Climate and local narratives to make sense of resilience in the face of changing sea-ice conditions

• Main Author: Sandré, Tanguy
• Other Authors: Cultures, Environnements, Arctique, Représentations, Climat (CEARC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen (UiB), International Glaciological Society
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2022
• Subjects: sea ice; resilience; narratives; climate; seasonality; community; [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; Climate change; East Greenland; Greenland; Ittoqqortoormiit; Sea ice; Uummannaq
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04497510

International audience While diverse Arctic realities tend to be integrated into the science-based narrative of climate and environmental change, local-based narratives elicit grounded experiences of resilience in the face of a changing climate. For instance, climate change-driven variations in the sea-ice thickness and extend are ubiquitous in the narratives we have been collected in Ittoqqortoormiit (East Greenland) and Uummannaq (West Greenland). 'When will the ice wraps itself again around the 354-inhabitant village?' Our humility-deprived question has been let unanswered in the course of a two-month fieldwork in Ittoqqortoormiit, meanwhile, convergent stories were told: 'In the past, the fjord would have been covered by thick and safe ice to absorb the tracks of sled dogs and snowmobiles.' Those changes deeply reshape the daily life and the ability to rely on traditional activities-hunting, short-distance mobility, etc.-for people living in small settlements in Greenland. This also redesign relationships between Greenland inhabitants and polar bears whose behaviour is affected by those sea-ice conditions. Available data about climate change in the Arctic doesn't provide adequate and accurate temporal and spatial community scales' knowledge to capture local realities and narratives in their dynamic dimensions as they pertain to situated experiences of resilience. Addressing this profound disconnectedness between the framing of scientific knowledge on climate change and community-embedded knowledge, needs and concerns, we mobilise long-dwelling fieldwork to underline salient criteria of changing sea-ice conditions for community members in Ittoqqortoormiit and Uummannaq. The narrative approach we developed challenges the exclusivity of the science framing of climate change and opens up space for new ways of knowing and facing a changing climate. Hence, we will be in a position to discuss the potential for bridging climate science and local narratives of change in order to provide an understanding of ...