Last week huge swaths of North America experienced record high temperatures, and the Alaskan arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the globe. To talk about the ways that climate change is affecting rural communities in Alaska, host Douglas Haynes is joined by ProPublica and KYUK journalist, Emily Schwing, about her recent article, “Newtok, Alaska, Was Supposed to Be a Model for Climate Relocation. Here’s How It Went Wrong.”

Schwing says that there are over 140 communities in Alaska like Newtok facing coastal erosion, permafrost deterioration, and the implosion of infrastructure. Now, part of the Newtok community has been relocated to Mertarvik, but this isn’t the first time the people of Newtok have moved, and each time it hasn’t been a choice. As the Trump administration continues to cut funding that could be used to address climate change impacts in these communities it will be harder and harder to respond to the urgency and complexity of the existential crisis we face. 

When Schwing first started reporting on the relocation of the Indigenous community of Newtok, she thought it would develop into a solutions journalism story, but quickly learned that the impacts of climate change, federal bureaucracy, and infrastructure collapse were having a direct impact on the people of Newtok. The folks who live in these communities deserve to keep their sense of place, their traditional livelihoods, and outsiders shouldn’t get to decide where they can live. 

Emily Schwing has covered lands and wildlife management, natural disasters, local government and Indigenous affairs extensively for public radio stations in Alaska and beyond since 2006. Schwing has worked all over the northernmost state from the Chukchi Sea coast to the Wrangell Narrows and from the Canadian border to the far reaches of the Aleutian Chain. Her work has been published by NPR, The Washington Post and High Country News, and she was part of The New York Times’ 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning COVID-19 tracking team.

Featured image: photo of permafrost erosion in Alaska by Benjamin Jones, USGS via Flickr.

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