ICEBERG

ICEBERG - Innovative Community Engagement for Building Effective Resilience and Arctic Ocean Pollution-Control Governance in the context of Climate Change

At the Stefansson Arctic Institute the research is led by Dr. Joan Nymand Larsen, senior scientist and research director, and professor of economics at the faculty of social sciences, University of Akureyri.

The ICEBERG consortium is led by University of Oulu, Finland (Prof. Thora Herrmann).

The research involves close collaboration across disciplines and sciences among many international partner institutions, and the use of citizen science to work in co-production with local residents and stakeholders.

Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, senior scientist at the Stefansson Arctic Institute, and associate professor of anthropology at University of Akureyri, will be working with Joan on the Greenlandic and Icelandic case studies. Joan and Jón Haukur have conducted field-based research in West and South Greenland for many years on social and economic inequalities, climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, and social indicators in close co-production with local stakeholders. This research enable the international and multidisciplinary team to take important new steps forward in identifying adaptation strategies in close engagement with local communities.

ICEBERG includes field sites in South Greenland and Northeast Iceland, where the team investigates the multifaceted and complex effects that pollution, climate change and human activities have on the coast and ocean in the Arctic, posing significant threats to the ecosystem and human health. The project will assess sources, types and distribution of pollutants and study the interconnected effects of human-induced pollution and climate stressors in the Arctic.

ICEBERG champions multi-stakeholder and gender-based approaches to assess the impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities on Indigenous and local communities and co-create scenarios of change. Scenario modelling is used to co-design local pollution-control strategies.

Joan Nymand Larsen will be co-leading work together with University of Oulu and others on risk assessment and local resilience strategies for ecosystems and communities in response to pollution and climate factors. The research also involves assessing the perceived and locally observed impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities of stressors on ecosystem health, food security and safety, human health, and well-being. The research consortium is highly interdisciplinary with close collaboration between social and natural sciences and local stakeholders.

Principle investigators at the Stefansson Arctic Institute:

Prof. Joan Nymand Larsen

Dr. Jón Haukur Ingimundarson

Consortium Partners: 16 partner institutions from 9 different countries – Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain.

For more information: Prof. Joan Nymand Larsen at jnl@unak.is