Abstracts - Posters

Climate Change in Arctic Communities Communicating and Understanding Climate Change from Different Perspective

Emma Arnold
Concordia University
emma@snografx.com

The impacts of climate change will likely be felt first and most significantly in the Arctic where considerable portions of the human population are indigenous. Indigenous peoples living in the Arctic today are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and it is for this reason the question of how to effectively involve indigenous peoples in climate change research becomes especially important. Climate change research - observing and understanding the impacts of climate change - is fundamental for developing responses, mitigation, and adaptation strategies.

Meet Ivan the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), home to the circumpolar regions of the Arctic. Ivan is pagophilic - he loves ice! - and is becoming increasingly worried about the prospects of climate change in his Arctic home, a fragile and vulnerable environment. The recent news of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) has done little to ease his mind. The assessment predicts devastating consequences for polar bears under a changing Arctic climate. Ivan sees the impacts of climate change in his own very particular way, a manifestation of how he understands his environment. Climate change research is most often documented within a scientific context. This poster will demonstrate, in a serious but sometimes humorous manner, how impacts of climate change can be communicated in different and complementary ways: from a scientific perspective (statistics, graphs, and other figures), an indigenous perspective (often communicated orally in ways that emphasize the interconnectedness of the environment), and from Ivan's perspective (shown, often humorously, in the form of artistic illustrations).

2005-04-06