DOI: 10.5443/11315
title: Community Adaptation and Vulnerability In Arctic Regions (CAVIAR) [Canada]

description: This project represents the Canadian component of the international IPY CAVIAR consortium. The research is designed to systematically assess the vulnerability of communities across the circumpolar north to changing environmental conditions, including climate change, and to identify opportunities to enhance the adaptive capacities of communities to sustain their natural resources, livelihoods and well-being. The project involves case studies, using a common methodology, to document exposures and adaptive strategies to deal with changing conditions. Exposures are identified by the local communities themselves, contributing to the development of community involvement in research. The research integrates natural science, social science and traditional knowledge, and is undertaken in collaboration with northern community members (through consultations and employing community members, often youth, as research assistants). Ethnographic fieldwork includes community-based research via interviews, focus groups, and participatory observation, as well as feedback visits for confirmation of findings and local dissemination. CAVIAR primarily collects qualitative data sets (interview and focus group recordings, which are subsequently transcribed). Research participants are northerners speaking to exposure-sensitivities and adaptive strategies in northern communities, and range from youth to elders. Quantitative data include detailed weekly hunting land use data in GPS format for hunters in Iqaluit (on-going) and georeferenced surficial geology polygons, sediment samples, landscape hazard examples, infrastructure foundation types and photographs of surficial sediment classes and landscape hazards in Clyde River. Within Canada, CAVIAR is connected to three ArcticNet NCE projects: "Adaptation in a Changing Arctic: Ecosystem Services, Communities and Policy", "Instability of Coastal Landscapes in Arctic Communities and Regions" and "Understanding and Responding to the Effects of Climate Change and Modernization in Nunatsiavut". CAVIAR Canada is also linked with a SSHRC Northern Communities Grant ("Feeding the family during times of change"), Health Canada's Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program, the Northern Climate ExChange's Yukon Community Adaptation project, and a SSHRC Northern Communities Grant (C-TAC, "Climate Change and Tourism Change in Northern Communities: A Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment").
description: Purpose: The assessment of vulnerabilities and adaptations has been identified as a priority area for research by policy makers, local and indigenous communities, the ACIA, the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), and the International Polar Year planning committee. The underlying purpose of the CAVIAR IPY project is to better understand how Arctic communities are affected by environmental and socio-economic changes in order to contribute to the development of adaptive strategies and policies. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) (2005) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007) outlined warming and attendant decreases in permafrost and sea ice for the Canadian Arctic. While there is general agreement that changes in climate, and associated conditions, are likely to pose significant challenges for communities, the nature of these risks and the most effective means of dealing with them are poorly understood. The particular environmental conditions to which local communities are sensitive have yet to be comprehensively documented. The strategies employed to deal with changing conditions in communities across the Arctic, and their effectiveness, have not been assessed. The conditions that facilitate or constrain the adaptive capacity or resilience of Arctic communities have not been substantiated. The wealth of information from local and indigenous knowledge has yet to be integrated with scientific knowledge to understand the nature of the opportunities to better deal with changing conditions. The broad goal of the CAVIAR research program is to enhance the theory, empirical understanding, and practical application of processes that shape adaptation and vulnerability in communities across the polar region by: further developing the concept of vulnerability and refining an integrative interdisciplinary research framework for vulnerability studies; applying the framework to a selection of communities across the Canadian Arctic to identify the social and environmental factors, processes and interactions that shape differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity; comparing results among Arctic communities to identify commonalities and transferable lessons; and improving understanding of interrelations between local vulnerability and decision-making related to adaptation, across multiple scales from local to international.
description: Summary: Climate change and its resultant effects are likely to pose significant challenges to communities, but the nature of these challenges and effective ways of dealing with them are poorly understood. To this end, this project is assessing the vulnerability of communities across the Arctic to changing environmental conditions and helping to identify opportunities to enhance adaptive capacities to sustain natural resources, livelihoods and well-being. Through community case studies, this research is drawing on scientific, local and traditional knowledge to identify conditions that contribute to more sustainable northern communities in the circumpolar region.