Activity Report
Background
UArctic builds and strengthens collective resources and collaborative infrastructure, thereby enabling member institutions to better serve their constituents and their regions. UArctic members cooperate with each other on multiple levels, focusing on faculty, institutional leadership, and international collaboration. UArctic represents its members’ interests internationally by promoting their diverse and shared capacity to serve northern communities and interests. UArctic is the North’s only truly circumpolar higher education network and one of the world’s largest education and research networks.
UArctic Thematic Networks and Institutes form a natural framework for development of UArctic education and research providing an optimal structure for increasing the knowledge generation and sharing across the North. UArctic Institutes are self-governing units devoted to research, monitoring, and education throughout the Arctic. Empowered by local knowledge and international level academic expertise, they facilitate development of multidisciplinary solutions for challenges in the Arctic.
UArctic is one of the ICARP IV partner organisations contributing to the process leading to both ICARP IV and IPY 2032-33 and for making sure that UArctic’s contribution considers its diversity, gender and geographical balance a task force was created. Task force has planned UArctic’s community events for gathering the input on research priorities to be developed further in ICARP IV Research Priority Teams.
UArctic aims to engage with all of its about 200 members, which vary from large universities to small local colleges, from research institutions to Indigenous organizations. In addition to contacting UArctic members, a specific discussion was done with UArctic Thematic Networks and during their annual meeting in late April 2023 and with UArctic member representatives at the annual assembly meeting in May 2023.
Community engagement process
The starting point of the community engagement was an open online survey which collected personal opinions of people’s most pressing challenges in their lives. The survey asked respondents to relate those to the northern "region of interest", and in addition to thinking about the current time, it also asked them to think about the 10 years ahead. The region of interest could be the area of the Circumpolar North where they live, work, originally come from, do research in/about, or have any another connection. The survey was launched on March 1 and kept open until April 11, 2023. The survey received 46 responses. The results were compiled and analysed by looking at the results based on a) region, b) age group as we are interested to see particularly youth perspective, (c) gender, and (d) interdisciplinary clusters of challenges.
The results were analysed, presented and discussed in the UArctic Thematic Networks leadership team meeting held in Rovaniemi, Finland in April 25-27, 2023 and were discussed in a pre-meeting and networking session organised during the UArctic Assembly meeting in Quebec city, Canada in May 22 – 26, 2023. The results were compiled into the graphs and presentations which were also presented at ICARP IV session at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland in October 2023 and graphs were available for feedback at the UArctic website until December 2023. The compilation of these community engagement survey and feedback is attached in Annex 1.
Results of the UArctic community engagement
UArctic is a membership organization committed to creating better lives for people in the North. Through cooperation in education, research, and outreach UArctic enhances human capacity in the North, promotes viable communities and sustainable economies, and forges global partnerships. Keeping all this in mind, UArctic’s community engagement and research needs and priorities are centered around the people in the Arctic and neighboring regions.
People, regardless of their origin, country, or culture, are affected by the biggest global threats: climate and environmental change and globalization. Climate change affects people and communities directly and indirectly, it affects environment, lands, waters and biodiversity surrounded by people, economy and livelihoods, traditional ways of living and modern cities, infrastructures, and transport and in so many other ways. The challenges (Figure 1) faced are local but often have global consequences and it is well known that Arctic amplification affects global climate and its weather patterns. Main climate change effects identified were permafrost thaw and infrastructure failures caused by it, biodiversity loss, new and invasive species introduced to Arctic, and how climate change affects Indigenous cultures and their livelihoods. Food and water security, quality of life, cultural preservation, socioeconomic pressures were listed. There is growing concern about biosecurity: microviruses and contaminants released due to permafrost thaw needs biosurveillance and monitoring, including human security perspective. Research with holistic view is needed and different mitigation and adaptation measures are needed for resilience. There is a need to understand the rate and scale of change and feedback processes.
Globalisation with growing trade across the Arctic Ocean and interest for natural resources can have major influence on Arctic communities. Current geopolitical situation needs views on security from inside the Arctic, not from the outside.
Education creates a global view of the World, but how and what to educate should not be globally decided but based on local needs (Figure 2). The relation between education and capacity building is important. There are different needs in different regions, different ways of communicating which sometimes need for innovative solutions. Skill building is needed for training personnel in the North as there is often mismatch of education and demand. Training of trainers and teachers te, passing the knowledge to new people, foot paths of ancestors were mentioned. Local training in local languages, skills training developed and enrolment of local and Indigenous communities were considered meaningful. Important question is how can education serve Arctic and where are possibilities in western education for Indigenous education? Digitalization can be a tool in places where digital tools can be reached, but online teaching resources and education must be co-created with Indigenous communities. Equal access to higher education in all regions needs increasing online offerings.
Educating stakeholders and connecting socio-economic thinking to education was stated. This is important for creating critical Arctic studies which would be available for global markets, business, tourism companies and tourists. Sustainable, respectful of Indigenous cultures and nondisruptive tourism should be offered to everyone, including through means of A massive open online courses (MOOCs).
Thirdly, mitigation and adaptation are needed, but how to do those in sustained way without hampering people’s lives and cultures? Can the same action be acceptable and sustainable in one region and the opposite in another? Everyone who lives in the Arctic knows that Arctic is not homogenous and therefore globally acceptable actions, such as windmills or electric cars, can be a labeled as green colonialism as they threaten the Indigenous Peoples culture and livelihood. This is particularly a case in Nordic countries, in Sápmi, Sámi homeland where reindeer husbandry is threatened by windmill farms and mining, also for those rare minerals needed for electric car batteries. This has created conflicts, very often because there are no two-way dialogues, no respect, and no understanding of the needs of either side. Critical perspective on economy; growth versus non-growth, how to ensure the extractive industries do not decrease the quality of life in the Arctic? There is a need to understand and learn and to do research on alternative ways of mitigation against climate change. Sustainable use of natural resources, including mining, is important. Restoration and climate-friendly processes and responsible tourists are needed. Reusing and recycling, circular economy and how can environmental challenges be turned into circular economy business opportunities? Figure 3 gives examples of issues raised in green transition, use of natural resources and what kind of socio-economic measures must be taken into account.
Research cannot be planned without thinking how to do it ethically (Figure 4). This is particularly true in the Arctic where lands and waters have been occupied for thousands of years by Indigenous Peoples. Research has to respect different ways of knowing and it has to consider/include all knowledge systems, Indigenous and local Knowledge and western science. Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary research , citizen science and/or community-based monitoring are needed for finding ways to adapt and mitigate against climate change and globalization related challenges. Efficient detection and monitoring of changes in biodiversity is needed. For that, engagement of stakeholders, decision-makers, citizens and Indigenous People (citizen science) is required. A holistic system approach cutting across the existing categories and disciplines has to be adopted by funding agencies calling for novel and sustainable funding models. Ethical and inclusive research is very important. The problem is that the short-term funding system doesn't enable long-term relationships as one never knows if one can get another funding and continue working with a community, where one has built relationship and trust. There are great ethical frameworks and collaborative, decolonial methodologies are also being developed but there is need to develop more.
Key questions related to ICAPR IV process:
- How do we create a pan-arctic approach to research and use research on pressing challenges, especially at times of geopolitical tension and exclusion of the Russian Arctic?
- How can ICARP IV Research priorities have the greatest impact? And what are the metrics of progress? What processes enable impact (local to global)?
- How do we develop processes that integrate and couple economic wellbeing, governance, resources allocation, human preparedness and resilience, and environmental sustainability challenges?
- What types of awareness and education are needed at a local level? And how can this be enabled for broader and more nuanced understandings? And how are the processes and knowledge mobilized?
- How are these priorities different or differently prioritized from region to region?
- What are the kinds of generational solutions that will prove valuable 30 to 50 years from now? And considering immediate urgencies as well as circular timelines?
Download the Final Project Report
Main Organisers:
- University of the Arctic
- Contact:
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Type of Activity
- Workshop
- Community Listening Session
- Survey
Dates and Location
- February 2023 | Online
- 25 - 26 April 2023 | Rovaniemi (Finland)
- 22 - 27 May 2023 | Quebec City (Canada)