The Arctic Council: an agent of change?

Barry, Tom; Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur; Einarsson, Níels; Young, Oran R.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102099

Cited by 31 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The Arctic Council's role as an agent of change in the region is promising, as it has moved its role from policy informing to policy making (Barry et al, 2020). Given the extreme fire season of 2020, an Arctic Council-led initiative for Pan-Arctic fire monitoring, prevention, and management is strongly needed for a rapidly changing Arctic (McCarty et al, 2020 Potentially expanding existing efforts or coordinating with new initiatives to incorporate the five other Indigenous permanent participants, as well as more efforts from the science and disaster response agencies of the eight member states and the expertise of other Arctic Council working groups, could create the type of community-and Arctic-centric science needed for Pan-Arctic fire policies and to increase the capacity for the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic to monitor and protect their Arctic homelands (Wilson, 2020)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century

McCarty¹,

Aalto²,

Paunu³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In recent years, the Pan-Arctic region has experienced increasingly extreme fire seasons. Fires in the northern high latitudes are driven by current and future climate change, lightning, fuel conditions, and human activity. In this context, conceptualizing and parameterizing current and future Arctic fire regimes will be important for fire and land management as well as understanding current and predicting future fire emissions. The objectives of this review were driven by policy questions identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group and posed to its Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers. This review synthesises current understanding of the changing Arctic and boreal fire regimes, particularly as fire activity and its response to future climate change in the Pan-Arctic has consequences for Arctic Council states aiming to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the north. The conclusions from our synthesis are the following: (1) Current and future Arctic fires, and the adjacent boreal region, are driven by natural (i.e., lightning) and human-caused ignition sources, including fires caused by timber and energy extraction, prescribed burning for landscape management, and tourism activities. Little is published in the scientific literature about cultural burning by Indigenous populations across the Pan-Arctic and questions remain on the source of ignitions above 70° N in Arctic Russia. (2) Climate change is expected to make Arctic fires more likely by increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, increased lightning activity, and drier vegetative and ground fuel conditions. (3) To some extent, shifting agricultural land use, forest-steppe to steppe, tundra-to-taiga, and coniferous-to-deciduous forest transitions in a warmer climate may increase and decrease open biomass burning. However, at the country- and landscape-scales, these relationships are not well established. (4) Current black carbon and PM2.5 emissions from wildfires above 50° N and 65° N are larger than emissions from the anthropogenic sectors of residential combustion, transportation, and flaring, respectively. Wildfire emissions have increased from 2010 to 2020, particularly above 60° N, with 56 % of black carbon emissions above 65° N in 2020 attributed to open biomass burning – indicating how extreme the 2020 wildfire season was and future Arctic wildfire seasons potential. (5) What works in the boreal zones to prevent and fight wildfires may not work in the Arctic. Fire management will need to adapt to a changing climate, economic development, the Indigenous and local communities, and fragile northern ecosystems, including permafrost and peatlands. (6) Factors contributing to the uncertainty of predicting and quantifying future Arctic fire regimes include underestimation of Arctic fires by satellite systems, lack of agreement between Earth observations and official statistics, and still needed refinements of location, conditions, and previous fire return intervals on peat and permafrost landscapes. This review highlights that much research is needed in order to understand the local and regional impacts of the changing Arctic fire regime on emissions and the global climate, ecosystems and Pan-Arctic communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century

McCarty¹,

Aalto²,

Paunu³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…While aspects of biodiversity are touched upon across several of the Council's subsidiary bodies, the CAFF Working Group is the primary instrument through which the Council addresses biodiversity [9] with a mandate to address the conservation of Arctic biodiversity, and to communicate its findings to the governments and residents of the Arctic, helping to promote practices which ensure the sustainability of the Arctic's living resources [34]. It does so through monitoring what is happening to Arctic biodiversity, assessing changes detected and, based on the outcomes from these activities, developing policy recommendations and management advice designed to contribute towards informed decision making (Figure 1).…”

Section: Arctic Council and Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the Council is not a Multi-Lateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) it reflects many of their concerns, e.g., through efforts to ensure synergies, create more effective governance and set priorities leading to the development of legally binding agreements [9]. The importance of linkages between the Council and MEAs that touch on the Arctic can be seen in how its activities inform the work of MEAs and in some cases contribute towards their formation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Council, however, has no overall strategy to guide its activities or evaluate any impact its activities may have to help ascertain if its goals are being achieved, hindering its ability to address broader issues such as climate change and sustainable development [9]. While the Council as a whole does not yet have a strategic plan, each of its Working Groups have strategic documents defining overarching goals [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the Council as a whole does not yet have a strategic plan, each of its Working Groups have strategic documents defining overarching goals [13][14][15][16][17][18]. However, only two specify in detail the actions needed to achieve these goals, i.e., the Actions for Arctic Biodiversity 2013-2021: implementing the recommendations of the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (Actions for Arctic Biodiversity) [15] and the Arctic Marine Strategic Plan 2015-2025 (AMSP) [17], thereby providing a reporting mechanism and a potential framework to facilitate the evaluation of the effectiveness of the Council [9]. The absence of obligated reporting as to how Arctic states are following up on the implementation of the Council's recommendations also lends itself to a lack of transparency as to how, or if, states act on outcomes from the Council's work, meaning that while the Council's impacts on a global scale are visible, detecting the effects of the Council's work at national or sub-national levels is difficult.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Does the Arctic Council Support Conservation of Arctic Biodiversity?

et al. 2020

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The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among Arctic states, indigenous communities, and peoples on issues of common importance. The rising geo-political importance of the Arctic and the onset of climate change has resulted in the Council becoming a focus of increasing interest from both inside and beyond the Arctic. This has resulted in new demands placed on the Council, attracting an increasing number of participants, and instigating a period of transformation as Arctic states work to find a way to balance conflicting demands to improve the Council’s effectiveness and take care of national interests. This paper considers whether, during this time of change, the Council is having an impact on the issues it was formed to address, i.e., environmental protection and sustainable development. To provide answers, it looks at how the Council reports on and evaluates progress towards the implementation of recommendations it makes regarding biodiversity, how it identifies where activities have had impacts and uncovers the mechanisms through which they were successful, to provide an insight into how the Arctic Council can be an agent of change.

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