{"id":194603,"date":"2015-03-24T04:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T18:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=194603"},"modified":"2015-03-24T04:00:16","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T18:00:16","slug":"kilili-seeks-7m-for-cnmi-climate-change-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/kilili-seeks-7m-for-cnmi-climate-change-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Kilili seeks $7M for CNMI climate change programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A huge portion of the proposed capital improvements budget for the Northern Mariana Islands should go to existing climate change programs of the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_194609\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-194609\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a attid=\"194609\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Kilili-Sablan-mug.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Kilili-Sablan-mug.jpg\" alt=\"Sablan\" width=\"500\" height=\"530\" class=\"size-full wp-image-194609\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-194609\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sablan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>According to Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs examined last week President Obama\u2019s fiscal 2016 budget proposal for the Interior Department\u2019s Office of Insular Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>The budget included $9.6 million for capital improvement projects in the Northern Mariana Islands, a slight increase over fiscal 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The budget also proposes $7 million and two staff positions for a new Resilient Insular Areas fund to help island governments plan for climate change.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my view, this $7 million could be better invested in existing programs that already address the causes and effects of climate change,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor instance, the Interior\u2019s Empowering Insular Communities program, which has provided $560,000 to the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and $440,000 to our Public School System for solar power systems, help reduce the use of fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Sablan, more of this investment in locally produced power \u201cwould not only reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming, but also keep more money in our local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In February, the Obama administration pledged more support to insular areas through increase funding and more focus on climate change and manpower concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the Obama administration \u201cwill continue to listen\u201d to the concerns of the insular areas.<\/p>\n<p>She mentioned that the government does recognize that it needs to increase the $30 million a year cap in funding for Guam and the CNMI.<\/p>\n<p>The official also mentioned the issue of climate change, and that the federal government has allocated some $140 million for ecosystem resilience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A huge portion of the proposed capital improvements budget for the Northern Mariana Islands should&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":194609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,3161,3162,121],"class_list":["post-194603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-empowering-insular-communities","tag-interior-department","tag-northern-mariana-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}