BackgroundCanada has recognized that Aboriginal and northern communities in the country face unique challenges and that there is a need to expand the assessment of vulnerabilities to climate change to include these communities. Evidence suggests that Canada’s North is already experiencing significant changes in its climate—changes that are having negative impacts on the lives of Aboriginal people living in these regions. Research on climate change and health impacts in northern Canada thus far has brought together Aboriginal community members, government representatives, and researchers and is charting new territory.Methods and ResultsIn this article we review experiences from two projects that have taken a community-based dialogue approach to identifying and assessing the effects of and vulnerability to climate change and the impact on the health in two Inuit regions of the Canadian Arctic.ConclusionsThe results of the two case projects that we present argue for a multi-stakeholder, participatory framework for assessment that supports the necessary analysis, understanding, and enhancement of capabilities of local areas to respond and adapt to the health impacts at the local level.

The transmission of environmental knowledge and land skills was studied among Inuit men in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. A list of 83 skills important for safe and successful harvesting was generated with 14 active hunters and elders, and examined with a sample of 47 men. This research found that land skills continue to be transmitted most often from older to younger generations through observation and apprenticeship in the environment. However there is a difference in the rate of skills transmission among generations, with average transmission rates lowest among younger respondents. Some skills were transmitted well among younger respondents including general hunting and camp-related skills, but others such as traveling on the sea ice and traditional navigation skills were not. Loss of certain skills and incomplete transmission of others were related to the absence of skills teachers, loss of native language, and changes in the educational environment.

Climate change will have far-reaching implications for Inuit health. Focusing on adaptation offers a proactive approach for managing climate-related health risks-one that views Inuit populations as active agents in planning and responding at household, community, and regional levels. Adaptation can direct attention to the root causes of climate vulnerability and emphasize the importance of traditional knowledge regarding environmental change and adaptive strategies. An evidence base on adaptation options and processes for Inuit regions is currently lacking, however, thus constraining climate policy development. In this article, we tackled this deficit, drawing upon our understanding of the determinants of health vulnerability to climate change in Canada to propose key considerations for adaptation decision-making in an Inuit context.

ABSTRACT. Arctic communities are recently reporting warmer and shorter winters, which have implications for the ice season and, consequently, on the access to local territories and resources by members of these communities. These climatic shifts are resulting in increased risks for travel during the winter season associated with less stable and thinner ice. An integrated communitybased monitoring (ICBM) program was developed in Nunavik to generate adaptation tools to support safe access to land and resources and to enhance local adaptive capacity through participation in community-based monitoring activities. The Nunavik ICBM approach brings together partners (northern communities, Canadian universities, and various organizations) that have different perspectives on the issues surrounding land and resources in Nunavik. The ICBM project also brings together traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge, linking data collected through semi-structured interviews, local ethnocartographic interviews, and ice-monitoring activities with data gathered at weather stations. The partnership-based Nunavik ICBM program dealing with territory and resource access is an example of communities and scientists working together to improve our understanding of climate change impacts in the North, their importance for aboriginal people, and the ways in which an integrated, cooperative research process can develop local adaptive capacity.Key words: adaptation, climate change, ice monitoring, integrated community-based monitoring, semi-structured interviews, northern Quebec, scientific knowledge, traditional knowledge RÉSUMÉ. Les communautés arctiques rapportent depuis quelques années des hivers plus chauds et plus courts qui ont des implications sur la saison de glace et par conséquent sur l'accès au territoire et aux ressources locales par les membres de ces communautés. Ces conditions climatiques ont comme conséquence d'augmenter les risques lors des voyages hivernaux en raison de glaces instables et plus minces. Un programme intégré de surveillance des glaces (PISG) a été développé au Nunavik pour produire des outils d'adaptation visant à soutenir l'accès sécuritaire au territoire et aux ressources et pour augmenter la capacité d'adaptation locale par la participation communautaire aux activités de surveillance. L'approche du PISG rassemble plusieurs partenaires (les communautés nordiques, universités canadiennes et différents organismes) qui s'intéressent particulièrement aux questions d'accès au territoire et aux ressources au Nunavik et y apportent des perspectives variées. Le projet du PISG intègre le savoir traditionnel et le savoir scientifique utilisant plusieurs sources de données (provenant des entrevues semi-structurées, des entrevues ethno-cartographiques locales, de la surveillance de glace et des données météorologiques). Le PISG est un exemple de partenariat entre les communautés nordiques et les scientifiques qui permet de mieux comprendre les impacts des changements climatiques en cours dans le nord, leur importanc...

Community‐based adaptation (CBA) has emerged over the last decade as an approach to empowering communities to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change. While such approaches have been widely advocated, few have critically examined the tensions and challenges that CBA brings. Responding to this gap, this article critically examines the use of CBA approaches with Inuit communities in Canada. We suggest that CBA holds significant promise to make adaptation research more democratic and responsive to local needs, providing a basis for developing locally appropriate adaptations based on local/indigenous and Western knowledge. Yet, we argue that CBA is not a panacea, and its common portrayal as such obscures its limitations, nuances, and challenges. Indeed, if uncritically adopted, CBA can potentially lead to maladaptation, may be inappropriate in some instances, can legitimize outside intervention and control, and may further marginalize communities. We identify responsibilities for researchers engaging in CBA work to manage these challenges, emphasizing the centrality of how knowledge is generated, the need for project flexibility and openness to change, and the importance of ensuring partnerships between researchers and communities are transparent. Researchers also need to be realistic about what CBA can achieve, and should not assume that research has a positive role to play in community adaptation just because it utilizes participatory approaches. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:175–191. doi: 10.1002/wcc.376For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Indigenous participation in land-based practices such as hunting, fishing, ceremony, and land care has a long history. In recent years, researchers and policy makers have advocated the benefits of these practices for both Indigenous people and the places they live. However, there have also been documented risks associated with participation in these activities. Environmental change brought about by shifts in land use, climate changes, and the accumulation of contaminants in the food chain sit alongside equally rapid shifts in social, economic and cultural circumstances, preferences and practices. To date, the literature has not offered a wide-ranging review of the available cross-disciplinary or cross-ecozone evidence for these intersecting benefits and risks, for both human and environmental health and wellbeing. By utilising hunting as a case study, this paper seeks to fill part of that gap through a transdisciplinary meta-analysis of the international literature exploring the ways in which Indigenous participation in land-based practices and human-environmental health have been studied, where the current gaps are, and how these findings could be used to inform research and policy. The result is an intriguing summary of disparate research that highlights the patchwork of contradictory understandings, and uneven regional emphasis, that have been documented. A new model was subsequently developed that facilitates a more in-depth consideration of these complex issues within local-global scale considerations. These findings challenge the bounded disciplinary and geographic spaces in which much of this work has occurred to date, and opens a dialogue to consider the importance of approaching these issues holistically.

The beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas (Pallas, 1776)) is expected to be influenced by changes in the environment. In Nunavik, the Arctic region of Quebec, Nunavimmiut (Inuit of Nunavik) have depended on beluga for centuries, developing an extensive understanding of the species and its ecology. Forty semidirective interviews were conducted with Inuit hunters and Elders from four Nunavik communities, who had a range of 28–47 years of beluga hunting experience. Interviews followed an ethnocartographic format and were analyzed using a mixed methods approach. Hunters most commonly reported prey species from the sculpin (Cottidae), cod (Gadidae), salmon (Salmonidae), and crustacean families; regional variations in prey and in foraging habitat were found. Hunters identified significant changes in body condition (i.e., blubber thickness), which were associated with observations about the seasonality of feeding. The timing of fat accumulation in the late fall and winter coupled with the understanding that Hudson Bay is not known as a productive area suggest alternate hypotheses to feeding for the seasonal movements exhibited by these whales. Inuit Knowledge of beluga foraging ecology presented here provides information on diet composition and seasonality of energy intake of the beluga and can be an important component of monitoring diet composition for this species into the future. An Inuttitut version of the abstract is available ( Appendix A ).

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