The University of Akureyri has published its Arctic policy towards 2030, which highlights its role as an Arctic university. A special Arctic Centre within the university helps it fulfil that role.
Read this article in Norwegian on Arbeidsliv i Norden
Hildur Sólveig Elvarsdóttir, the centre’s project manager, says one of its biggest current projects is called Stronger Arctic Research in Iceland. It is being run in cooperation with the University of Iceland, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNÍS).
“In this project, we have four workshops over two years, in Akureyri and in Reykjavík, each with a different topic. We have already done two, on how to adapt to climate change and on matters of the sea and international scientific cooperation.
“The other two will be on energy shift and its effect on communities, and environmental protection and sustainable resource use.”
Elvarsdóttir says everyone from the scientific community is invited to participate in the workshops.
“The purpose is to map out holes in our knowledge in the research community in Iceland. It’s not uncommon that many people are doing a lot of things on their own, but they don’t speak about them with other scientists.”
Umbrella for Arctic research
When the workshops started last spring, the university decided to establish a hub for Arctic research in Iceland’s Arctic Centre.
“We think of the centre as an umbrella around the Arctic research that is being done in Akureyri. And that does not only apply to the university but also, for example, the Stefansson Arctic Institute, which focuses on social issues.
“We are also cooperating with IASC, Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) and the Icelandic Tourist Board, to name a few. The main purpose is to remove the silos that people have built around themselves.”
Elvarsdóttir says workshop attendance has been good so far.
“People with different backgrounds have come to create cooperation within university departments and universities. So this is a great platform to bring different Arctic affairs scientists together.
“You can’t focus purely on the environment, you also have to know how it affects people and communities. So we want to bring diverse scientists together for cooperative research.”
The Arctic Centre is still in its starting phase, and the operation has not been fully defined yet.
“We just wanted to create a platform for research in Akureyri, which has been defined as the centre of Arctic research in Iceland. So we are still in the process of introducing it and increasing interest in Arctic affairs.
“There is a lot of work to be done, but I think it’s also fine not to have it too defined in the beginning. We want to build up our Arctic environment, and I think it’s exciting to find out how we can do that in the best possible way.”
Elvarsdóttir mentioned the social effects of climate change in the Arctic. And one ongoing research project focuses on exactly that. It is called “Sustainable and Resilient Communities in Remote Settlements in the Arctic in the Age of Climate Change” and is funded by NordForsk.
It is overseen by two researchers at the University Centre of the Westfjords, Mathias Kokorsch and Jóhanna Gísladóttir.
The overall objective of the project is to generate new knowledge on current and future climate adaptation and the management of natural hazard events in remote Arctic settlements, to strengthen sustainability and resilience.
Gísladóttir says the aim is to investigate people’s perceptions of the changes happening in these remote arctic areas, what is already being done, and to inspect natural hazard warning systems as well as local indigenous knowledge, especially in Greenland.
The two researchers are leading the work on assessing how relocation from high-risk areas works.
“In Iceland, we have a history of relocations, after the disastrous avalanche in Súðavík in 1995, for example, where a part of a town was moved from the affected area.
“We have also had relocations because of volcanic eruptions, including in the Westman Islands and Grindavik. These cases can inform us of what went well and what could have been done better.”
Different effects in different areas
Four places are being looked at specifically – Longyearbyen in Svalbard (Norway), Tasiilaq in Greenland and Fjallabyggð and Neskaupsstaður in Iceland.
Gísladóttir says the effects can differ a lot.
“In Svalbard, for example, we’re looking at permafrost thaw, which can affect buildings and infrastructure, but that is a slow and ongoing process.
“In Iceland, landslides and avalanches are more of a risk. With climate change, we can expect that more avalanches will be slush floods, which can create other kinds of danger.
“The frequency and even the season of these slides could also change with more extreme precipitation weather. And the risk that the sea might pose is not only higher water levels, but also floods. There was a big flood in Akureyri only three years ago.
“In Greenland, storms from the glacier are becoming more frequent and can even blow large objects through windows. So there are different kinds of threats.”
The research started last year and is expected to last for three years. Interviews with people in these remote areas are ongoing. In earlier research, Gísladóttir and Kokorsch conducted a survey among residents of remote areas in Iceland.
“The environmental change people most strongly associated with was the retreat of glaciers. We also found that people in Iceland showed a strong attachment to place, which can lead to a tendency to underestimate the risks there.
“On the other hand, when people feel such a strong connection to their community, this sense of place can encourage more people to volunteer for rescue services or other first-response teams.”
Locals as first responders
The ongoing research aims to inform a preparedness and response model to the effects of climate change.
“We want to find out what other Arctic communities are doing, what we can learn from them and what they can learn from us. In these small communities, the local people are the first responders.
“In the urban areas, there are bigger emergency units, and you expect someone to take over during an event. That is not the case in the smaller and remote communities.”
These smaller communities are different in other ways, too.
“In Svalbard, for instance, people only stay for four to five years on average, so people are constantly coming and going. In Greenland, you have the indigenous Inuit communities, and in Iceland, the migration of foreign workers means communities change rapidly.
“This means you have people who don’t know anything about risk management, so the needs are different. But all these different communities can learn from each other.”
