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

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Chapter 4 · Physical and socio-economic environment

~1200 scenarios assessed during the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5), as well as on other future studies recently undertaken by national and international institutions. The Barents area has never been insulated from the external world. Since ancient times, people living in the region have been involved in long-distance trade and exchanges, and over the past 1000 years the vast territories and natural resources of the North have gradually been unlocked. First, the region was made the object of taxation, colonization, and Christianization.With the rise of territorial states, contested boundaries were drawn and the divided areas were integrated into the nation states that emerged in northern Europe after the French Revolution. Exploration and conquest of the Arctic became important tasks for the new nation states, and through waves of industrialization, starting in the late 19th century, the economies of the North were totally transformed. During the Second World War and the Cold War, the Barents area was a focal point in the rivalry between the superpowers.Thus, the region has always been shaped by developments and events originating outside the region.What is new today is the scale, scope and intensity of the external linkages and interactions. The Barents area has become increasingly interconnected with social, economic, political, and cultural processes and changes worldwide. This includes the flow of trade and investment, migration, governance systems, and the spread of knowledge and ideas. These non-climate-related drivers are of great importance both for the transformation of the region and for the ability to cope with global warming. The consequences of climate change will always depend on societies’ vulnerability and adaptive capacity, which are largely determined by human and economic resources, institutions and policies. As pointed out in the last Arctic Human Development Report, “ While the climate in the Arctic is changing, in a number of studies of communities in the region, the impact of climate change on adaptation of communities to change is rather minimal compared to many other factors ” (Heleniak, 2014: 91).This is captured in the notion of ‘multiple exposure’, which points to the many- faceted threats and hazards that local communities typically face (Kelman et al., 2015). Climate scenarios are alsobasedon socio-economic assumptions (Andrew, 2014). The IPCC’s latest climate change projections are based on selected time- and space-dependent trajectories of concentrations of greenhouse gases and pollutants resulting from human activities. These are known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and are commonly known as RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5, with the number representing the radiative forcing level in 2100.A broader range of socio-economic assumptions can be explored using a more expansive set of socio-economic scenarios assessed by the IPCC (Clarke et al., 2014; Krey et al., 2014). Figure 4.17 shows the key socio-economic drivers (population, economic activity, energy consumption) and the associated global average temperatures as reported by the IPCC (Krey et al., 2014). Rapid global change makes the future of the Barents area increasingly uncertain and thus more difficult to predict. To date the approach has largely been to extrapolate current trends

both are regulated by dams which means discharge is not only affected by changes in climate.More details concerning rivers and runoff are reported in the SWIPA update (Prowse et al., 2017) and Chapter 2. 4.4.5 Avalanches Avalanches are a common phenomenon in all areas with steep mountainsides and a seasonal snow cover, and this includes the Barents area where such events occur mainly in Norway.They also occur in Sweden, Finland and Russia. In the High Arctic, on Svalbard and in Franz Josef Land, there are numerous events every year. Avalanches are classified by the water content of the snow during an event. Dry snow avalanches occur where cold winter snow prevails, usually in a continental climate.Wet snow avalanches and slush flows occur in a coastal maritime climate or during spring melt in the Arctic. In Norway, three to four avalanche fatalities are reported each year on average, many in the northern regions of Finnmark and Troms, as well as Spitsbergen. Rising temperatures and increasing precipitation are changing the types and abundance of avalanches.While wet snow avalanches and slush flows were previously known only around the spring melt in Spitsbergen, events in recent years have occurred around mid-winter in February and March. These resulted from intense rain and unusually high temperatures (Hansen et al., 2014). This indicates a shift from dry cold winters (continental climate) to a more maritime coastal climate, even in the High Arctic. If this trend continues, avalanche types and return periods known from southwestern Norway will be seen more frequently in the coastal continental areas of the Barents area, while the Arctic islands will experience avalanches of the type currently common along the coast of Troms and Finnmark. Hazard zoning based on avalanche frequency analysis for data from previous decades (1961–1990) will thus need to be revised to reflect the changes taking place under Arctic warming. A general description of the Barents area, including information on the population, employment, main industries, living conditions and systems of governance is given in Chapter 2. Current and projected changes in regional climate and the physical environment are addressed in Sections 4.2 to 4.4. These changes in climatological and meteorological variables (temperature, precipitation, snow, wind, waves, ice, icebergs) are affecting the region’s ecosystems, and general conditions for human development. This is addressed in Chapter 6. However, climate change is but one of several factors that will change the current characteristics of the region; it is exposed to multiple other challenges, and climate change interacts with these social, economic and political drivers in complex ways. The focus of this section is on the key socio-economic drivers that will shape the future of this region and affect the ability of its communities to deal with climate change. The drivers are summarized in terms of six megatrends based on the key global drivers in the 4.5 Socio-economic drivers: global megatrends and multiple exposure