Shifting Safeties and Mobilities on the Land in Arctic North America: A Systematic Approach to Identifying the Root Causes of Disaster

Abstract

Amid the surge in research on mobility and migration in the context of environmental change, little research has focused on the experiences of people for whom travel is cyclical and a part of daily, weekly, or seasonal life. For Inuit in Arctic North America, the land is the heart of cultural and community life. Disruption to time spent on the land is reported to impact the emotional health and well-being of individuals and communities. There is concern that environmental change is creating barriers to safe travel, constituting a creeping disaster. We systematically review and evaluate the literature for discussion of barriers to travel for Inuit in Arctic North America, using an approach from the field of disaster anthropology to identify root causes of constraints to mobility. We identify root causes of risk and barriers to time spent on the land. These emerge from historic and contemporary colonial policy and inequality, as opposed to environmental hazards per se, impacting people’s mobility in profound ways and enacting a form of slow violence. These results suggest a need to understand the underlying processes and institutions that put people at risk.

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and Indigenous Peoples’ health and wellbeing: A systematic umbrella review

“…Land and place are central to Indigenous Peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and thus the health and wellbeing impacts being experienced from climate and environmental change. For Indigenous Peoples, as Davis et al (2022) highlight, "the land is the heart of cultural and community life" [ 38 :2]. Just as the reviewed literature points to the centrality of land and place to Indigenous Peoples, so too does it indicate that "impacts , adaptation , and vulnerability are highly place- and culture-specific" [ 55 :1263] and that the "health of people and place demand an integrated engagement" [ 56 :5772].…”

“…Finally, 17 articles (44.7%) identified that ecosystem changes globally are creating threats to human safety. Most notably, natural calamities or environmental hazards such as flooding were known to increase accidental injury or death [ 32 , 35 , 38 , 48 , 50 , 58 ]. Subsequent erosion, particularly in coastal regions of Latin America and the Circumpolar North, was also tied to these health risks by causing infrastructure instability [ 42 , 53 ].…”

“…Ecosystem changes that alter physical landscapes were reported to be especially significant to Indigenous contexts, because “when physical landscapes change , stories , memories , or meanings may also change or fade away” [ 29 :1079]. Several articles reported reduced cultural, historical, or social, or physical ties to the land [ 28 , 29 , 35 , 36 , 38 , 48 , 57 , 60 ] with implications for community-level kinship [ 36 ]. For example, challenges to traditional food access and availability threatened the viability of food sharing networks and other practices dependent on community collaboration [ 30 , 34 , 39 , 52 ].…”

“…Traditional knowledge and cultural practices were also indirectly associated with ecosystem changes in 23 reviews (60.5%). Articles reported impacts on traditional knowledge in terms of loss, disruption, reduced relevance, and unreliability in its use and transmission [ 26 , 27 , 29 , 30 , 35 , 37 , 38 , 43 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 52 , 54 , 57 , 60 ]. In reviews focused on the Circumpolar North, there was notable concern for the transmission of this knowledge to younger generations given the observable erosion of land skills and institutional memory [ 28 , 32 , 37 , 39 , 58 ].…”

“…Nevertheless, engagement with diverse knowledge systems was recognized as deepening and broadening understandings of health-related climate change and biodiversity loss impacts [ 29 , 34 , 39 ] as well as "improv[ing] quality of evidence about co-impacts" [ 70 :14], e.g., "[through] collecting more responsive and representative data" [ 59 :17]. Many articles highlighted that ecosystems have always been changing to some extent, that "adaptation to environmental change is a constant in their lives and they will continue to adapt" [ 43 :12] and that embedded in many IK systems is the ability to flex and adapt to these changes [ 34 , 38 , 46 , 55 ], with some reviews identifying IK itself as a "determinant of adaptability/resilience" to climate/environmental change [ 39 :816]. In this light, reviews pointed to the need to both support community-led adaptation and also address broader sociopolitical constraints on community-determined responses.…”