All of Newtok’s 400 residents will have to move to higher ground but funding shortages and Covid means some are being left behindJuliaIlhardtTue 8 Jun 2021 11.12 EDT

Two years ago, Lisa Charles and her family moved from their lifelong home in the town of Newtok,Alaska, to Mertarvik, a 30-minute trip by boat or snow machine depending on the season.

Lisa is a member of one of the US’s first communities of climate transplants, though she is also Yup’ik, a mother of seven, a nonprofit employee, and a political volunteer. Melting permafrost has rapidly accelerated the erosion of the land under Newtok, bringing houses precariously close to the water’s edge.

All of the town’s nearly 400 residents will eventually have to make the move to Mertarvik, but a lack of funding and the global pandemic have left the village…