24 October 2018

RISK and AFI at the Arctic Biodiversity Congress 2018

Mia Landauer (RISK and AFI) participated the Arctic Biodiversity Congress 2018 in October 12 in Rovaniemi, Finland.

© Saara Lilja-Rothsten, 2018

© Saara Lilja-Rothsten, 2018

The conference was organized by the Arctic Council Working Group, Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) and it gathered approximately 600 participants from around the world. Dr. Landauer gave a talk in the session “Building social-ecological resilience” organized by Stockholm Environment Institute, Government of Sweden and Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry, Finland. The session stated that resilience is a cross-cutting topic which has become increasingly important to the Arctic Council because the changes that the Arctic social-ecological systems are facing today, are rapid, uncertain and consequences of surpassing critical thresholds can be irreversible and increase the vulnerability of Arctic residents and indigenous people. This session explored approaches and partnerships to foster social-ecological resilience.

The topic of Landauer’s talk was “Sustainable and resilient reindeer husbandry in an increasingly uncertain world” and it focused on resilience of Arctic social-ecological systems. These systems are at high risk of climate change and other rapid changes such as economic development. Reindeer husbandry is one of the most important traditional livelihoods in the Arctic and it is practiced in particular by indigenous Sámi. A geographically very distant, but in many other ways similar social-ecological system is yak husbandry in Tibetan plateau, also practiced by indigenous peoples. Landauer’s presentation focused on comparing these two social-ecological systems and discussed possibilities for cross-learning to identify similarities and differences in drivers of changes, policies and their impacts. The talk highlighted that participatory approaches are required for policy design, planning and implementation. Furthermore, inter- and transdisciplinary research and multi-stakeholder partnerships are necessary to increase evidence-based policy making to increase resilience of Arctic traditional livelihoods.



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Last edited: 06 November 2018

CONTACT DETAILS

Mia Landauer

Guest Research Scholar Systemic Risk and Resilience Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program

Guest Research Scholar Cooperation and Transformative Governance Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313