The publication of the Arctic Council's Arctic climate impact assessment, Impacts of a warming Arctic, in November 2004 was the culmination of sustained scientific focus on global climate processes and the resulting impacts in the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first century. Research on impacts of climate change, and particularly that dealing with human impacts, has increasingly moved to consideration of how humans are able to adapt to change, leading to a surge in publications on adaptation and adaptive capacity.
Climate change and globalization in the Arctic is the latest in a series of publications on climate change, vulnerability, and adaptation from Earthscan. The goal of the current publication is to demonstrate the vulnerabilities that local stakeholders in the Arctic consider that they are subject to and the adaptations that they can institute. This is undertaken from a political-science perspective using case studies in the Scandinavian north, with the intent of adding a European dimension to vulnerability studies of the Arctic. More accurately, however, the book only addresses Arctic stakeholders in selected northern European regions rather than across the circumarctic. The title of the book is somewhat misleading in two ways: it does not cover the circumarctic, and it is not well integrated.
The book comprises two introductory chapters, three case study chapters, and one concluding chapter. Chapter 1 defines and discusses the fundamental concepts of vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and globalization that frame the remaining chapters. These emphasize social vulnerability, that is, the risk and stress people face from environmental change and their response to such change; economic and political globalization; and adaptation to change as a political process at multiple levels of governance. Chapter 2 sets out the methodology that is adopted in the three case studies: a qualitative approach based on stakeholder interviews. The semi-structured interviews sought information on a stakeholder's socioeconomic circumstances, sensitivity to environmental changes, and the type of coping strategies a stakeholder might adopt in response to political and climate changes. This was supplemented by a review of local newspaper reports.
Chapters 3–5 detail the three case studies, which assess social vulnerabilities in key economic sectors of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland, namely the forestry industry (chapter 3), commercial reindeer herding (chapter 4), and the fishing industry (chapter 5). These detailed descriptions provide a solid portrayal of the political, economic, and physical forces that individuals and organizations in each of the sectors contend with. In chapter 3 we become aware of the effects of increased internationalization of the forest industry on local sawmills in Sweden and the necessity for workers to become more mobile in order to seek employment. At the company and government level we are introduced to the ramifications of market-driven strengthening in forest certification — one stakeholder viewing this as the result of British consumer demand. The effects of increased mechanization, supplementary feeding, and global meat markets on reindeer herding are developed in chapter 4, with a particular focus on the impacts and adaptation of traditional Saami herders. A significant issue voiced is that while reindeer herders have the ability to respond to many of these changes, they have no ability to control market prices, something that impacts their profitability and in turn their livelihood. One stakeholder cites the impact on their profitability through lower demand for reindeer meet resulting from competition with New Zealand deer meat. Chapter 5 traces the numerous interacting factors that have affected the fishing industry along the Barents Sea coast of Norway, including the introduction of individual transferable quotas in 1990, changes in fish-processing, restructuring of the local fishery and fishing rights, and the evolving multiple-level structure of governance and regulation. One local fishing organization contrasts the open rights people have had to fish for the last 10,300 years to the restricted rights of the last 15 years. The three case studies are notable for the detailed narratives (between 100 and 150 notes per chapter) that support each one.
Chapter 6 concludes the vulnerability assessment by summarizing the common economic, political, and environmental changes facing the various stakeholders across the three case studies, and the primary drivers of adaptive capacity. These drivers include human, social, political, financial, and institutional capital. Adaptations that stakeholders identify are described as being either individual economic adaptations (for example, diversification, technological changes, and marketing) or broader scale adaptations (for example, promoting legislative or regulatory changes to increase resource access, and greater inter-organizational coordination and networking to promote greater influence). The overriding adaptive strategies that emerge with respect to climate change are market diversification, reducing dependence on the local environment, and adjusting spatial and temporal harvesting patterns.
This volume provides a detailed and thorough examination of vulnerability and adaptation in the northern European Arctic, and serves as a useful reference for stakeholder views in the forestry, fishing, and reindeer herding sectors. It is impressive for the detailed narratives that support the case studies, and it is mainly these case studies that are the contribution to emerge from the text. The book is also valuable in providing a northern European perspective on globalization and climate changes effects in the Arctic. However, there is a minimal level of synthesis connecting both the three case studies and the conclusion that limits the relevance of the book beyond the northern European Arctic and the three industry sectors that are examined. The content of this volume would be strengthened by conceptual linkages in the concluding chapter to the key ideas on vulnerability and adaptation dynamics presented and reviewed in the introduction. Such a contribution will be highly valuable and broadly useful to diverse stakeholders striving to adapt to rapid change, such that vulnerabilities can be anticipated and, perhaps with enough knowledge and wisdom, minimized.
