Building adaptive capacity in a changing Arctic by use of technology

Abstract

Rapid Arctic warming, manifested as thawing permafrost, loss of coastal sea ice, sea level rise, and climate-related extreme events, is particularly challenging for Indigenous people relying on wild food to sustain their livelihood and culture. The adoption of new technologies could provide specific capabilities to confront vulnerabilities associated with fishing and hunting activities, but it could also accentuate existing vulnerabilities of the communities and undermine the generic (i.e., non-specific) adaptive capacities to respond to rapid environmental and socioeconomic changes. We investigated the role of technology for building capacity to respond to challenges posed by climate change in three remote communities in northwest Arctic Alaska. We refer to technology as tools used to change how people engage or relate to landscape or society. We interviewed 35 Inuit subsistence users and used Q-sort methodologies to examine their attitudes toward technology and climate change adaptation. Communication technologies and new ways of transport have allowed harvesters to travel faster and further, and 89% of the interviewees underscored the role of technology for enhancing the specific capacity to cope with extreme weather (77%), foggy conditions (60%), and environmental changes (89%). Despite of the role technology plays in enhancing the capacity to respond to climate threats, just over half viewed technology as generally favorable for the community (54%), although most admitted there are downsides (60%), including higher financial costs (34%), increased vulnerability (23%), and time spent on maintenance (9%). Our results underscore the need to focus on generic capacity when developing climate adaptation policies for Arctic Alaska to attend to both climatic and non-climatic stressors affecting the vulnerability of Indigenous communities.

We Must Stop Fossil Fuel Emissions to Protect Permafrost Ecosystems

“…Air temperature in the permafrost domain over land and sea has risen two to four times faster than the global mean, largely because of ice and snow loss, changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation, and the effects of ozone-depleting gases (Huang et al, 2017;Goosse et al, 2018;Mu et al, 2020a;Polvani et al, 2020;AMAP, 2021). Ice in all its forms underpins and overlays the permafrost domain, and its loss disrupts energy balance, ecosystem structure, and human activity (Bamber et al, 2018;Schuur and Mack, 2018;Bamber et al, 2019;Turetsky et al, 2020;Schmidt et al, 2021;Irrgang et al, 2022). Consequently, climate change is intensifying disturbance regimes across the permafrost domain and restructuring socioecological dynamics at continental scales (Hjort et al, 2018;Chou et al, 2021;Veraverbeke et al, 2021;Treharne et al, 2022).…”