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 sub-regions 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.
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Notes
Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are referred to by various different designations such as Aboriginal Peoples or First Nations in Canada, Alaska Natives in the State of Alaska, and indigenous numerically small peoples in Russia. I recognize the fact that these groups are heterogeneous and that any label may not be appropriate in certain contexts but have chosen to use the term “indigenous” in line with the AHDR.
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Acknowledgments
The Alaska and Chukotka portions of the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA) were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grants (NSF OPP 0071082 and OPP 120174). The write-up for these results was supported by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global and Climate Change Post-doc Fellowship from NOAA’s Climate and Global Change Program. Documentary research was funded by the NSF Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) Program (NSF HSD Grant 0729063). I would like to thank Stephanie Martin, Don Nelson, Yvon Csonka, Joan Nymand Larsen, Andrew Crow, and Julianna Acheson for their helpful reviews of earlier drafts of this article. Also, the two anonymous reviewers deserve special thanks for their thoughtful critiques. Carol G. West and Brendan Williams provided proofreading assistance. An earlier version of this paper was submitted for review to representatives of Chukotka and Alaska indigenous groups in compliance with SLiCA publication protocols.
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West, C.T. The survey of living conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA): A comparative sustainable livelihoods assessment. Environ Dev Sustain 13, 217–235 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-010-9257-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-010-9257-5