Advancing adaptive capacity of Arctic communities. This is the aim for CHARTER, a new EU Horizon 2020 funded project, coordinated by Professor Bruce Forbes of Arctic Centre. The European Commission has just signed the papers and work can begin.

CHARTER (Drivers and feedbacks of
changes in Arctic terrestrial biodiversity) will run from 1.8.2020 and it
will last four years. Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland is leading a team
of 21 international partners and a budget of 5,9 million euros. The project is a
global effort with partners from beyond the EU including Iceland, Greenland, Norway
and Switzerland as well as from the United States, Canada, China and
Russia.

-The very idea of the project is
to make science and indigenous and local communities to meet and interact, says
professor Bruce
Forbes. 

CHARTER is an ambitious effort to advance adaptive
capacity of Arctic communities to climatic and biodiversity changes.
This is done through state-of-the-art synthesis based on thorough data collection,
analysis and modelling of Arctic change with major socio-economic implications and
feedbacks. To achieve this goal, the project will combine expertise from Earth
System sciences and biodiversity studies within a Social-Ecological
Systems framework and strongly participatory
approach.

Strategies
co-developed in partnership with indigenous and local communities will comprise
synergies between their ambitions for adaptation actions with novel forms of land
management geared towards climate mitigation and sustainable development. The
overall objective is improved understanding of Arctic change and how ecosystems and
communities will navigate this change with implications for e.g. decision-makers,
national and international climate/biodiversity policies, and reindeer governance.

Arctic climate change facts are in the
background of this project. Arctic air temperatures have already increased more than
six times the global average. Even if existing COP21 Paris Agreement commitments are
met, winter temperatures over the Arctic Ocean will increase 3-5°C by mid-century
compared to 1986-2005 levels. This will have profound consequences for indigenous
and local communities as well as Social-Ecological System
resilience.

"Charter

CHARTER will work with Arctic
communities to co-develop strategies and policy pathways for locally and regionally
critical livelihoods and enhance adaptation. It also aims at projecting
and simulating the effects of social-ecological changes for linked
indigenous and local communities and traditional livelihoods sharing the affected
territories, especially herding and hunting of large semi-domesticated and wild
ungulate herds. In addition, the project aims at
understanding the responses of Arctic terrestrial systems
to changes in the cryosphere (e.g. permafrost, snow and sea ice cover, and
rain-on-snow events), biodiversity and their feedbacks and interactions.

CHARTER will work both in Northern
Fennoscandia and in Northwest Russia, and with existing datasets from these regions
as well as the North American Arctic, Greenland and high alpine zones of the EU.

-It will create a unique data-based
synthesis informed by stakeholder perspectives of 21st century Arctic change,
Professor Forbes summarizes. The policy options will be driven by co-production of
knowledge with local communities, simultaneously accounting for global shifts,
including climate change.

Photos in
this press release are from Yamal. They are taken under very difficult conditions
during rain-on-snow events in the remote tundra. The first one by Florian Stammler
is a clear illustration of rain-on-snow event and the second one by Roma Serotetto
shows reindeer frozen in the position (clustering
together) in which they died.

Additional information:

Research Professor Bruce Forbes
Arctic
Centre, University of Lapland
bruce.forbes(at)ulapland.fi, +358 40 847
9202

https://www.charter-arctic.org/