The political economy of climate action in Indian Country

Abstract

The public choice literature has long considered the political economy of environmental regulation and has examined a variety of national and subnational governments’ environmental policies aimed at adaption to climate change. However, there has been little attention paid to the determinants of environmental adaptive actions taken by indigenous governments. Given many indigenous peoples’ heightened vulnerability to issues caused by climate change, it is important to understand when and why they take action to adapt to climate change and what obstacles may stand in the way. I argue that natural resource abundance, informational resource access, population vulnerability, and reliance on natural resources will impact whether indigenous governments enact policies to respond to climate change. Using an original dataset of tribal actions addressing climate change for 574 federally recognized tribal governments, I find that the amount of land, educational attainment, broadband access, and proportion of tribal members working in the natural resource industries are positively associated with the tribal government’s responses to climate change.