Search

This paper examines the role of Inuit traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in adaptation to climate change in the Canadian Arctic. It focuses on Inuit relationships with the Arctic environment, including hunting knowledge and land skills, and examines their roles in adaptation to biophysical changes that affect subsistence hunting. In several instances, TEK underpins competency in subsistence and adaptations to changing conditions, which includes flexibility with regard to seasonal cycles of hunting and resource use, hazard avoidance through detailed knowledge of the environment and understanding of ecosystem processes, and emergency preparedness, e.g., knowing what supplies to take when traveling and how to respond in emergency situations. Despite the documented importance of TEK in adaptation and in maintaining a level of competency in subsistence, the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change are not well defined in the scholarly literature. This paper aims to conceptualize the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change by drawing on case study research with Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. TEK is considered an element of adaptive capacity (or resilience) that is expressed as adaptation if TEK is drawn upon to adapt to changing conditions. This capacity depends on the development, accumulation, and transmission of TEK within and among generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides an account of ‘vital ecosystem security’. The central claim is that ‘vital ecosystem security’ and the processual ontology of ‘complex adaptive becoming’ provide useful terms with which to think environmental citizenship biopolitically within the contingent matrix of climate change. The paper identifies how complex adaptation, the operative form of vital ecosystem security, defines an emerging form of environmental citizenship, which can be found operating at the interface of a new type of forestry and the global carbon cycle. The specific case developed here concerns the boreal forest of northern Canada. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Environmental change in the Canadian Arctic has implications for livelihoods, food systems, infrastructure and Inuit culture. Although Inuit communities are located in industrialized countries, their integral connections with the natural environments contribute to significant exposures and sensitivities to changing conditions. This paper characterizes the vulnerability of Tuktoyaktuk in the western Canadian Arctic to climate change in the context of ongoing socio-economic and environmental changes. Existing stresses in the community influence infrastructure, livelihoods and wellbeing. Strategies for adapting to adverse conditions have largely been tactical and short term, rather than planned actions in anticipation of changes in climate. In light of projected intensification of climate change and a proposed natural gas pipeline in the Tuktoyaktuk area, the community is expected to experience new stresses in the future. Future adaptation planning and policy needs to enable community involvement in the protection of important community attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past decade research examining the human dimensions of climatic change in the Arctic has expanded significantly and has become the dominant framework through which the relations between northern peoples and climatic change are understood by scholars, policy makers, political leaders, and the media. This paper critically examines the assumptions, exclusions, and orientations that characterize this broad literature, and suggests revising and expanding the terms upon which it is carried out. It focuses in particular on the exclusion of colonialism from the study of human vulnerability and adaptation to climatic change, the framing of Indigenous peoples and communities in terms of the local and the traditional, and the ways in which efforts to improve the lives of northern Indigenous peoples risk perpetuating colonial relations. The paper argues that these exclusions and orientations lead scholars to systematically overlook the immense importance of resource extraction and shipping as human dimensions of climatic change in the Canadian Arctic, and it examines the implications of such oversights. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Arctic is a global hotspot of climate change, which is impacting the livelihoods of remote Inuit communities. We conduct a longitudinal assessment of climate change vulnerability drawing upon fieldwork conducted in 2004 and 2015 in Ikpiarjuk (Arctic Bay), Nunavut, and focusing on risks associated with subsistence harvesting activities. Specifically, we employ the same conceptual and methodological approach to identify and characterize who is vulnerable, to what stresses, and why, assessing how this has changed over time, including re-interviewing individuals involved in the original study. We find similarities between the two periods, with many of the observed environmental changes documented in 2004 having accelerated over the last decade, exacerbating risks of land use: changing sea ice regimes and wind patterns are the most widely documented at both times, with new observations reporting more frequent sighting of polar bear and orca. Socio-economic and technological changes have altered the context in climate change impacts are being experienced and responded to, both exacerbating and moderating vulnerabilities compared to 2004. The adoption of new technology, including GPS and widespread use of the internet, has helped land users manage changing conditions while sharing networks remain strong, despite concern noted in the 2004 study that they were weakening. Challenges around access to financial resources and concern over the incomplete transmission of some environmental knowledge and land skills to younger generations continue to increase sensitivity and limit adaptive capacity to changing climatic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation readiness is proposed as a complimentary concept to adaptive capacity that captures the strength and existence of governance structures and policy processes which determine whether adaptation takes place. As such, adaptation readiness is concerned with examining actual experiences with planning for adaptation and seeks to characterize whether human systems are prepared and ready to 'do adaptation.' We propose a framework for evaluating readiness, identifying 6 overarching factors essential for adaptation taking place: political leadership, institutional organization, adaptation decision making and stakeholder engagement, availability of usable science, funding for adaptation, and public support for adaptation. For each readiness factor we identify potential indicators, data sources, and considerations for analysis, outlining approaches for quantitative scoring and qualitative examination. We briefly illustrate application of the framework using an example from the territory of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, a region projected to experience some of the most dramatic changes in climate globally this century. The framework provides a systematic approach for assessing adaptation readiness, and can be used - in combination with other approaches - to inform the identification and prioritization of adaptation support, guide resources to areas where need is greatest, and serve as a proxy for adaptation tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]