DOI: 10.18739/a2zw18t65
title: Assessing Knowledge, Resilience & Adaptation and Policy Needs in Northern Russian Villages Experiencing Unprecedented Climate Change

description: This project's primary objective is to assess the knowledge, resilience &amp;amp; adaptation, and policy needs of rural Viliui Sakha communities, a geographically and ethnically underrepresented group in northeastern Siberia, Russia, who face an uncertain future due to the unprecedented local effects of global climate change (GCC). The project aims to fulfill that objective by partnering with communities to explore local perceptions, responses, and ways to effectively address the local issues of GCC. The project is a four-village, three-year collaborative effort involving participation of village residents, native specialists and field assistants, an in-country research community and international collaborators. The project PI Crate has worked with the targeted communities for sixteen years and is fluent in both the native Sakha and Russian languages. Crate's 2003-2006 community sustainability project revealed that Viliui Sakha inhabitants consider the local effects of GCC to be their most substantial barrier to continued subsistence and residency. The proposed project represents a continuation of that research by assessing knowledge about the local impacts of GCC on the community, regional and Republic levels in order to decipher what is known and what needs to be known to fill knowledge gaps and positively inform community life. The project objectives are to: 1) Develop community-levels rosters of past and present knowledge of and adaptation to climate change; 2) Operationalize those roster data to develop measures and gauge the resilience and adaptive capacity of households and communities facing GCC; 3) Document local elders' knowledge about climate change that is both applicable and pragmatic for use in contemporary village-level adaptive schemes; 4) Survey the relevant western science on GCC (beginning in-country and moving to international) in order to fill the gaps in local knowledge to facilitate community-level adaptation and understanding; 5) Appraise policy efforts at the local, regional, Republic and national levels for their utility and make recommendations accordingly. Methods to be employed include: focus groups, semi-structured interviews, surveys and secondary data analysis. This study integrates research and education by advancing discovery and understanding while at the same time promoting teaching, training, and learning in at least four substantial ways: 1) by conducting our field research with the active participation of four village communities and village-level research assistants; 2) by collaborating with an in-country research team; 3) by working with a research assistant and two graduate students for the project's duration; and 4) by collaborating with an international research partner. By working at the local, regional and Republic levels and through collaborating with the in-country research institute and other partners on climate issues, the project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education networks and partnerships. The project team will disseminate the results of the project widely to enhance scientific and technological understanding via academic and non-academic publications, a project website, and by generating a set of resource materials available to others interested in community based climate change projects. The proposed activity is designed to benefit society on several levels, by increasing the understanding of the local effects of GCC for the targeted communities, by producing resource materials to share that knowledge with other populations, to inform policy decisions, and to enhance research collaborations and exchanges.