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Culturally significant places: answering the where

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This article is reprinted from The Circle 4.14. Maryann Fidel is the CONAS Project Manager at the Aleut International Association, a permanent participant of the Arctic Council. She works with rural Bering Sea communities in Alaska and the Russian Far East on a community-based observation and monitoring network.
People living in remote subsistence-based communities know very intimately the places that are important to the well-being of their village.  It is the beach where their grandpa taught them the seasonal patterns of the seal, or a family’s salmon camp that has been there as long as anyone can remember.  There is a critical need to translate this knowledge into something that can be used to inform decisions.

It is important to fill in gaps in knowledge so that important sites or activities are not neglected through ignorance.’

When creating maps of harvest areas it is essential that local people are meaningfully engaged in the design of the study, data collection and presentation. Maps often contain sensitive information and are frequently created to address issues that affect the community. Identifying marine areas important for traditional hunting and fishing are crucial for minimizing conflicts between coastal communities and marine-based industries, which are expected to increase in the Arctic.  This has been recognized at the international level with the Arctic Council’s publication, The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009.
Two recommendations from this report address the need to identify areas used by Arctic communities, as well as areas of cultural significance. As a follow up to these recommendations a report entitled ‘Identification of Arctic marine areas of heightened ecological and cultural significance’ attempted to identify areas of particular ecological and cultural importance in 2013.  The short chapter that examines areas of cultural significance concludes ‘available information makes the extent of this cultural legacy clear, but details are lacking. It is important to fill in gaps in knowledge so that important sites or activities are not neglected through ignorance.’
The Aleut International Association (AIA)—a permanent participant in the Arctic Council—has taken an active role in the mapping of culturally significant areas.
The Bering Sea Sub-Network (BSSN) was an international, community-based observing network that began in 2007 and ran until 2014.  It was a partnership involving AIA, the University of Alaska Anchorage, the Alaska Native Science Commission and 8 indigenous, subsistence-based communities in Chukotka and Kamchatka in the Russian Federation, and Alaska, USA. This project brought together people from a variety of different backgrounds and cultures who share a dependence on the health of the Bering Sea.
One aspect of the research included a mapping effort to characterize where people harvested important subsistence species.  Surveys were administered by local Community Research Assistants to the same respondent pool of high harvesters every six months over a four year period.  During the interview hunters and fishers were asked to circle on a map where they had gone to harvest select species during the past six month period.  These methods were based on the idea that harvest areas are dynamic, people go to different places depending on the time of year and depending on environmental conditions such as storms, animal migration patterns, etc.  A single map of a subsistence harvest, while useful, is unable to capture this dynamic reality.  These techniques helped to not only answer the question of where people go to harvest, but when.  An innovative mapping methodology was developed to protect the confidentiality of individual harvest areas, incorporate large amounts of spatial information, and present use areas on a gradient scale (from high to low use).
The following map demonstrates change over time.   This particular change is likely due to a convergence of factors including: a change in the range and availability of species; climatic change; a complex regulatory structure; industry practices and/or socioeconomic factors.
walrus
The Community Observation Network for Arctic Subsistence (CONAS) is a new project initiated by the Aleut International Association and the University of Idaho which builds on BSSN.  It is continuing this dynamic subsistence mapping effort in Bering Sea communities.
AIA has also initiated a project within the Arctic Council’s Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) working group called, ‘Arctic marine subsistence use mapping: Tools for communities’.  The goal of this project is to provide communities with the tools to produce high quality maps of locally important, sensitive or vulnerable areas.
It is important to keep in mind maps of harvest areas represent just one aspect of how Indigenous communities relate to the environment. They should be used in conjunction with, not instead of, community consultation.

The Sea of Okhotsk: a billion dollar ecosystem

General,

This article is reprinted from The Circle 4.14. Dr. Eduard Shirkov is the head of Laboratory of Environmental Economics Research, Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography.
The Sea of Okhotsk boasts an area of roughly 1.6 million square kilometers, water volume of more than 1300 cubic kilometers, and a coastline over 10 thousand kilometers long. The average depth of this remarkable body of water ranges from 820 meters, to a maximum depth of 3916 meters. In terms of natural resources, these features combine to make the Sea of Okhotsk one of the largest and richest shelf seas in the world.  Worth billions of dollars in ecosystem services, and critically important to human life,  it needs and merits protection from over-exploitation.

The natural resources potential of the Sea of Okhotsk is both a unique and considerable piece of the natural capital of Russia.

The waters of the Sea of Okhotsk create their own unique water masses due to the varying widths and depths of the Kuril Islands, which border the sea. Because of the high differentiation of hydrological factors and climate, a full water exchange between the Sea of Okhotsk and the ocean requires many years, creating unique ecosystems with very high biodiversity. The northern parts of the Sea predominantly contain ecosystems with Arctic species of flora and fauna, while the rest of the Sea feature boreal ecosystems.
The natural resources potential (NRP) of the Sea of Okhotsk is both a unique and considerable piece of the natural capital of Russia. It accounts for more than half of the far-eastern and nearly one quarter of all Russian fish catches. Due to its tidal sea influx, it is also an area of huge hydroenergy potential, again, unique in its scale, and a significant source on a national scale of expected hydrocarbon resources. In addition, the largely undisturbed ecosystems of the Sea of Okhotsk provide a stable generation of ecosystem services, critically important for human beings. But paramount to all of these benefits generated by the Sea of Okhotsk are the provisioning services derived from exploitation of bioresources, and its regulating effect through carbon sequestration and assimilation of other industrial and agricultural pollutants.
circle
It should be noted, however, that the Sea of Okhotsk is the coldest of the Russian Far Eastern seas. The cold period (when the average daily temperature is below zero) lasts from 120 days in the south to 220 days in the north. A larger part of the Sea is covered with ice for up to 7 months annually. In January, the temperatures drop to minus 20-25 °C. Severe and frequent storms, icing factor, the lack of natural shelters for ships, as well as the high seismicity of the area pose serious risks for navigation and operation of offshore engineering facilities.
The maximal and stable level of the economic rent being held from NRP exploitation over a long time period can be taken as the main criterion of environmental and economic efficiency of natural resources management in a specific, ecologically isolated region. In the course of complex estimation of NRP elements of the Sea of Okhotsk, carried out by the scientists of the Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography, the capitalized rent value of natural capital of the region is estimated at 454 billion US dollars. Extraction and utilization of all known Okhotsk hydrocarbons decrease this rent value by 134 billion US dollars. In addition, oil pollutants (without taking into consideration probable serious accidents) decrease NRP rent value that come from fish resources and relevant regulatory ecosystem services by another 39 billion US dollars”.
Modern technologies for offshore hydrocarbon exploration and transportation, and existing legal and economic mechanisms for nature management do not offset these decreases in value. Therefore the compromise solution for this conflict lies in the area of spatial specialization or zoning of marine nature management in the north-eastern and south-western parts of the Sea of Okhotsk, two areas which are different both in the structure of resource potential and conditions of their exploitation.
Zoning of the Sea of Okhotsk according to resource specialization of its areas can be done according to potential conflicts of parallel exploitation of marine bioresources and hydrocarbons; conditions of exploitation; and existing fishery zoning. Taking into account both factors, the boundary between resource-specialized zones can be drawn as an extension to the North-West of the existing boundary between fishing subzones 05.1 и 05.3 (Fig. 1). Two-thirds of the biological potential of the Sea of Okhotsk would then be concentrated in the north-eastern area—including the Western-Kamchatka shelf (Fig. 2). However, two-thirds of hydrocarbon potential would be concentrated in the south-western area (Fig. 3).
Potential losses of natural capital value caused by existing practices of nature management in the Sea of Okhotsk can be reduced by $93 billion through integrated marine management. Only through these measures will it be possible to conserve the highest bio-productivity of the north-western area of the Sea of Okhotsk, including the Western Kamchatka shelf, nominated as an Ecologically or Biologically Sensitive Marine Area under the Convention for Biological Diversity.

Protecting the Arctic marine environment – within and beyond national waters

General,

This article is reprinted from The Circle 4.14. Dr. Nengye Liu is a Marie Curie Fellow at School of Law, University of Dundee, United Kingdom. His current research focuses on the European Union and the protection of marine biodiversity in the Arctic.
The Arctic is home to more than 21,000 known species of highly cold-adapted mammals, birds, fish, invertebrates, plants and fungi including lichens, plus tens of thousands of microbial species. But  climate change is inducing an ecosystem regime shift in some areas, resulting in a very different Arctic species composition.

Protected areas have been described by the Convention on Biological Diversity as an important means to achieve conservation gains.

Summer temperatures in the Arctic in recent decades have been warmer than at any time in the past 2000 years, with the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Arctic summer sea ice cover, particularly the amount of multi-year ice, is decreasing at an accelerating rate leading to increased human activities such as fishing, navigation and extractive industries within this fragile environment.
Protected areas have been described by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as an important means to achieve conservation gains. The IUCN defines a marine protected area (MPA) as: “any area of the intertidal or sub tidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora, fauna, historical and cultural features which has been reserved by law or other effective means to protect part, or all, of the enclosed environment”. The Convention is in agreement that by 2020, at least 10 per cent of the world’s coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, should be conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures. As of 2010, 11 per cent of the Arctic, about 3.5 million km2, has protected status in 1127 protected areas. Over 40 per cent of Arctic protected areas have a coastal component but for the majority of these areas it is not possible to determine the extent to which they incorporate the adjacent marine environment. Therefore, the question is how to establish MPAs in the Arctic Ocean.
In 2008 in Bonn, Germany, the 9th meeting of the Conference Parties of the CBD (COP 9) adopted a set of seven scientific criteria to identify ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs) in the global marine realm. These include:

  • Uniqueness or rarity
  • Special importance for life-history stages of species
  • Importance for threatened, endangered or declining species and/or habitats
  • Vulnerability, fragility, sensitivity, or slow recovery
  • Biological productivity
  • Biological diversity
  • Naturalness

In 2010, COP 10 noted that the application of the EBSA criteria is a scientific and technical exercise, that areas found to meet the criteria may require enhanced conservation and management measures, and that this can be achieved through a variety of means, including MPAs and impact assessments. A regional EBSA Workshop for the Arctic took place in Helsinki, Finland from 3-7 March 2014. The Workshop described 11 areas meeting the EBSA criteria, of which 9 areas were within the national jurisdiction of Russian Federation. According to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), waters within 370 kilometres (200 nautical miles) of shore make up exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Arctic coastal states (US, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark/Greenland). Within EEZs, only coastal states are entitled to establish MPAs. One example is the U.S., which has adopted a closure of commercial fishing in its waters north of the Bering Strait until there is appropriate scientific understanding and management in place. The moratorium prohibits commercial fishing in all marine areas in the American EEZs of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
But beyond EEZs there are high seas in the Arctic Ocean. To date, there is no international legal regime that provides for cross-sector MPAs on the high seas. The lack of a regime addressing biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction has already been identified by the international community and, during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), states committed, on an urgent basis, to addressing the issue. The agreement to act included a commitment to taking a decision on the development of an international instrument under UNCLOS, before the end of the sixty-ninth session of the UN General Assembly to address biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. If the new implementing protocol of the UNCLOS can be adopted in the foreseeable future, it will provide a solid legal basis for the establishment of MPAs in the Arctic high seas, particularly in the central Arctic Ocean.

Finding the Arctic’s most important marine habitats

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This article is reprinted from The Circle 4.14. Jake Rice is the Chief Scientist for Canada’s Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, providing advice for international and domestic marine policy and management, including the EBSA process.

Developing scientific criteria for determining ecologically or biologically significant areas (EBSAs) was one of the key components of Canada’s plans to implement the Oceans Act in 1997. These criteria highlight waters that may have high functional significance for species that use the area; are fragile or highly vulnerable to perturbation; serve as centres of aggregation for populations; or are otherwise exceptionally diverse or productive. These criteria have since been applied to all of Canada’s marine areas and are proving to be of value in freshwater systems as well.
Initial meetings to apply the criteria in the more southern areas of Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific oceans relied primarily on extensive and spatially resolved sets of systematically-collected scientific data sets. When attention turned to the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Archipelago there were fewer such data sets, and their coverage was often limited in space and time. DFO turned to social scientists who worked with Elders and long-time residents of the Canadian North to record knowledge of areas of ecological or biological significance in ways that were culturally respectful and directly usable in the expert meetings for those two Arctic marine areas. The process for meeting and collecting this knowledge took time, but no more time than consolidating all the data sets of oceanographic and biological information in other areas. Some EBSAs were indeed recognized based on “scientific” data sets from remote sensing or ship-based surveys of ocean productivity, current patterns, and ice conditions, or by technologies for tracking tagged animals. Many others were identified based on Inuit and Aboriginal knowledge of migration routes of marine mammals and where they bred, fed, and overwintered, or areas where they have long fished or found seabirds. Often the available scientific data and knowledge of the Indigenous people worked in complementary ways to highlight the areas that were most significant on one or several of the criteria. Maps of all the EBSAs that have been identified are available here, along with rationales for each one.
The process of identifying the EBSAs focused on information-sharing and objectively using the knowledge from all sources to identify the areas that best reflected the pre-adopted criteria. The maps and justifications of EBSAs that were produced are rich in information. But maps are only maps until they are used as a resource for planning and management. This is where we are seeing concrete evidence that the time invested in creating them was time well spent.

Maps are only maps until they are used as a resource for planning and management.

First of all, in the process of applying the criteria, we learned some things about EBSAs that had not been grasped before. In the Arctic, many of the areas found to be ecologically or biologically significant got much of their significance from the position and nature of the ice front, which of course moves seasonally. For the first time, the meetings delineated EBSA boundaries that might have encompassed the entire area covered by the ice edge from its winter maximum to its summer minimum. But the justifications stress that within those larger boundaries, the features that made the area special would be found in association with the smaller subarea where the ice edge was located at any particular time. Importantly, the management implication of that situation was spelled out. In planning for activities that involve permanent built infrastructure, the entire area in the EBSA boundary needs to be considered as requiring particularly risk-averse management. In planning for activities which are inherently mobile, such as ecotourism or fishing, risk-averse management is still needed, but should be focused on the much smaller sub-area where the ice front is located at the time the activity is occurring. Since the Arctic EBSA workshops, this way of thinking about different kinds of EBSAs has spread to oceans all over the world, at is applies equally well to important features like oceanographic fronts.
So we now have these maps of EBSAs and their individual justifications. Are they making a difference? The short answer is that it is too soon to tell. Planning for uses and, where appropriate, protection of the Arctic is an ongoing process. Plans such as the Integrated Ocean Management Plan for the Beaufort Sea make extensive use of the results of the EBSA identification process in developing the plan. However that Plan is still fairly high level, implementing the concepts is another piece of work. What, if anything, ends up being different in the EBSAs versus other parts of the Arctic remains to be seen. Importantly though, the EBSAs are part of all the discussions for other topics such as Marine Protected Area networks in the Arctic, the routing of shipping, tourism etc. Having the information systematically available is already helping. As the EBSA identification process spreads to the rest of the Arctic, and as information accumulates and areas are reviewed, it can only get better.

Where the ocean blooms

General, ,

 

© Wild Wonders of Europe /Magnus Lundgren / WWF

© Wild Wonders of Europe /Magnus Lundgren / WWF


This article is reprinted from The Circle 4.14. Dr. Jan-Gunnar Winther is a hydrologist and director of the Norwegian Polar. Dag Vongraven is a biologist and senior adviser at the Environmental and Mapping Department of the Norwegian Polar Institute. He also chairs the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group.
The ice edge is rarely a neat line. Rather, it comprises a dynamic zone of varying degrees of ice cover between open water and 100 per cent ice cover.
Dependent on current and wind conditions, it can change from being a fairly narrow, well-defined edge, to a swath of ice-floes tens of kilometres broad. It is in constant motion, moving north- or southwards during the seasons. The outer rim of the sea ice which is close enough to the open ocean boundary to be affected by its presence is often called the Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) or the Sea Ice This zone of high biological production is particularly vulnerable to human impact. In addition to its role in moderating regional and global climate, sea ice needs to be taken into consideration when assigning new licenses for oil and gas prospecting in the Barents Sea.

For a few weeks in spring, the Sea Ice Zone becomes a hotbed of primary production, a blooming garden of plant plankton and ice algae.

sea-ice-persistence

Map showing maximum and minimum sea ice extent in the month of April in the years from 1984 to 2013, as well as ice persistence in 10% increments. Ice persistence is the frequency of April days with ice concentration greater than 15% in any given pixel/area in the material the maps is based on.


An important and vulnerable garden
For a few weeks in spring, the Sea Ice Zone becomes a hotbed of primary production, a blooming garden of plant plankton and ice algae. Zooplankton feed on these, and they in turn are prey for larger animals. From its outer edge and throughout the area where the light penetrates the ice cover, the Sea Ice Zone is more ecologically vulnerable than other parts of the ocean.
Primary production takes place across the world’s oceans, but nowhere is it as concentrated in time and space as in the Sea Ice Zone. A more predictable and denser patch of food than the open ocean, the Sea Ice Zone is an important feeding ground for a variety of animals, including ivory gulls, ringed seals, polar bears, narwhals, beluga and bowhead whales. Many of these are nationally or internationally protected and/or endangered species. The area provides crucial habitats and foraging areas for other key species in the Arctic ecosystem, such as capelin and polar cod, which are prey for other species of marine birds and mammals. It is also an important resting place for migrating species of marine birds and mammals – a biological hot spot.
A challenge for managing the Arctic
Many environmental values vary in time and space, as does the sea ice. Properly managing dynamic systems such as ice-covered waters is a substantial challenge. Diminishing sea ice presents opportunities for the expansion of human activities in the Arctic in the near future. Human influence may negatively affect stocks and populations of many Arctic species. Contributing to the integrated, knowledge-based management of the region, the Norwegian Polar Institute has recently assembled statistics on sea ice conditions in the Barents Sea and described the vulnerability of this area. The Institute also provides knowledge on ecosystems and physical conditions in the Arctic, including sea ice. It has described this zone based on satellite monitoring of the ice cover for the last 30 years (1984-2013) and produced maps to show variations in the timing and location of sea ice during each month of the year.
Monthly maximum sea ice extent for the period 1984-2013. Suggested licenses in the 23rd licensing round are shown as squares on the map.

Monthly maximum sea ice extent for the period 1984-2013. Suggested licenses in the 23rd licensing round are shown as squares on the map.


The 23rd licensing round for oil and gas prospecting in the south-eastern part of the Barents Sea opens the door for petroleum activities further northwards than ever before. In a consultative statement to the Norwegian authorities, the Norwegian Polar Institute has pointed out the vulnerability of this region on account of the seasonal presence of sea ice and a general lack of knowledge of the area and its variability. The proposed hydrocarbon exploration areas will be closer to vulnerable seabird colonies on the island of Bjørnøya (Spitsbergen archipelago), closer to the maximum extent of sea ice, overlapping the Polar Front, in the south-eastern part of the Barents Sea and partly within areas which have been defined as particularly valuable and vulnerable in the Integrated Management Plan for the Norwegian Part of the Barents Sea and the Areas outside Lofoten.
The Institute has also highlighted the need for increased preparedness for oil spills and other accidents in the region.

We are the walrus

From the field,

35,000 walruses haul out at Point Lay, Alaska. September 2014.

35,000 walruses haul out at Point Lay, Alaska. September 2014.


For people who have problems visualizing climate change, this is what it can look like in the Arctic – 35,000 walruses crowded onto an Alaskan beach, driven there by the loss of their preferred resting and feeding place on coastal ice. A similar scene is playing out on beaches across the Bering Strait in Russia. These enormous gatherings follow the warmest global June-August period on record.
The large-scale gatherings are deadly. There are at least 50 carcasses on the Alaskan beach, mostly smaller calves and females, trampled by males. This happens even in years (like this one) when the sea ice does not hit a new record low. The trajectory, and projections are the same – continued ice loss in the Arctic. Seeing the walruses on the beach is a tangible sign of that change.
Less obvious, but no less serious, are the changes in the global climate driven by the continuing loss of Arctic ice – the changes affecting a large proportion of the world’s population. Unusual weather patterns in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere have been linked to the climate disturbance caused by Arctic ice loss. To put that in some perspective, one study estimated the costs on uncontrolled climate change to be $12 trillion by 2095. Another US study released in June projected large-scale impacts on coastal communities, problems with extreme heat, and massive crop losses.
This is not a problem confined to a few thousand walruses on a beach in Alaska. We are the walrus. We can do as they are, adapt the best we can, huddled together, or we can take action, and demand that our governments take action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ramping up renewable energy sources.

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