Community Vulnerability and Adaptation in the Arctic Barry Smit1, Kik Shappa2, James Ford1 1Dept of Geography, University of Guelph, Canada 2Hamlet of Grise Fiord, Nunavut, Canada Presented to Adaptation Day, COP11, Montreal, December 4th 2005

Exposure and adaptive strategies Role of climate and other stressors Future risks and adaptive capacity Community perspectives and partners

Arctic Bay, Nunavut Kik talks about Arctic Bay, the nature of the community and the lifestyles that Inuit here lead. I worked with Barry Smit and his group in 2004/2005 helping him look at vulnerability to climate change in my community. I will talk about ….

The ice is more dangerous Kik talks about changes he has seen in the ice and what it means or him and people in AB

We have to be more careful Kik talks about how people are responding to these risks. One way is that people are being more careful when they go hunting

The weather changes all of a sudden Kik talks about changes in the weather and how they are affecting Inuit

We have to be more prepared People are making extra preparations before they go out in response to things being more unpredictable. They are taking extra grub and extra gas and extra naphtha in case they have to spend extra nights on the land.

We have to use our knowledge of the land To cope with these changes we have to use our knowledge of the land.

We share a lot which makes things easier We also share a lot, such as food we catch and equipment, which makes it easier to cope with these changes. However, some of the younger people are loosing the knowledge and are no longer sharing. This is a concern to people in my community.

Insights from working with communities Climate and multiple stressors Adaptation opportunities Other work - CAVIAR Ford and Smit (2004), Ford (2005)

Acknowledgements