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Moderator: Jim Vanderwal

TOONIKTOYOK: Inuit-led Research on Climate Change Risks and Hunting Costs

Presenters: Angus Naylor, David Fawcett and Adam Kuptana

The goal of the TOONIKTOYOK project is to develop a dynamic understanding of how changing climatic conditions are affecting subsistence hunting and adaptation options among Inuit in Ulukhaktok, NT. Using a novel participatory-GIS methodology, the project equips 10 active Inuit hunters with GPS units, which are carried throughout the course of the year to record real-time land use data. This data is supplemented through the cohort’s participation in bi-weekly semi-structured group interviews, convened by a local Inuit project-coordinator, and with questions informed by project objectives, which capture additional information on stressors affecting subsistence practices and challenges to adaptive capacity. This oral presentation will highlight the importance of community-led monitoring initiatives to combat and better understand the effects of climate change, discuss the application of participatory-GIS methods for climate change adaptation, and describe the ways through which Inuit are affected by and respond to climate change.

Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk – the Acceleration of Coastal Change

Presenters: Thomas James and Shawn Stuckey

Over the last few decades, the rate of coastal change in some parts of the Arctic — in particular the Beaufort Sea — has accelerated due to declining sea ice, warming temperatures, increased wave action and storm surges. No other community is more vulnerable to the acceleration of climate-driven change than the community of Tuktoyakuk (pop. 950). The residents of the coastal community of Tuktoyaktuk, located within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, are all too aware of this rapid erosion, coastal flooding and land subsidence from permafrost thaw.  Erosion rates have increased by 27% in the past two decades, and it is clear that current shore protection measures are not working and able to withstand the increased climate-forcing events that continue to plague the community during the open water season. The rapidly increasing burden of coastal erosion facing this community necessitates urgent mitigation.