[SOUND] [MUSIC] Which is correct? A, thawing permafrost leads to loss of lakes only, B, thawing permafrost leads to creation of lakes only, C, thawing permafrost leads to both creation and loss of lakes or D, thawing permafrost has no effect on the permanence of lakes? The answer is C. Thawing permafrost leads to both creation and loss of lakes. >> So, far we have learned a lot about different science topics in the Arctic and research on those topics but we have to remind ourselves why are we doing this research. And the reason is for you and for me, in other words the human world being which improves the quality of life for people. In this section we will look about, look at the peoples who live in the Arctic. And there are several groups of indigenous peoples who have lived for generations, many thousands of years throughout the Arctic. There are also the residents who arrived in the Arctic about 1,000 years, for example, the Vikings that colonized Iceland and the Faro Islands, and then the more recent migrants who have been attracted to exploit resources, mining towns, for example, in the Arctic, and create cities there. Altogether, there are about 13 million people. And if we take a wide definition of the Arctic, spread across about 21 and a half million square kilometers. And you see on the map the major settlements, the major cities that are the more recent centers of population in the Arctic. These population centers vary enormously in size and density of population from for example Murmansk in Northernmost Russia and settlements in the far north of Canada with just groups of houses and detached from the mainland. These settlements, such as the one here in Canada, of indigenous peoples, have been disconnected with the rest of the world for thousands of years, mainly because of their isolation, the extreme environment, and although there have been links, these have been much less than elsewhere in the world. Communications have even today in Canada are not good because less than half of all the roads in the Canadian North are wet weather roads. In other words, the communication roads break down in bad weather and in winter. In the Russian far north, there are approximately 12,000 kilometers of or ice roads, on which communities depend for communication. The Arctic peoples, therefore, that have lived in these isolated conditions have to be very resourceful and very adaptive to change. The activities of peoples in the Arctic vary from subsistence activities like reindeer herding, use of reindeer, reindeer hunting, fish, seal hunting, all the way through to major resource extraction of precious metals, and of course, fossil fuels. About a quarter of the world's fossil fuels remain in the Arctic. And with climate change they're becoming more accessible. The Arctic peoples, and particularly the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, are facing two unprecedented changes together which will challenge their resilience. The first is globalization. Because although the communication between the Arctic and the rest of the world has been very poor and is dramatically increasing now with a big impact of western civilization, if you like, on the Arctic people. That is the major change that is taking place. But in addition to that, at the same time, these people have to adapt to many aspects of climate change. And just to give you some views of the way peoples lives have changed by globalization. Here are indigenous peoples of northernmost Siberia using mobile phones, an everyday form of life. But they're still using reindeer. And on the right hand side, you see a reindeer herd on a very modern road in the north of Finland. A mixture of modern development of infrastructure, but traditional land use practices. Although climate change has occurred before, many times in the Earth's history, what is new for the Arctic people is that before, they were less dependent on infrastructures. For example, roads, airstrips, hospitals and arm schools for education. So, in the past because they didn't depend on infrastructure, it's much easier for them to move to where the climate was more appropriate and the resources for food were most appropriate. So, they could follow the climate changes moving backwards and forwards. Today they can't move big cities, they can't move resources so easily. And, one other aspect of the climate change which affects them very badly, is that today the weather conditions for every day routines are unpredictable. And here, you just see one common example of a truck going through an ice road, because the ice conditions are less predictable, and that may happen with ice platforms, the hunting of seals, or whales, or fish. Communities are also at risk from extreme events, this example is from in the Cabini Mountains of the Peninsula where the town is surrounded by mountains and is very prone to avalanches, and here in the bottom corner you can see a mountain pass. With a road going along that path, which is very vulnerable to avalanches. And on the right, you see a group of people who have these canons to dislodge the avalanches. But we are very bad at predicting avalanches and that unpredictability is going to be more risky for people's lives Food security. Getting everyday food for the people in the Arctic is also becoming concerned. And it is affected by globalization, depends on western package and convenience food increases and that brings along with it diseases like diabetes which was unheard of 70 years ago in the Arctic. So, that globalization effect of dependence on western food is having an impact. But the same time, the herding, gathering of traditional foods, and hunting, is becoming less reliable through climate change. An example here is in the two pictures. I've talked before about icing events. And the way that icing events lead to reindeer death. One third of all wild reindeer have been killed in the last 30 years, probably by these extreme events in the that I talked about before, but that means that the provision of food is less reliable now than it ever has been for these people. Some measures are already underway, it's not all doom and gloom. And there are subsidies which are being changed to support better food types, and hunter support groups, and many other actions. So, this is not just a bad story. One approach to understand the changes in food security and other local changes. It's to consider people as part of an ecosystem. We can't consider ecosystems without considering people because they both depend on ecosystems and they effect ecosystems. And we have a term which originated about 15 years ago called ecosystem services, and climate change affects ecosystem services. We can think of three groups of ecosystem services. One is provisioning ecosystem services. They are used directly by people. They include fish, reindeer, berries and so on. There is another category called regulatory ecosystem services. They affect our lives but we don't use them directly, and they include the storage and release of greenhouse gases, carbon, and the supply and natural purification of water, water resources. These are regulatory ecosystem services. The third group are cultural ecosystem services. They include things we find beautiful, things we want, places we want to go to, and spirituality. To try to understand these ecosystem services researchers have been working in Swedish Lapland to discuss and evaluate these services with local people. And only then when we identify them and their value can we begin to focus in on what we should be understanding in the context of climate change. And I can't describe this diagram in detail, but here you see many different categories of issues important to indigenous [INAUDIBLE] reindeer herders of northern Sweden. Scientists and Arctic peoples need to improve the ways in which they work together. So far, you've heard about the indigenous peoples and Arctic peoples, before that, you heard about science. What I want to talk about now is the way these two come together. They are beginning together, but not sufficiently. Arctic people are holders of traditional ecological knowledge. We call it T.K. and that's based on learning over thousands of years from experiences which have helped them to survive. So, if the knowledge was not important, they wouldn't have survived or if the knowledge was wrong they wouldn't scientists are learning from this knowledge. One of the good example of this is the Sami have about 300 words for snow. And scientists have been working with Sami reindeer herders. Here this group includes Sami reindeer herder, the hunched figure. There are other Sami reindeer herders there, linguists, climate people, snow people, ecologists, all looking at what the Sami see when they look at the snow. So, scientists are learning from the indigenous people. That's how we can learn from the indigenous people, but on the other hand, scientists need to communicate their results more effectively toward the people. They have to not just work themselves in the scientific community, but try to improve the well being that the people still living in the Arctic. So, it's important that the research they do is more relevant, and it is also important is this complex graphic tries to show it's important they work at a scale which is useful to the Arctic peoples, but also a scale which is useful for scientists. On the left, you see a model of what will happen to vegetation in the Arctic over 100 years time, the whole of the Arctic. Scientists need to do that to understand the effect of vegetation on climate. One right, you see a completely different approach, which is a model at ten kilometers, showing vegetation changes at ten kilometers, and that tells the reindeer herders what their areas of grazing will be like in the future. That is what is useful to them. Another area where local communities and researchers can work better together is cities and science, and in this framework communities monitor their own environments and participate in scientific research. Another point of contact between scientists and communities is working together to plan how they will adapt to changing climate. Such and the impacts of that changing climate, such as permafrost thaw. In this example, researchers are working with a community of Salluit in Northern Quebec, as this community is threatened by permafrost thaw. This is a community in Salluit, and you see it nesting in a valley between mountain slopes. What's happening, it's getting warmer, the permafrost is thawing. Here you can see a thaw slump and that is going to effect the infrastructures, and is effecting infrastructures in some cases. We need to know where to build. As simple as that. So, the approach is to look at all the aspects of environmental change, put them together and make a risk assessment map. This map shows you, in different colors, where it's safe to build, the green areas, where it's not safe to build, the red areas. So, this is an excellent and highly appropriate, highly relevant exercise between researchers and communities. The next session, we'll discuss not just the people who are living in the Arctic and how they're affected by climate change, but how the rest of the world is affected by a climate change. How it affects us and how the scientist see the big view. >> Which is true? A, ecosystem services are provisioning services used directly by people. B, ecosystem services are regulatory services affecting people's life, but not used directly. C, ecosystem services are cultural services that include aesthetic values, spirituality, and sense of place.
