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In 2005, for example, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference filed a complaint against the United States to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, alleging greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. And, critically, those lawsuits did not place the burden of addressing climate change on the United States, a notion that has proven difficult. So far, treaty rights have addressed climate change only as part of a broader argument, such as in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, but climate change itself has not been the primary subject of litigation (in part because there is no law about climate change in the U.S., as Interior Secretary David Bernhardt pointed out last week in a Senate hearing). The idea of treaty-protected habitat played out in the fight against the two cases of Millennium Bulk Coal and Coyote Island terminals in Washington state, where the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation, Nez Perce Tribe and others argued that a coal terminal would harm salmon and treaty-protected fishing rights. “Courts have found that there can be this right to habitat protection in order to protect the treaty right.”Ĭourtesy of Kelsey Kimberlin/KU Marketing Communications “I see huge opportunity in certain instances for using treaty rights, because we have had success in that context,” says Elizabeth Kronk Warner, professor and director of the Tribal Law and Government Center at the University of Kansas School of Law and member of Sault Ste. But across Indian Country, as climate threats become clearer, more are beginning to wonder: Why not?Ĭan tribal nations successfully sue the federal government over climate change-related violations of treaties? And if so, what would that look like? To date, none have directly used treaty rights to tackle climate change head on.
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This has won tribes major victories for land and water rights, as well as stalled or defeated coal terminals and gas pipelines.
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Over the past several decades, tribal nations have fought on that environmental vanguard through the powerful mechanism of treaty rights. “The tribes seem to be the last bit of a vanguard the environment has.” “Climate change is an everyday topic in our office,” Fryberg says. Located near the cool waters of Puget Sound in Washington state, the tribe is actively dealing with the already-apparent transformation of traditional territories: eroding shorelines, raising spring tides, and warming waters that hurt salmon by pushing food sources north. has worked at the Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources Department, he’s watched climate change subtly reshape the region.