Socially-oriented observations definition and aims

Following the Second International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) in Copenhagen in November 2005, the elaboration of socially-oriented observation (SOO) systems was considered as an important component of the monitoring system of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008 and of the Arctic Council (AC). A special ‘social’ direction of the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) IPY sub-committee on observations was established and a Sustained Arctic Observation Network (SAON) including social observations, as a special direction of the integrated monitoring system of the north, was discussed. Nevertheless, there are still many questions regarding structure and content of the social data to be examined.

SOO in the Russian north was supported by multidisciplinary IPY cluster PPS Arctic N 151 (Present day processes, past changes, and spatiotemporal variability of biotic, abiotic and socio-environmental conditions and resource components along and across the Arctic delimitation zone) under the leadership of Norway and funded by Russian Academy of Sciences and the Research Council of Norway. An integrated Arctic socially-oriented observation system (IASOS) network has started to be developed and SOO carried out within it according to the international protocol included in the PPS Arctic Manual (PPS Arctic Manual 2008). This protocol is being tested at observation sites of the IASOS network situated in different biomes (from tundra to southern taiga zone) and various administrative regions: Arkhangelsk Oblast, Murmansk Oblast, Republic of Komi. The IASOS network is included in the SAON Inventory of Russian Networks. (Vlasova Reference Vlasova2010a). In 2011 IASOS received support at the International Arctic Legal Forum in Salekhard 2011 (Rezolutsia 2011). The development of the SOO methodology may bring some new points to this process of natural and social science integration so needed in observing, understanding and predicting changes happening in the entire Arctic socio-ecological systems (SESs).

The main objectives of SOO are to:

1. 1. Increase knowledge and observation of changes in quality of life conditions (QL). These are material well-being and its distribution, employment opportunities, social relations, public services development including health care and access to high quality education, state of natural environment including climate, safe drinking water and foods, etc.

2. 2. Reveal trends in human capital and capacities (HC). These are physical and mental health, demography, education, creativity, spiritual-cultural characteristics and diversity, participation in decision making, changes in perceptions, values, connectedness, information exchange etc. All these changes have impacts on the overall sustainability of a coupled socio-ecological system (SES).

Moreover it is important to consider that the SES resilience and sustainability is influenced by several external impacts such as climate or biodiversity changes, human activities as well as federal and local government policies and the processes of globalisation. While elaborating the SOO definition and methodology, authors assume that the higher the QL and the better the HC are, the better the SES sustainability becomes. Also it seems extremely important that the definition of SOO should be clear and should satisfy both natural and social scientists, decision-makers and diverse public needs, to produce a better consensus between different stakeholders.

Taking into account the above points, the following SOO definition has been elaborated. SOO is the monitoring of specially identified key issues of QL and HC improvement at different scales (from local, national, regional, circumpolar, global) and trends, leading to abrupt changes in SESs (thresholds) (Vlasova Reference Vlasova and Chereshnev2009). Simultaneously SOO methodology makes it possible to observe human-defined targets set at different levels to achieve stronger SES sustainability and resilience (Vlasova Reference Vlasova2010b).

The aims of SOO are much in common with those put in the Arctic Resilience Report project (ARR) which, following scoping workshops and further discussions, was accepted as an AC project in November 2011 (Nilsson and others Reference Nilsson and Olsson2011). Sweden has made the ARR a priority for its chairmanship of the AC (2011–2013). The main objective of SOO as well as of ARR is to observe, assess and manage change in the Arctic. Humanity has capacities to anticipate and possibly influence (manage) change and its trajectories. For this purpose a long-term observation system to monitor changes (rate, magnitude and genius) should be developed.

The theory of resilience in SES, as first described by Holling (1973) and developed further by other scientists representing a wide range of fields, offers a useful framework for understanding the dynamic relationship between humans and the environment in SESs, and provides models for increasing society's capacity to manage change. So, a resilience assessment is an attempt to generate systemic and anticipatory knowledge about linked SESs to better inform decision making. The ARR draws on the methodology for resilience assessments published in the Resilience Alliance's resilience assessment workbook for practitioners published in 2010 (Resilience Alliance 2010). In brief, the ARR is a science-based assessment that aims to better understand the integrated impacts of change in the Arctic. The goal is to identify the potential for shocks and large shifts in ecosystems services that affect human well-being in the Arctic and to analyse the interactions between different drivers of change, and how they affect the ability of ecosystems and human populations to withstand shocks (Nilsson and others Reference Nilsson, Cornell, Wilkinson and Vlasova2012).

The aim of SOO concerning the key issues identification and monitoring, corresponds with that of the resilience assessment goals to identify the potential for shocks and large shifts in ecosystem services. The difference here is only that in SOO ecosystem services are considered as an important element of QL conditions. The definition QL conditions embraces not only ecosystem services, but also the no less important socio-cultural services. These two types of services could be better considered as Arctic system services. This suggestion was proposed at the August 2012 ARR methodological workshop discussing ways of strengthening the social and integrative perspective in ARR assessment.

Speaking about the common features of SOO and ARR as well as their differences it could be also said that SOO are more socially directed as HC development and improvement is put in the core of SES and is considered to play a main role in SES sustainability. The definition of resilience given in the resilience workbook, stresses changes and ecosystem services: ‘Resilience is fundamentally a system property. It refers to the magnitude of change or disturbance that a system can experience without shifting into an alternate state that has different structural and functional properties and supplies different bundles of the ecosystem services that benefit people’ (Resilience Alliance 2010).

The definition of SES and its resilience is put in the centre of the ARR assessment methodology. It stated that: ‘Central to resilience thinking is the concept of a social-ecological system (SES). These systems, in which cultural, political, social, economic, ecological, technological, and other components interact, are referred to as social-ecological systems. Social–ecological systems emphasize the “humans-in-nature” perspective in which ecosystems are integrated with human society. Natural resource management issues are not just ecological or social issues, but have multiple integrated elements’ (ARR 2011). The question here is how and where this integration could be achieved by the ARR and SOO methodologies and approaches?

In ARR while identifying the potential for shocks and large shifts in ecosystems services that affect human wellbeing in the Arctic, the aim is about understanding ‘thresholds of concern’, focusing on the resilience ‘to what’. In SOO, in order to observe the main target, that is the QL and HC improvement and stronger sustainability, it is firstly necessary to identify key issues (much in common with ARR ‘thresholds of concern’) and adapt and implement development strategies for sound solution of these key issues and targets (strategic goals) set in interrelated domains, social, economic, nature-environmental, governance as well as the spiritual-cultural. In order to come to sound solutions what is needed is to determine such key issues (thresholds of concern) and not only those influencing the ecosystem services but the entire QL conditions and the state of HC. This goal could be implemented with the help of specially developed SOO approaches, methods and tools.

Approaches, methods and tools of socially-oriented observations

Social, environmental, economic, political and spiritual-cultural key issues and changes leading to key issues and thresholds of concern are not easy to identify. Major changes as well as thresholds exist nowadays but are not identified by scientists or perceived by press, politicians or local people until they become abrupt and irreversible. Moreover changes and thresholds are extremely difficult to foresee (for example the abrupt political and socio-economic transformation of the former USSR, the global financial crisis, Moscow pits and forest fire smoke and an extremely hot summer, which increased deaths in the city by 69% in summer 2010, etc.).

That is why there is a need to develop such approaches of SOO that will help us to detect important changes as soon as possible and also to do our best to predict these changes. In order to better identify and predict these trends and changes we use a special set of integrated approaches within SOO (Vlasova and others Reference Vlasova, Doubleday and Hofgaard2008).

The main approaches and principles of SOO are:

1. 1. The principle of community engagement based upon compulsory involvement of broad groups of local and indigenous people. These people with their local and traditional knowledge are considered to be not only an object of observations (as in traditional social science) but firstly as an active subject of SOO implementation;

2. 2. The problem–strategic approach means that important stages in SOO consist in the determination of key issues and simultaneously the targets set and solutions proposed by different social, professional groups and stakeholders;

3. 3. An interdisciplinary and multi-institutional approach based on the five-sphere concept of the structural organisation of SES. In accordance with the concept, in order to reach the main target, achieving the sustainability and building SES resilience, it is necessary to adjust (adapt) the solution of problems appearing in each consecutive sphere, social, economic, environmental, management and, what is very important, the spiritual and cultural sphere of human life and activities. There may be a question: what are the purposes and advantages of including the different elements? Both natural and social domains of the SES system closely interact. Sometimes scientists do not know or cannot explain these complex interrelations and feedbacks. If some changes, especially abrupt ones, are observed in one of these spheres either natural or social, this is a signal that the whole SES could loose its resilience and needs transformation and special strategies of adaptation. In several cases local and traditional knowledge is very helpful in identifying these changes or thresholds on the way to irreversible processes in the whole SES. For this purpose the institutions taking main responsibility within each of these spheres, especially decision-making institutions, should be actively involved;

4. 4. A multi-scale approach is extremely important to identify key issues and indicators for SOO. It means that all used or currently developed indicators reflecting key issues appearing at different territorial levels are of great importance. These special scales are: global, circumpolar, zonal, sub-zonal, ecosystems, administrative regions and municipalities. The concept of the ‘focal scale’ in ARR methodology is considered to be very important for SOO multi-scale approach development. The focal scale should be determined and the local municipal scale seems to be most relevant in the context of real adaptive capacities and search for concrete solutions in the local region. Sometimes, as we have already observed during SOO, local communities tuned to be very adaptive to changes, even when not receiving any suggestions and sufficient help from national governments or international organisations.

As pointed out, the main approaches of SOO include the involvement of broad groups of local and indigenous people and are based on community engagement tools and instruments (Vlasova and others Reference Vlasova, Doubleday and Hofgaard2008).

Among these tools we practice such methods as:

1. 1. Permanent long-term semi–structured interviewing along with gathering narratives and stories. ‘Permanent’ means periodically reproduced interviewing. It would be better if funding permits the conducting of rather expensive semi-structural interviewing of diverse social, age, gender and professional groups of different stakeholders. But as a rule this is very expensive and in order to implement the SOO, the main two to three key issues should be identified and the principal stakeholders should be interviewed (for example reindeer herders, the local administration of the community and gender or youth groups which experience the major impact of the concrete issue on their QL and HC).

2. 2. Express short-term semi-structured interviewing during field trips and student summer schools.

These two types of semi-structured interviewing were based on a preliminary developed questionnaire. This questionnaire was discussed with and approved by our PPS Arctic Canadian and Norwegian colleges and published in PPS Arctic Manual (PPS Arctic Manual 2008). During semi-structured interviewing our task is to receive answers to the following 10 main questions included in the PPS Arctic protocol:

1. What are the main issues affecting the quality of life in your region? Please list issues of concern to your quality of life; 2. What are the main driving forces contributing to the issues you listed in your answer to question 1 above? 3. What are the main consequences for quality of life of the issues that you listed in your answer to question 1 above? 4. What can be done to achieve a better quality of life and sustainability? 5. What are main indicators, or variables that we should observe to understand the trends for better and worse in the quality of life? 6. Are you satisfied with the state of the environment? (Yes or no, with an invitation to add comments); 7. Is your life better than it was 5 years ago? (Yes or no, with an invitation to add comments); 8. Is your personal health good? (Yes or no, with an invitation to add comments); 9. Are you happier now than you were 5 years ago? (Yes or no, with an invitation to add comments); 10. Are the environmental changes that are taking place influencing your well-being?

Along with semi-structured interviewing we use the method of rapid stakeholder assessments (RSA). RSA sessions during scientific and education workshops and meetings in schools, local organisations, agricultural farms, industrial enterprises, etc. help us to integrate natural/social science with local and traditional knowledge. According to this method, the main steps in the procedure for key issues and indicators identification within an RSA session are:

1. 1. Identification of main issues, (limits to quality of life), in the key region and their ranking.

2. 2. Identification of main factors (driving forces) in different domains (spiritual-cultural, nature-ecological, etc.) leading to the appearance of these main issues.

3. 3. Identification of main consequences for quality of life of certain revealed issues in different domains.

4. 4. Identification of main solutions and opportunities (targets and measures to be set) to achieve better quality of life, human capital development and sustainability.

5. 5. Identification of main obstacles on the way to realise these solutions and targets.

6. 6. Identification of main indicators to control and observe the trends for better (worse) quality of life and human capital development within the SOO network.

Along with community engagement methods mentioned above we use statistics, scientific literature, maps, images, gathering and analysis, taking photographs repeated in time. Also analyses of samples of drinking water and food in polluted areas are collected and considered. While doing this we involve and compare the opinions of local peoples about the quality of water and food they consume. Certainly there are many other natural phenomenona that are required to be analysed by scientific methods (in hydrology, in climatology, in biogeography, etc.) in order to give any precise answers on QL and HC issues, especially health. But the SOO experience, gives evidence that these issues of water and food quality are of primary importance in many northern communities as people do not know what is the quality of drinking water and food they consume and in many cases they are wrong in their choice of drinking water from natural underground sources and eating contaminated food grown in their gardens (Volkov and others Reference Volkov and Vlasova2010).

Key issues and thresholds of concern identified by SOO in the Russian north

The implementation of SOO methodology provides us with an opportunity to make a first very rough selection of main key issues of QL and HC development in the selected administrative regions of the Russian north. Specific persons for interviewing were selected. Although the number of people interviewed was no more than 300, this was sufficient to make a first primary list of main issues that communities have to solve. Sometimes if experts consider this to be necessary and possible, the administration was also interviewed.

The main issues and indicators for further observations identified for all our observation sites in the Russian north, although there are some local specifics, are:

1. 1. High mortality and low birth rates, a negative natural population growth, reduced life expectancy, especially among men;

2. 2. Increased mortality from unnatural causes: alcohol poisoning, suicide, accidents;

3. 3. High out-migration of the population, the increasing number of abandoned villages despite the stated intent of many northerners, including youth, not to leave their homes in some communities;

4. 4. Despite the reduction of poverty (the proportion of people with incomes below the poverty line), the inequality of the population by income (Gini coefficient) is not reduced, and in many areas is increasing, which is certainly a negative impact on the social well-being of residents with very low wages;

5. 5. High levels of unemployment, higher than the official figures, especially among young people and women, and indigenous peoples. There is a negative trend. Even if there are jobs, people (even young people) do not want to work;

6. 6. Poor reproductive health of women, high levels of stillbirth and infant mortality rates, high levels of morbidity, especially among children, number of abortions in some areas exceeds the number of births;

7. 7. Increased prevalence of trends in age composition of the population of older persons;

8. 8. Low availability of modern housing and quality social services (health care, higher and secondary education, in the field of leisure);

9. 9. Reducing the level and diversity of spiritual and material culture and education of northerners;

10. 10. Continued ‘social desertification’, a drop in the quality of human capital, in people's activity, which is undoubtedly one of the major causes of environmental degradation. Lower economic activity does not mean that the environmental situation is improving. In many cases, it is the opposite;

11. 11. Poor quality of the environment, especially (but not only) in the areas of large-scale extraction of natural resources (minerals, oil, gas and timber, etc.). Human induced disturbances (uncontrolled forests cutting, pollution with household wastes, etc.) are increasing;

12. 12. Increase in natural risks and anomalies, the spread of new pests and diseases in a changing climate, reducing the life-support functions of ‘the feeding landscape’;

13. 13. Reduced transport accessibility and community access to vital resources (forestry, energy, fisheries, drinking water and food and the necessary quality);

14. 14. Low self-sufficiency in food;

15. 15. Poaching, especially in the territories of traditional nature use;

16. 16. Uncontrolled forest cuttings;

17. 17. Poor level of administrative control from the local government;

18. 18. Poor level of peoples’ participation in decision making.