugimura, Community Development Director. “We are currently updating our greenhouse gas emissions inventory and developing a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) streamlining checklist for environmental analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT),” she added.
Bob Gardner, one member of the county Board of Supervisors, spoke on the importance of partnering between county and tribal government in these efforts at documenting and adapting to climate change. “I want to increase our County consultation with the Tribe so we can make sure we respect and include their cultural and traditional practices as we implement climate change as well as other initiatives,” he said. “I know the Tribe has valuable historical experience taking care of our public lands. It’s our obligation to make sure we work together closely to gain from their knowledge and experience.”
Looking ahead, many have hope that continuing these partnerships can help the collective better understand the impacts of climate change, and how we must learn to live with them while simultaneously fighting to slow them. Lange emphasized the importance of pairing traditional, cultural knowledge with data collection. “Traditionally… that knowledge is just up here,” she said, gesturing to her head. Understanding climate change through different perspectives is key for this reason. Monserrat had similar thoughts. “If we’re smart, we’re going to pay attention and listen… there’s some deep knowledge there that we could benefit from… you can always learn something from somebody else.” There is value in learning about how different people are experiencing the impacts of climate change differently, she said.
Tonenna similarly reflected on figuring out how to reduce the impacts of climate change, “The actions we take today to stave off climate impacts may improve things, or by our resistance to change, we may worsen them, but regardless, whatever happens provides an opportunity to learn from so that we know how to move forward. For the Mono Lake Tribe, we want to be mindful of what others have done in their area and then factor that into our area so that we’re learning from what’s going on around us.”