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

process is that it can be used as an opportunity for learning across different knowledge communities and for challenging pre-defined ways of framing certain issues. The scenario methodology presented in Chapter 5 specifically links different potential trajectories for global megatrends with identifying issues that are relevant at the community or sector level. Chapter 8 and the Arctic Resilience Assessment focus on features of social-ecological systems that are central to adaptive capacity. One critical feature relevant to both society and ecosystems is diversity (see also Chapter 9). For example, livelihood diversity is a key element of resilience and highlights howmarket and non-market livelihoods can buffer one another when conditions are less than optimal (Chapters 8 and 9). As for ecosystems, species diversity is important, because it has been demonstrated to provide more functional redundancy within the ecosystem (Chapter 2). Chapter 8 also highlights the capacity to self-organize at the local scale, which includes having significant local decision- making authority. However, the fact that human activities often have implications beyond the local and beyond the present makes the role of local self-organization and power over decision-making complex, accentuating the need for more attention to how decisions, activities, and interactions across space and time have cumulative impacts on society in future that are difficult to foresee in the here and now. The complex processes behind anthropogenic climate change are a case in point. Some uncertainties and many specific risks related to impacts of climate change, such as more frequent extreme weather events, will remain unavoidable. Societies have often handled this type of risk with various forms of insurance. For risks that are difficult or very costly to avoid, adaptation action can therefore be a matter of deciding what level of risk is acceptable and how much to invest in buffer capacity or other types of insurance. Adaptation occurs in the context of multiple stressors shaped by cumulative and interacting impacts of climate change, globalization, demography, and market conditions. When changing socio-economic, environmental and political conditions create complex challenges for communities, livelihoods, sectors and municipalities, it is the totality of change that both requires adaptation and influences adaptation processes. What is emerging is a set of nested societal scales (broadly defined as local, regional, national, and international) in which the needs for adaptation, the capacity to adapt, the processes needed to address the changes, and the barriers and limits are situated. Governing adaptation must take these interconnected and nested scales into account. Moving beyond an analysis that focuses on drivers of change and the impacts to which society has to adapt, this chapter has emphasized adaptation as a social process.As such, adaptation needs to be understood both in different specific local contexts and within a larger global context and multilevel governance perspective that influences power over local and sectoral 10.4 Implications for decision-makers and further research

that facilitate transparent negotiations and resolutions of conflict between local, regional, national and global priorities.

10.3.2 Mainstreaming adaptation The idea of mainstreaming adaptation proposes the merging of climate change adaptation into existing policy, and promotion through existing agencies and institutions. In its fifth climate change assessment (AR5), the IPCC recognized climate-social policy linkages and suggested that mainstreaming as a policy approach may capture opportunities for adaptation otherwise not identified. Utilizing existing structures and institutions for adaptation planning saves resources and is arguably a more pragmatic approach. This approach is highly relevant for adaptation to multiple stressors and cumulative effects, not just to climate change. Local governments in Sweden, Norway and Finland are to some degree mainstreaming climate adaptation into land-use planning, risk and vulnerability assessment and management plans (Chapter 9).Amajor issue across the Fennoscandian cases studied is that climate change adaptation is not mandatory for authorities responsible for land-use planning, which has consequences for whether adaptation becomes a priority or not in relation to other tasks. 10.3.3 Taking uncertainty to heart The fact that global trends and major world events are likely to influence local communities in the Barents area creates an increasing need for local and regional capacity to assess global developments. Assessments of trends and drivers tend to be heavily influenced by current events, which highlights a need for caution in trying to make projections about the future.The inevitable uncertainty about the future makes it necessary to think about adaptation as a long-term process rather than a one-time activity. While society has many mechanisms for managing predictable change, uncertainties about the level and direction of change often create extra challenges. Given the many uncertainties related to the direction, magnitude and consequences of change in environmental, political, societal, economic and cultural conditions discussed earlier, there is a need to find approaches that take uncertainties to heart (‘assuming change’) (Chapter 8). Living with and planning under uncertainty is nothing new for any segment of society, as decisions are constantly made in an uncertain world. Nevertheless there are some approaches that address how to further assume and address such uncertainties. Two such approaches are discussed in this report, where Chapter 5 looks at the potential of exploratory scenarios and Chapter 8 looks at indicators that could help highlight the salient features of social-ecological systems that facilitate living with change. Exploratory scenarios are simplified descriptions of how the futuremay develop based on key driving forces and relationships and can be used for assessing whether current policy options are robust in the face of different potential futures. Such scenarios can be developed inmany ways, both top-down by experts who take their starting point in global processes and attempt to scale down relevant trends and by local participatory bottom- up processes. An advantage with a participatory bottom-up