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The European, Canadian, and Latin American seaweed industries rely on the sustainable harvesting of natural resources. As several countries wish to increase their activity, the harvest should be managed according to integrated and participatory governance regimes to ensure production within a long-term perspective. Development of regulations and directives enabling the sustainable exploitation of natural resources must therefore be brought to the national and international political agenda in order to ensure environmental, social, and economic values in the coastal areas around the world. In Europe, Portugal requires an appraisal of seaweed management plans while Norway and Canada have developed and implemented coastal management plans including well-established and sustainable exploitation of their natural seaweed resources. Whereas, in Latin America, different scenarios of seaweed exploitation can be observed; each country is however in need of long-term and ecosystem-based management plans to ensure that exploitation is sustainable. These plans are required particularly in Peru and Brazil, while Chile has succeeded in establishing a sustainable seaweed-harvesting plan for most of the economically important seaweeds. Furthermore, in both Europe and Latin America, seaweed aquaculture is at its infancy and development will have to overcome numerous challenges at different levels (i.e., technology, biology, policy). Thus, there is a need for regulations and establishment of “best practices” for seaweed harvesting, management, and cultivation. Trained human resources will also be required to provide information and education to the communities involved, to enable seaweed utilization to become a profitable business and provide better income opportunities to coastal communities.

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Changes in sea ice, snow cover, lake and river ice, and permafrost will affect economy, infrastructure, health, and indigenous and non-indigenous livelihoods, culture, and identity. Local residents are resilient and highly adaptive, but the rate and magnitude of change challenges the current adaptive capacity. Cryospheric changes create both challenges and opportunities, and occur along local, regional, and international dimensions. Such changes will provide better access to the Arctic and its resources thereby increasing human activities such as shipping and tourism. Cryospheric changes pose a number of challenges for international governance, human rights, safety, and search and rescue efforts. In addition to the direct effects of a changing cryosphere, human society is affected by indirect factors, including industrial developments, globalization, and societal changes, which contribute to shaping vulnerability and adaptation options. Combined with non-cryospheric drivers of change, this will result in multifaceted and cascading effects within and beyond the Arctic.

The goal of the CAVIAR project is two-pronged: capturing the particular social and environmental conditions that combine to create exposure-sensitivities and require adaptation in case study communities across the Arctic; and applying a common framework that anchors integration of results in a pan-Arctic assessment of community vulnerability and adaptability. At the core of the CAVIAR project is designing and framing the research in collaboration with the local communities allowing us to understand the particular processes and conditions in each locale, which is a prerequisite for understanding adaptation and vulnerability to change. This undertaking has required a fundamentally interdisciplinary collaboration, across and between social and natural sciences, and between scientific and local/traditional knowledge. By involving the local communities in setting the parameters of the research we have identified the aspects of Arctic communities (such as livelihoods, income, social interactions) that are susceptible to changing conditions. The purpose of integration, on the basis of the case specific particularities, is to generalise the processes and conditions which shape vulnerabilities in the Arctic, and gain insights into adaptive capacity to deal with future changes. It is clear that the lives and livelihoods of people in the Arctic are sensitive to the effects of a changing climate, but they are also sensitive to changing economic, institutional and social conditions. While natural resource based livelihood dependence had a large share of attention, other prominent issues included municipal services, infrastructure and the impacts of industrial expansion.