Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

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Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

9.4.3 Barriers and limits to adaptation Adaptation options for responding to changing conditions are embedded in how society facilitates the implementation of adaptation strategies. But although a municipality or primary sector may be aware of the best strategies to use for any given situation, it may be that there are barriers and limits to their use. Thus,to fullyunderstandadaptationoptions also requires attention to barriers and limits.One view is that these barriers and limits can be expressed as the absence of the factors that drive or facilitate the processes and governance of adaptation, such as lack of capacity building,lack of flexibility to diversify livelihoods,or inaccessible knowledge. But this does not help in defining and identifying adaptation options; an understanding of the reasons behind the barriers and limits becomes critical. However, according to the IPCC increasedunderstanding of barriers and limits to adaptation has not yet resulted in systematized,description-focused analyses (IPCC, 2014a). This is underscored by the Barents area studies presented in this assessment, which show there are clear barriers and limits to implementing adaptationwarranting attention (see Chapter 10 for a discussion of barriers at a more aggregate level). It could be argued that there is a need to understand better the systemic factors at the national level that to date have reduced the negative impacts of globalization, but that may with increased urbanization result in increased outmigration from rural areas (Keskitalo and Southcott, 2015).

In Finnish Lapland, the tourism and forestry sectors are forerunners in climate awareness and were the first to bring climate viewpoints to the regional development strategies (Mettiäinen, 2013). Community adaptation and vulnerability assessments in northern Norway have found that the perceived need to adapt varies considerably between occupational groups within the same communities (e.g. Hovelsrud et al., 2015; Dannevig and Hovelsrud, 2016).While municipal spatial planners perceive planned adaptation to be necessary, fishers and fish industry actors do not and argue that they always adapt to changing conditions (Hovelsrud et al., 2015). Other studies suggest that perceptions of high adaptive capacity may mask the need to develop adaptation strategies, and thereby increase vulnerability to changing conditions (e.g. West and Hovelsrud, 2010). A perception that adaptation is not needed (Dannevig et al., 2013) and a lack of political commitment (Himanen et al., 2012) are both barriers to developing adaptation strategies. A study that engaged community stakeholders in co-production of climate change knowledge was only successful with municipal officials; fishers did not perceive such knowledge to be of interest (Hovelsrud et al., 2015; Dannevig and Hovelsrud, 2016). Such perceptions may create barriers for developing adaptation strategies, which in the long-term may exacerbate the consequences of changing conditions.

When assessing barriers and limits, it is useful to examine lessons learned from climate adaptation that are applicable to other cumulative effects of changing conditions (including climate change). Those identified for the Barents area span a broad range of complex and unexpected factors and can be loosely categorized in the following terms: motivation and the perceived need to adapt; trade-offs between adaptation concerns and mandatory and more pressing tasks; available and relevant knowledge; lack of resources; transferability of national goals and guidelines to local concerns; unclear responsibilities and insufficient frameworks; and ignoring local and indigenous knowledge. perceived need to adapt Motivation for adaptation may be divided into motivation in terms of agency and capacity of an individual or community to cope with change, and the perceived need to adapt (e.g. to projected climate change). The distinction is related to the difference between reactive and planned (proactive) adaptation. For actors involved in natural resource based activities, adaptation is motivated largely by impacts on the production factors that in turn determine the economic outcome and potential for continued livelihood (Keskitalo, 2008). 9.4.3.1 Motivation and the

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Sovietskaya Street, Yar-Sale, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, 1993 (upper) and 2017 (lower)