The survey of living conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA): A comparative sustainable livelihoods assessment

Abstract

The Arctic is a region of the world experiencing extremely rapid climatic and social change. Indigenous communities have faced similar challenges for millennia and have historically demonstrated remarkable resilience to socioecological perturbations. In contemporary contexts, however, it appears that the pace and extent of change is overwhelming the adaptive capacities of many indigenous communities. Scholars recently completed a survey of living conditions spanning the circumpolar Arctic to quantitatively document the impacts of social and ecological stress across regions. The database they created is called the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic or SLiCA. This article explores the utility of using this dataset to compare livelihood systems across three subregions of Alaska and four sub-regions within the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation. The results point out that livelihood systems in Chukotka have a substantially lower level of sustainability than in Northwest Alaska due to the high prevalence of vulnerable households.

Well-being and environmental change in the arctic: a synthesis of selected research from Canada’s International Polar Year program

“…Some perceive also the circumstances of Inuit, Dene and Metis of the Canadian north as similar to the experience of Greenland societies in the 1950s and 1960s; the rapid pace and scale of change in Greenland during this period is thought to have resulted in a loss or shift in traditional social norms and values (Hansen 1999). Unlike the Greenland experience, the rapid pace and scale of change in the Canadian north may be outweighing the adaptive capacity of many northern communities (West 2011). There is also concern that climate change is likely to compound the level of socio-economic and cultural stress already being experienced (Smit et al 2008).…”

Adaptive capacity of Arctic communities in the context of climate change and shipping growth: A review of Russian and Western literature

“…In addition to determinants and adaptation readiness, literature identifies several contextual factors and cross-scale processes that are not strictly a part of adaptive capacity, but can complicate the effectiveness of community's ability to adapt to changing conditions (C. T. West, 2011) and may also affect local exposure to changing conditions . The following factors are identified as follows: demographic trends like gender and its societal roles (Buchanan, Reed, & Lidestav, 2016;Bunce, Ford, Harper, Edge, & Team, 2016;Goldhar et al, 2014;Tomaska, 2015), population structure (Lundmark, Pashkevich, Jansson, & Wiberg, 2008), youth participation and engagement (MacDonald, Ford, Willox, Mitchell, & Productions, 2015), the type of community (Armitage, 2005) and the area's political and socio-economic situation (Keskitalo, 2009;Kvalvik et al, 2011), including market conditions and globalisation (Keskitalo & Kulyasova, 2009).…”

Monetary Poverty in Inuit Nunangat

“…Indeed, the low income threshold based on half-median revenue would reveal nothing if applied to the poorest countries in the world; conversely, the method of the "$1.25 a day" that is used for those countries would reveal nothing if applied in the wealthier ones. The same limitation was at the origin of the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, when the usual questionnaire on material living conditions proved to be inefficient when applied in Arctic areas (e.g., Edouard, 2008;Kruse et al, 2008;Morin et al, 2010;West, 2011). Comparing metropolitan Canada with Inuit Nunangat using the same tools for both would yield misleading results.…”