New Strategies to Mitigate Arctic Climate Warming
10.10.2006 - Other
Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks proposed four policy strategies aimed at sustaining the people and environment of the Arctic in the face of global and regional warming. Their research focused on Alaska as a particularly appropriate case study because its ecosystem services such as water, food and fuel, which are key processes that mediate climate effects on society, are critical to the sustainability of rural livelihoods and culture.
- The first strategy focuses on enhancing humans' adaptability to a warming climate by integrating science and technology with local knowledge, and by integrating science, management and local needs.
- The second strategy focuses on enhancing the resiliency of people and the environment to significant social and ecological change.
- The third strategy focuses on reducing human and environmental vulnerability by effectively communicating to the public how the effects of high-latitude (Arctic) climate warming are linked to their low-latitude causes.
- The fourth strategy is to facilitate transformation, which means the ability of people to look at the changing world and their place in it in new and unknown ways.
Despite the challenges of sustaining the beneficial attributes of complex social-ecological systems in the face of multiple large-scale directional changes, including climate warming, the scientists believe that the above strategies will provide societal benefits, and suggest that all must be pursued simultaneously.
