When you talk about climate change in the Arctic, it must encompass both the ecosystem and communities. Resilience acknowledges the deep interconnection where the wellbeing of one directly impacts the other. Inuit with their remarkable ability, exemplify resilience by continually having to evolve strategies to mitigate the effects of a warming climate.
Two girls run with excitement as they prepare for a cultural presentation at the Community Center in Mittimatalik. Nunavut, Canada, 2024
Photography By Pamela EA
RESEARCH
Definition editing by Zahra Saifee
Research by Delphi Drake Mudede
Fact-checking by Hailey Basiouny
November 7, 2024
• Climate resilience is essential for communities to combat the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. Resilience speaks to anticipating, preparing,
and responding to these negative climate disasters, such as fires and floods,
while also building communities that are able to mitigate effects of chronic climate changes such as sea level rise, temperature rise, and ice melt.27
• The Arctic is experiencing environmental degradation at an unprecedented rate
on a millennial timescale. More than 85 percent of Alaska Native villages are impacted by coastal erosion and flooding, and though these communities have a history of adaptation to challenging environments, resilience in the face of accelerated change is much more difficult.
• Aboriginal Peoples in Canada have diverse notions of resilience grounded in culturally distinctive concepts of the person that connect people to community and the environment, the importance of collective history, the richness of Aboriginal languages and traditions, as well as individual and collective agency and activism.28
• Combining indigenous perspectives with western science is needed to create resilient solutions, because a combination of both can address gaps in each. For example, a program called SmartICE pairs traditional Inuit knowledge with data collection buoys and electromagnetic sensors to give northern communities real-time measurements of sea ice thickness along their travel routes. It uses lived knowledge of an area and then fills in gaps or changed conditions with technology, showing a more accurate picture of the arctic landscape.29
