JPI Climate: Social-Ecological Transformations: HUMan-ANimal Relations Under Climate Change in NORthern Eurasia

Ongoing climate change in the 21st century will instigate profound societal transformations in the 21st century. Yet, our knowledge of how such transformations can be achieved in an equitable and sustainable manner is limited. The HUMANOR project investigates historical transformations of mobile pastoralist social-ecological systems (SESs) for clues about which pathways may lead to such transformations. We comparatively study SESs that have undergone profound climatic fluctuations in the last centuries (indigenous Sámi, Nenets, Evenki and Mongolian pastoralists) while maintaining their livelihoods through a host of incremental and qualitative shifts. Although these systems are increasingly being exposed to rapid climate change (e.g. the Arctic warming faster than lower latitudes), our understanding of SES response capacities is limited to adaptations within the current systems. We propose that a long-term focus on human-animal relations and the general socio-economic contexts may illustrate how people can deal with abrupt changes (including massive environmental shocks) and re-create these systems. Our focus is on the complex drivers of social-ecological transformations of recent decades and centuries that include climate variation, land use change, governance forms, institutional change (including legislation and social norms) and markets. We expect to show that although it is an ancient livelihood, still practiced across vast areas of N Eurasia, pastoralism is constantly undergoing shifts in the nexus of feedbacks between humans, animals and the environment. This comparative trans-disciplinary study is performed across several timescales (centennial changes since the Middle Ages- marking reindeer domestication in Fennoscandia and Siberia and the height of the pastoralist Mongolian Empire, and decadal changes since the mid-20th century) in order to illustrate the historical context of change and provide key insights into people as active agents or passive receptors of change. For instance, we know that even at low human population densities, large livestock herds can alter ecosystem structure and function but we know comparatively little about how social, economic and political changes foster or impede deliberate, desirable changes in the ecosystems and societies underlying these SESs. We propose that projecting future transformations will benefit from the retrospective partitioning of: (1) socio-economic and political from climate drivers over decadal scales; and (2) human-animal agency from climate drivers over centennial scales. We use an interdisciplinary mix of methods to first reconstruct historical human-animal-environment relationships and environmental histories by documenting current oral environmental histories (myths, legends, life stories) and environmental reconstruction from pollen records and other soil signatures. We use indigenous residents current environmental knowledge to uncover the recent changes (climatic, vegetation, etc.) in their environments and participant observations to uncover the complex socio-economic realities of their SESs. Our analysis draws strength from: (1) contrasting SESs across diverse geographic scales; and (2) accounting for heterogeneous perceptions of risk concerning the future viability of (reindeer) pastoralism in the European Research Area. We envision our project making a significant contribution to the design of ethical and sustainable transformations of SESs in Europe and beyond.

The HUMANOR project is rooted in participatory action research taking place over many years in partnerships between scientists and stakeholders. Our innovative approach includes stakeholders in research aimed at more flexible and collaborative governance. As part of our transdisciplinary research strategy, stakeholder workshops plan the research under the RISES and NCoE TUNDRA projects are scheduled for winter 2015. Indigenous scholars and local non-academic practitioners from different age cohorts are developing this proposal together and will implement and disseminate the findings. Female early career and senior indigenous scientists take leading roles in collecting oral histories, participatory GIS, environmental history, and the co-production of knowledge essential to policy-relevant research. This training will be accomplished through hiring early career researchers across the network and training them in our four sites, including the University of Aberdeen. Public dissemination of research results as central components of their respective mandates. These include Science Centre & Exhibition at Arktikum in Rovaniemi, Ájtte Sámi Museum in Jokkmokk, and Shemenovsky Museum & Exhibition Centre in Salekhard.The cooperation is balanced with European, Russian and indigenous experts in social anthropology (ethnography, oral history) and human geography (PGIS). Complementary expertise encompasses environmental history (archaeology, palaeoecology) and political ecology.