Usteq: integrating indigenous knowledge and social and physical sciences to coproduce knowledge and support community-based adaptation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Arctic is in the midst of unprecedented and accelerating environmental change and will not return, for the foreseeable future, to a reliably frozen climate of recent past decades. Climate-forced population displacement, including community relocation, will be one of the greatest climate adaptation challenges for Alaska Native communities and the tribal, state and federal governing entities responsible for protecting community residents and providing technical assistance and resources. A new governance framework, based in human rights principles, must be created that can allow institutions to shift their efforts from protecting people in the places where they live to creating a relocation process when environmental and social thresholds are surpassed. Determining which communities are most likely to encounter displacement will require a sophisticated assessment of a community's ecosystem vulnerability to climate change, as well as the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of its social, economic and political structures. In Alaska, understanding the rate of environmental change through the integration of indigenous knowledge with physical and social science is essential. The article describes how this coproduction of knowledge is the foundation for this new governance framework and for transformational climate adaptation in Alaska.