Climate change impacts, adaptation, and the technology interface - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 121

'The projected rate of warming and its effects will need to be taken into
account in the design of all new construction, requiring deeper pilings, thicker
insulation, and other measures that will increase costs' (Hassol 2004:88).
Climate variability due to warming trends will continue to challenge the
sustainability of engineered projects in the North. The engineering design
and construction industries must become more oriented towards sustainable
development goals and objectives. Workable designs must often be replaced
by optimal designs, including value engineering, life cycle costing and appro-
priate risk management and assessment. Social, environmental and economic
sustainability are the medium-term goals.
In the boreal North, Aboriginal communities are assisted in strategic plan-
ning and research into sustainability by such organizations as the Northern
Research Institute of Yukon College, the Aurora Research Institute of Aurora
College in the Northwest Territories and the Nunavut Research Institute,
although only the northeastern fringes of the boreal region lie in Nunavut.
The sustainability goals are supported by many federal initiatives, including
the Northern Development Strategy of the Government of Canada introduced
in 2009. All of the federal Science-Based Departments and Agencies (SBDAs)
have programmes that are active in Canada's North.
Many universities are active in northern research, most of which are
members of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies
(ACUNS). Their research is usually independent of community priorities,
but partnerships with communities are becoming more common. University
research in partnership with communities is funded by several federal pro-
grammes, including the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and
the Community University Research Alliance (CURA) programme of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
In the North, communities and industrial developers alike are faced with
permafrost degradation, slumping of ice-laden landforms, changes in timing
of freeze-up, melting of river ice and sea ice, and many other aspects of global
change. Climate warming brings greater variability and more extreme events,
such as forest fires, landslides and storms. These impacts are occurring in the
circumpolar North at an alarming rate, and it is necessary to begin immedi-
ately to understand the impacts and adapt to them (Malcolm 2002, 2010).
Climate change is occurring faster than indigenous knowledge can adapt
and is strongly affecting people in many communities. Unpredictable
weather, snow, and ice conditions make travel hazardous, endangering
lives. Impacts of climate change on wildlife, from caribou on land, to fish
in the rivers, to seals and polar bears on the sea ice, are having enormous
effects, not only for the diets of Indigenous Peoples, but also for their
cultures.
(Hassol 2004:96)