Beluga whale stewardship and collaborative research practices among Indigenous peoples in the Arctic

Beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) are an integral part of many Arctic Indigenous cultures and contribute to food security for communities from Greenland, across northern Canada and Alaska to Chukotka, Russia. Although the harvesting and stewardship practices of Indigenous peoples vary among regions and have shifted and adapted over time, central principles of respect for beluga and sharing of the harvest have remained steadfast. In addition to intra-community cooperation to harvest, process and use beluga whales, rapid environmental change in the Arctic has underscored the need for inter-regional communication as well as collaboration with scientists and managers to sustain beluga populations and their cultural and nutritional roles in Arctic communities. Our paper, written by the overlapping categories of researchers, hunters, and managers, first provides an overview of beluga hunting and collaborative research in seven regions of the Arctic (Greenland; Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Canada; Alaska; and Chukotka). Then we present a more detailed case study of collaboration, examining a recent research and management project that utilizes co-production of knowledge to address the conservation of a depleted population of beluga in Nunavik, Canada. We conclude that sustaining traditional values, establishing collaborative management efforts, the equitable inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge, and respectful and meaningful collaborations among hunters, researchers and managers are essential to sustaining healthy beluga populations and the peoples who live with and depend upon them in a time of rapid social and environmental change.

Upscaling the resilience assessment through comparative analysis

Resilience is the capacity of any system to maintain its function, structure and identity despite disturbances. Assessing resilience has been elusive due to high levels of abstraction that are difficult to empirically test, or the lack of high quality data required once appropriate proxies are identified. Most resilience assessments are limited to specific situation arenas, making comparision one of the unresolved challenges. Here we show how leveraging comparative analysis can provide insights on how Arctic communities (N = 40) can best deal with social and environmental change. We found that the capacity to self-organize, and nurturing diversity are sufficient conditions for Arctic communities whose livelihoods have been resilient, or for communities whose livelihoods have been transformed. Our study provides an alternative perspective on how to assess resilience by leveraging comparsion across cases. It also identify governance patways to support adaptations and transformations in the Arctic, a geography with some of the most dramatic social and natural challenges to come.

Transitioning Service Design within Government: An exploration of how the role of Service Design within Central Government agencies might benefit from Transition Design as a key artbiter of social change

<b>This research considers how Transition Design, an emergent design provocation, could be used to grow the role of Service Design within New Zealand Central Government. Leading this investigation is the assertion that currently within Central Government agencies a re-evaluation and re- scoping of the contributions that Service Design can make towards the resolution, mitigation or navigation of the complex social, cultural, political and economic issues these agencies now face is required. This study also asserts that Service Design could play a more impactful role within Central Government as an arbiter of change. To achieve this, the role of Service Design needs to be redefined and service designers’ skills recalibrated. This research considers how Transition Design could be used to achieve this aim. </b><p>Transition Design, as a provocation not a manifesto, challenges the existing paradigms which characterise Service Design and illuminates radical pathways for societal transitions to more sustainable futures. This study identifies opportunities within New Zealand Central Government structures, systems and processes to use Transition Design as a model to challenge existing modes and having done so, enable more radical social and environmental change. </p> <b>A critical component of this research is a series of interviews conducted with Service Design practitioners currently working within or alongside New Zealand Central Government. These interviews were analysed and used to help define areas or stages of Service Design that TransitionDesign interventions could be tested against. Importantly, these interviews also served to develop new models that illustrated areas in which Transition Design methods or ideologies could be applied within the Central Government context. A second round of interviews critiqued the practical application of Transition Design within current and towards future Service Design practice. Having identified many of the key barriers currently limiting the effectiveness of Service Design and service designers working within Central Government, this research posits that the provocations exhibited within Transition Design will go a long way to enabling the expansion of both Service Design’s role and service designer’s capacities, capabilities in the resolution, mitigation and navigation of the complex social, cultural, political and economic issues that need to be addressed by New Zealand </b><p>Central Government. </p>

Transitioning Service Design within Government: An exploration of how the role of Service Design within Central Government agencies might benefit from Transition Design as a key artbiter of social change

<b>This research considers how Transition Design, an emergent design provocation, could be used to grow the role of Service Design within New Zealand Central Government. Leading this investigation is the assertion that currently within Central Government agencies a re-evaluation and re- scoping of the contributions that Service Design can make towards the resolution, mitigation or navigation of the complex social, cultural, political and economic issues these agencies now face is required. This study also asserts that Service Design could play a more impactful role within Central Government as an arbiter of change. To achieve this, the role of Service Design needs to be redefined and service designers’ skills recalibrated. This research considers how Transition Design could be used to achieve this aim. </b><p>Transition Design, as a provocation not a manifesto, challenges the existing paradigms which characterise Service Design and illuminates radical pathways for societal transitions to more sustainable futures. This study identifies opportunities within New Zealand Central Government structures, systems and processes to use Transition Design as a model to challenge existing modes and having done so, enable more radical social and environmental change. </p> <b>A critical component of this research is a series of interviews conducted with Service Design practitioners currently working within or alongside New Zealand Central Government. These interviews were analysed and used to help define areas or stages of Service Design that TransitionDesign interventions could be tested against. Importantly, these interviews also served to develop new models that illustrated areas in which Transition Design methods or ideologies could be applied within the Central Government context. A second round of interviews critiqued the practical application of Transition Design within current and towards future Service Design practice. Having identified many of the key barriers currently limiting the effectiveness of Service Design and service designers working within Central Government, this research posits that the provocations exhibited within Transition Design will go a long way to enabling the expansion of both Service Design’s role and service designer’s capacities, capabilities in the resolution, mitigation and navigation of the complex social, cultural, political and economic issues that need to be addressed by New Zealand </b><p>Central Government. </p>

Demystifying Collapse: Climate, environment, and social agency in pre-modern societies

Collapse is a term that has attracted much attention in social science literature in recent years, but there remain substantial areas of disagreement about how it should be understood in historical contexts. More specifically, the use of the term collapse often merely serves to dramatize long-past events, to push human actors into the background, and to mystify the past intellectually. At the same time, since human societies are complex systems, the alternative involves grasping the challenges that a holistic analysis presents, taking account of the many different levels and paces at which societies function, and developing appropriate methods that help to integrate science and history. Often neglected elements in considerations of collapse are the perceptions and beliefs of a historical society and how a given society deals with change; an important facet of this, almost entirely ignored in the discussion, is the understanding of time held by the individuals and social groups affected by change; and from this perspective ‘collapse’ depends very much on perception, including the perceptions of the modern commentator. With this in mind, this article challenges simplistic notions of ‘collapse’ in an effort to encourage a more nuanced understanding of the impact and process of both social and environmental change on past human societies.

Resource extraction and intersectoral research: Engaging accountable relations in the Environment Community Health Observatory Network

The inaugural gathering of The Environment Community Health Observatory (ECHO) Network is a network of academic, non-profit, and health authority scholars and practitioners committed to understanding and responding to the cumulative impacts of resource extraction. The Network is embedded within multiple jurisdictions and institutional contexts, reflecting the Network’s efforts to work across sectors to address questions arising in communities and regions experiencing the overlapping influences of rurality, remoteness, and resource extraction. In this paper, we draw from entrance interviews and a group exercise with Network members to explore the complexity of accountability as an unfolding challenge for research that addresses resource extraction in Canada. We locate these findings within the current settler colonial context in which the Network is embroiled, arguing that a condition of settler colonialism is erasing not only Indigenous legal orders but also accountability mechanisms outside of state-based discourses. In making this argument, we understand settler colonialism as a failed yet persistent project. We contend that collectively engaging through situated and relational accountabilities beyond simply accounting for “accountability”, ECHO Network members—and others looking to social and environmental change—are critically challenged to approach settler-state apparatuses for transformative engagement beyond merely recognizing that accountability is relational.