International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

Fig. 3.10-17. Meeting
with officers of
Lebesby Municipality
(Kommune),
Finnmark, Northern
Norway in 2008.
The participants are
discussing climate
and adaptation
of relevance to
municipal planning.
(Photo: Grete K. Hovelsrud,
CICERO)
452
IPY 20 07–20 08
Observation and monitoring strategies. Through
applying a common vulnerability assessment
framework (Smit et al., 2008; Ford et al., 2008; 2010;
Sydenysmith et al., 2010), the project has documented
a range of stresses and exposures encountered by
local communities across the Arctic, related to climatic,
ecological, social, economical, cultural and political
changes. The project developed a participatory
methodology, including both local/indigenous
and scientific knowledge that best explains how
combinations of environmental and societal exposure
sensitivities create vulnerability and necessitate
community adaptation.
Data has been collected through extensive
fieldwork using primary sources (interviews, focus
groups, participant observation, questionnaires –
Figs. 3.10-17, 3.10-18) and established protocols and
procedures from secondary sources (government
records on socio-economic and climate conditions,
satellite imagery, reports). The development, in
association with the Norwegian Meteorological
Institute and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute
in St. Petersburg (AARI), of downscaled climate change
projections for the Norwegian and Russian cases
study sites provided essential and innovative tools in
supporting community understanding and response.
The development of the climate scenarios was an
iterative process among the local communities,
who defined the relevant climate elements, and the
scientists making and analysing the models (Hovelsrud
and Smit, 2010).
New and improved knowledge. The CAVIAR project
has designed and framed the research in collaboration
with local communities, allowing for multiple drivers
and conditions in each locale, a prerequisite for
understanding adaptation and vulnerability to
change. For each case, the researchers investigated
the aspects of current conditions, livelihoods and
institutions that increased the manner and degree
of community sensitivity. Some common aspects
emerge across many of the studied cases despite their
cultural, geographic or economic differences. These
include, in broad terms, the consequences of changes
in coupled social-ecological systems with respect
to resource accessibility, allocation and extraction
policy; limited economic opportunity and markets
access constraints for distant northern communities;
demographics; attitudes and perceptions of change;
local-global linkages; infrastructure; threats to
cultural identity and well-being; transfer of local
and traditional knowledge; economic and livelihood
flexibility; and enabling institutions. These aspects