The SeMPER-Arctic project collects and analyses local narratives of environmental and social changes in Arctic communities in Greenland and Russia* to understand resilience from a place-based and interdisciplinary perspective; its findings aim to inform strategies for enhancing community resilience and guide regional policymakers at various levels in the context of global environmental change.
The local narratives of resilience will be gathered in three Arctic communities: Uummannaq in Western Greenland, Ittoqqortoormiit in Eastern Greenland and Tiksi in Yakutsk, Russia. Two external types of stories will be collected: regional development and public policy narratives and environmental science narratives. The purpose is to analyse how the two external narratives interact with local narratives of resilience in order to assess their impacts. The objective is to develop a narrative centred, locally rooted, place-based understanding of resilience within arctic communities. As such resilience and narrative analysis are the central framework in SeMPER-Arctic which will contribute to the knowledge base on global environmental change through locally guided enquiry of what it means to be a resilient arctic community in the 21st century
Nordregio gathers the regional development and public policy narratives relevant for Uummannaq and Ittoqqortoormiit. In parallel, North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk gathers the narratives in Tiksi. Nordregio leads the work package on impact maximation of research results in collaboration with the local partner Arctic Business Circle. Through local workshops, the aim is to engage into action the SeMPER-Arctic research findings.
*This project proceeds without a Russian institutional partner, based on the Nordic Council of Ministers’ decision to discontinue collaboration with Russia and Belarus, announced on the 4th of March, 2022.
