Climate Change and Globalization in the Arctic An Integrated Approach to Vulnerability Assessment

Climate change vulnerability assessment - to assess people's overall vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change - is a rapidly developing field. However, despite the fact that major trends such as globalization and the changing characteristics of the political and economic governance systems are crucial in impacting and shaping a community's capacity to adapt to climate change, these trends are seldom included in climate change vulnerability assessments. This book addresses this shortcoming in that it first develops a methodology and framework for qualitative vulnerability assessment in 'multiple impact' studies (of climate change and globalization), and then applies the framework to several cases of renewable natural resource use across scales.

The book draws upon case studies of forestry and fishing - two of the largest sectors that rely on renewable natural resources - and reindeer herding in the European North. The study represents a bottom-up view, originating with the stakeholders themselves, of the degree to which stakeholders find adaptation to climate change possible and how they evaluate it in relation to their other concerns, notably economic and political ones. Moreover, the approach and research results include features that could be broadly generalized to other geographic areas or sectors characterized by renewable natural resource use.

Climate change vulnerability assessment is a rapidly developing field. However, despite the fact that such major trends as globalization and the changing characteristics of the political and economic governance systems are crucial in shaping a community‘s capacity to adapt to climate change, these trends are seldom included in assessments. This book addresses this shortcoming by developing a framework for qualitative vulnerability assessment inmultiple impact studies (of climate change and globalization) and applying this framework to several cases of renewable natural resource use. The book draws upon case studies of forestry and fishing - two of the largest sectors that rely on renewable natural resources - and reindeer herding in the European North. The study represents a bottom-up view, originating with the stakeholders themselves, of the degree to which stakeholders find adaptation to climate change possible and how they evaluate it in relation to their other concerns, notably economic and political ones. Moreover, the approach and research results include features that could be broadly generalized to other geographic areas or sectors characterized by renewable natural resource use.

Introduction: Vulnerability Assessment in the Context of Multiple Levels and Impacts * Structuring the Conceptions of Change * A Methodology for Vulnerability Assessment * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Forest Industry Stakeholders in Northern Sweden and Finland * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Reindeer Herding Stakeholders in Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland * Perceptions of Change, Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity among Fishing Stakeholders in Northernmost Norway * Conclusion * Index

E. Carina H. Keskitalo is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ume University, Sweden, and a researcher in national and international projects on adaptation to climate change.