Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
vulnerability - risk, sensitivity, resilience and fragility - to provide a tool set
for understanding social adaptability to abrupt changes in climate. Briggs
uses these tools to examine the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, draw-
ing on evidence of change occurring with the melting Greenland ice sheet,
and the increasing release of methane from Arctic oceans contributing to
GHG emissions. Briggs goes on to demonstrate the ways in which human
social and political systems are vulnerable to changes in the environment, and
makes clear the dependencies human social systems have upon ecosystems,
which in turn has an impact on human, state and international security.
David Malcolm brings an engineering and technology background to
his chapter on technological adaptation to climate change. Malcolm links
changes to the environment in the Arctic to adaptations and improvements in
engineering and technology, arguing that this is an important part of the adap-
tation process, increasing human security under conditions of instability in
the environment. Malcolm draws on long-term data regarding climate change
in the Arctic, mapping some of the key impacts that have taken place so far.
As Malcolm states, despite what appears to be a lack of interest from south-
ern-based communities (in this case, southern Canada), climate change in the
Arctic cannot be understood as a phenomenon that affects this region alone.
What happens in the North has, or will have, an impact in the South. Malcolm
describes an integrated approach to planning and engineering in the North,
where technological expertise must meet not only technological demands, but
also comply with sustainable development goals and community values.
The next chapter addresses the interdisciplinary nature of human and
environmental security concepts, where the authors Dawn R. Bazely, Julia
Christensen, Andrew J. Tanentzap and Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv discuss the
ways in which the human security concept can be useful to natural scientists
to make their work relevant to the social and political world. In other words,
the authors go after what can be considered a core challenge of communica-
tion and dissemination: the science-policy gap. As the authors note, there is
no question that there remains significant challenges in the ability for social
scientists and natural scientists to collaborate effectively, but suggest that
a human security framework that recognizes the interconnections between
social systems and ecosystems provides a solid foundation for interdisciplinary
cooperation and research. Ecology has a number of 'uncomfortable' messages
for human societies based on decades of research. This includes the message
that there are indeed limits to growth; that due to the complexity of the sys-
tems we are speaking of there is always uncertainty regarding the outcomes
and impacts of human-environmental interactions, but human systems are
not well equipped to deal with uncertainties; and that ecosystems are subject
to curvilinear relationships, which means that change can occur very abruptly
and suddenly. The authors discuss how to make ecology relevant to a broader
audience, and that as a social science concept, human security is appealing due
to its longer-term, broader dimensions.
 
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