Arctic Futures

 The Center for Arctic Policy and its affiliates contribute to a number of forward-looking projects that seek to understand, envision, and shape the future of the Arctic. These "Arctic Futures" projects include:

Arctic Futures 2050
CAPS Director Amy Lovecraft presents posters at the Arctic Futures 2050 Conference in 2019
CAPS Director Amy Lovecraft presents posters at the Arctic Futures 2050 Conference in 2019

SEARCH (Study of Environmental Arctic Change) is leading the three-pronged effort, comprised of three contributions to informing Arctic policy with science. CAPS has participated in these in multiple ways:

  • Director Amy Lauren Lovecraft sits on the Science Steering Committee of SEARCH, and the SEARCH Executive Director is CAPS Affiliate Dr. Brendan Kelly.
  • Dr. Lovecraft co-led the Arctic Futures Scenario Workshop in Seattle in April 2018. A narrative report on the workshop, written by Dr. Lovecraft, and a full technical report can be downloaded here:

Citation: Lovecraft, A. L. 2019. Arctic Futures 2050: Scenarios Narratives. Report on the SEARCH Scenarios Project. Study of Environmental Arctic Change

Citation: denamics. 2018. SEARCH Scenarios Project Arctic Futures 2050: Technical Documentation. SEARCH.

  • Dr. Lovecraft and Research Associate Dustin Elsberry represented the Center for Arctic Policy Studies at the in Washington, DC, in Sept 2019, and presented a series of posters illustrating the outcomes of the 2018 Arctic Futures Scenario Workshop.

Participatory Scenario Methods and Outcomes: SEARCH Workshop April 2018

Amy Lauren Lovecraft, º£½ÇÂÛ̳, Marc Müller-Stoffels, denamics GmbH, Kelsey Aho, º£½ÇÂÛ̳, Douglas Cost, University of Alaska º£½ÇÂÛ̳

Rigorous, informed speculation about the future of the Arctic can help scientists and decision-makers prepare today to take action for future research, policies, and investments. These seven posters provide the outcome of the shared knowledge and work by over 30 participants at the Arctic Futures 2050 Scenarios Project workshop initiated by the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) in April 2018. This group participated in a scenarios process using the Robustness Analysis Method to answer the question "What information is needed to successfully respond to changes in Arctic environments by 2050?" Specifically, there is a poster that explains the method, a poster explaining the workshop, and five others that represent plausible future worlds created using the key drivers and future projections identified by the experts at the workshop.

Scenarios Development with Alaska's Arctic Indigenous Youth
Recent work by CAPS affiliate Dr. Douglas Cost and CAPS Director Amy Lauren Lovecraft has been published in a 2020 Polar Geography article "Scenarios development with Alaska’s Arctic Indigenous youth: perceptions of healthy sustainable futures in the Northwest Arctic Borough."
 
From the abstract:

"How do arctic youth perceive the resilience of their communities?... Arctic Futures Makers (AFM) was a scenarios workshop of 22 Alaska Indigenous high school students convened over two days in February 2016 on the resilience of the Northwest Arctic Borough’s communities in light of climate and development changes. The scope of the scenarios workshop focused on defining factors the students felt were key to the future of healthy and sustainable communities.... Three findings are significant to explain how these youth think about themselves and their region’s future: (1) high school students’ results are similar to those of adults in similar workshops but with important differences related to what makes a community ‘livable’ (2) students were initially reticent to imagine multiple possible futures (3) students’ perceptions of their own communities’ resilience changed after the workshop experience."

Download the full article PDF here: Cost and Lovecraft_2020_Scenarios Development with Alaska's Arctic Indigenous Youth

SALIENSEAS Scenarios Workshop - Maritime Futures 2035: the Arctic Region

Doug Cost facilitates scenarios workshopUAF Assistant Professor Doug Cost facilitated this scenarios workshop