7.2.1 Whiteness as a Key Physical Parameter of the Arctic Climate System

The Arctic is often studied by climate scientists for its key role within the larger climate system. This is notably explained by the phenomenon of Polar or Arctic Amplification, by which change in the net radiation balance tends to produce larger changes in temperature in polar regions than, for instance, in mid-latitudes. This process of amplification is observable in the past climate and glacial period, and is expected to become stronger in coming decades (Serreze & Barry Reference Serreze and Barry2011; Previdi et al. Reference Previdi, Smith and Polvani2021). The phenomenon of amplification is strongly associated with positive feedback such as albedo effects, which refer to the fraction of incoming solar energy or light that a surface reflects back to space (Fox-Kemper et al. Reference Fox-Kemper, Hewitt and Xiao2021; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022). This reflected energy is a fundamental component of the earth’s energy balance. The albedo has values between 0 for a black surface that absorbs all energy and reflects none, and 1 for a white surface that behaves like a mirror and reflects all light without absorbing any. The albedo of snow-covered sea ice or of a pristine white is therefore higher than that of the darker open sea. The whiteness of the Arctic, the snow coverage and sea ice extent, plays a major role into the planetary albedo and is therefore of the utmost interest for climate scientists to observe climate change. For instance, the progressive decline of sea ice extent and ice thinning is predicted to reach a seasonal ice-free Arctic Ocean by 2050. The region amplification also produces impacts beyond the Arctic, such as in storm tracks, the jet stream, and planetary waves and their associated energy propagation, as well as accentuated impacts of Pacific variability (Cohen et al. Reference Cohen, Screen and Furtado2014; Overland et al. Reference Overland, Francis and Hall2015; Preece et al. Reference Preece, Mote and Cohen2023). It must be noted here that the physical whiteness of the Arctic is itself a narrow representation of the regions which are predominantly and for most of the year uncovered by white surfaces.

7.2.2 Whiteness of the Gaze

Independent of the processes associated with the physical polar whiteness, social notions of whiteness are pervasive in the making of the science itself. Firstly, Arctic climate science remains mostly produced in mid-latitudes, and the field is largely characterized by ‘fly in, fly out’ practices, devoid of any form of local engagement (Skjervedal Reference Skjervedal2021). But it also submerges the framing of the climate change narrative on Arctic regions. Multifaceted changes and upheavals are mainly analysed in a global and science-based approach of climate and environmental sciences that tends to make invisible local contexts and specificities (Bremer et al. Reference Bremer, Wardekker and Dessai2019; Krauß Reference Krauß2020). This is especially significant in the Arctic (Bravo Reference Bravo2009; Holm Reference Holm, Krupnik, Aporta, Gearheard, Laidler and Kielsen Holm2010; Baztan et al. Reference Baztan, Cordier, Huctin, Zhu and Vanderlinden2017; Stephen Reference Stephen2018), where local and Indigenous communities are also often portrayed as passive ‘victim-heroes’ (Roosvall & Tegelberg Reference Roosvall and Tegelberg2013). Even when these approaches acknowledge injustice and recognize agency, they remain views from the outside that preserve a certain kind of narrative. In other words, the conduct of the research itself imposes a restriction on the kind of knowledge involved – for instance, restrained to the realm of the quantifiable (for example, albedo) – in making and sustaining a narrow understanding of the Anthropocene.

With the concept of whiteness at the centre of their analysis, Baldwin and Erickson (Reference Baldwin and Erickson2020) underline the inherent coloniality of the Anthropocene. They argue that the whiteness of the Anthropocene ‘determines not only who can be heard in that space but also the very terms on which the Anthropocene debate unfolds as an object of public concern’ (Baldwin & Erikson Reference Baldwin and Erickson2020: 6). In the Arctic, the regional – but globalizing – science-based narrative tends to annihilate expressions of place-attachment, cultural values, or local knowledge, and hence neglects local agencies through epistemic injustice and violence while strengthening pre-existing power imbalances. By contrast, community responses to a changing climate and environment ‘is deeply implicated in their sense of who they were and are, also in relation to a larger world’ (Hastrup Reference Hastrup2018: 1) and the knowledge they hold (Krupnik & Jolly Reference Krupnik and Jolly2002). For instance, in Ittoqqortoormiit, sea ice changes can only be understood in nonlinear manifestations whose narrations articulate epistemic humility, place-attachment, belonging, and relation with more-than-human beings. Furthermore, the presence or the absence of sea ice shapes seasonality, whose occurrence directly connects with the ability to move and travel, hunting practices and expressions of freedom (Sandré et al. Reference Sandré, Wardekker, Gherardi, Bremer and Wardekker2024).

How do we navigate with this critical view when we apply it to ourselves? We need to acknowledge that we embody the white gaze, which is deployed through whiteness, and that our position is unsatisfactory to address the aforementioned critiques. The SeMPER-Arctic project, for instance, aims at decolonizing concepts such as resilience but was itself developed with limited community engagement. Once the project was funded, we, as critical ethnographers, were committed to ‘explicitly consider how (our) own acts of studying and representing people and situations are acts of domination’ (Noblit et al. Reference Noblit, Flores and Murillo2004: 3). This contradiction pushes us to step back and propose an ethic of amplification, where we aim to decentre our practices and to pluralize the telling of research stories.

7.3.1 Amplifying Voices: Research as a Relation to Support the Expression of Plurality

In order to address, but not easily resolve, the criticisms outlined earlier, a new radical way of engaging with research is required, especially when working with groups represented as if on the margins, from yonder, that is, from the non-Western world. We suggest that by employing a critical ethnography framework, we are in a position to endorse ‘an ethical responsibility to address processes of unfairness or injustice’ (Madison Reference Madison2020: 30). This view aims to take care of the sufferings of living beings and commits us to supporting changes towards an improved situation or to minimize sufferings. The critical approach to climate scholarship is all the more relevant as it allows us to emphasize how vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic is constructed through discourses that ignore the effects of colonialism and its ongoing impacts. Its formulation itself extends colonial forms of knowledge and practice (Cameron Reference Cameron2012). For instance, the PB framework relies on measurable and quantitative indicators (e.g., atmospheric CO₂ concentration levels or rates of biodiversity loss) and proxies (e.g., satellite-derived vegetation indices such as NDVI or nitrogen fertilizer application rates). Such global and unanchored metrics are constitutive of a particular, that is, Western, episteme, which, intentionally or not, excludes unquantifiable criteria salient to groups operating within different epistemic frameworks (e.g., spiritual, cultural, or relational values to ecosystems that resist quantification).

The tools used to measure and objectify PB research are abstractions, and these metrics are often very alien to the human population in general (Karlsdóttir et al. Reference Karlsdóttir, Huctin, Gherardi, Vanderlinden and Sandré2023). As critical ethnographers, we subvert concepts such as neutrality and taken-for-granted assumptions. This is not a pleasant journey, a fortiori, but not only for researchers like us from the settler’s world, knowing that ‘we have all internalised dominant ideas about what constitutes “good” research and “acceptable” research practice’ (Brown & Strega Reference Brown and Strega2005: 2). A common postulate among research methodologies is that the researcher is an outsider ‘able to observe without being implicated in the scene’ (Smith Reference Smith2021: 157). Neutrality, objectivity, and distance are valued as part of the ‘good science’ framework. Nevertheless, being an outsider experiencing the inside clearly means being part of the landscape, entangled in multiple relationships and taking part in ‘the care enveloping every social interaction’ (field notes, 2021, p. 2). ‘In Indigenous frameworks, relationships matter’ (Smith Reference Smith2021: 137). To deploy an ethical practice oriented towards plurality, it requires us to direct our intention around showing respect to the community we are working with and to walk softly: ‘(Y)ou need to prove that you can actually function as a positive member of that community; there’s no way to do that without becoming a part of that community. That takes time’ (NCAI & MSU 2012: 18).

7.3.2 Ethics towards Plurality: Why Does It Matter?

What makes plurality an ethically important consideration? We distance our views from those that support a plurality of views (on climate change, for example) only when they seem appropriate for dominant policy decisions but still fail to recognize local contexts. Our aims are not an instrumental plurality directed towards mastering, but to address a process of fairness. Within environmental justice and transdisciplinary research, narrative-centred approaches have shown their value to support the capacity of marginalized communities and groups to speak for themselves (Ottinger Reference Ottinger2017) and to make sense of changes in the light of their own knowledge, beliefs, and experiences (Vanderlinden et al. Reference Vanderlinden, Baztan and Chouinard2020). Sultana (Reference Sultana2022) argues for the crucial place of lived experiences to counterbalance hegemonic framings and structural forces that perform climate coloniality. A narrative-centred methodology allows for reframing categories and for recognizing that the science-based or policy-oriented way of categorizing the world is not necessarily salient and often insufficient, especially but not only in postcolonial contexts. In that way, narratives elicit the plurality of worlds and alternative worldviews existing outside and alongside the Western world. As Jonsson (Reference Jonsson2016: 1) argues, ‘It is only when the Indigenous attains the place of the subject telling the story that we can seriously claim to have a postcolonial narrative of the Arctic.’ In Ittoqqortoormiit, alongside more formal interviews, the gesture of decentring our gaze, adopting a relational approach, pushed us to consider stories that were not initially in the scope of our research. While investigating the impacts of climate change through narratives of lived experience, we opened up space for other salient stories to emerge. One of those was associated with the central importance of mattak (narwhal skin) and threats to the future of narwhals hunting. That led us to the co-production of a short film in the native language and with community members. With this short film, we also tried to correct the inherent lack of engagement in the design and conduct of our research project. Feedback and evaluations by community members following the screening and the diffusion within the community – for example, repeated comments such as ‘we’ve been telling that for many years’ and ‘you/we need to spread it out to the world’ – suggest that an important step towards inclusive and fair research practices has been reached (Karlsdóttir et al. Reference Karlsdóttir, Huctin, Gherardi, Vanderlinden and Sandré2023). We believe that place-based stories that capture lived experiences of the acute environmental crisis have to be heard and contribute to pluralize Anthropocene discourse.

7.4.1 Unbounding the Anthropocene Discourses

The Anthropocene can be captured as an expression of a dualist framing in the form of a gendered and racialized Man pursuing the liberation from a passive and changeless Nature (Grove & Chandler Reference Grove and Chandler2017: 79). Since its introduction to depict or label a new geological epoch (Crutzen & Stoermer Reference Crutzen and Stoermer2000; Crutzen Reference Crutzen, Ehlers and Krafft2006), the concept of the Anthropocene has been extended beyond geology and gained legitimacy in multiple fields of academia as well as in the public arena. Beyond the debate around the date for the Anthropocene (see for instance critical reflections from Lewis & Maslin Reference Lewis and Maslin2015; Davis & Todd Reference Davis and Todd2017), the diffusion of the concept has been accompanied with tense critiques that both cover a problem-framing – for instance tending to homogenize humanity (see Baldwin & Erickson Reference Baldwin and Erickson2020; Luke Reference Luke2020) – and its embeddedness in the ideology of control and mastering. The Anthropocene was also extensively criticized as hiding root causes of global change found both in imperialism and in racial capitalism (Sealey-Huggins Reference Sealey-Huggins, Johnson, Joseph-Salisbury and Kamunge2018). Alternative terms were suggested to re-root the climate and ecological crisis in the historical development of capitalism (Capitalocene) or enslavement (Plantationocene) (see for instance Haraway Reference Haraway2015; Bonneuil & Fressoz Reference Bonneuil and Fressoz2016). Whatever term one uses, the Anthropocene and more widely the anthropocenic framing are to be understood both as a moment that directly threatens (certain) ways of being in the world and as a global narrative that pursues a dynamic of rendering margins invisible. In other words, the climate and ecological crisis, in its intertwinement with multidimensional upheavals, sheds new lights on the unsustainability of the hegemonic way of experiencing the world, while threatening with higher intensity certain ways-of-being in the world, which are also those less accountable for the situation (see Sultana Reference Sultana2022, Reference Sultana, Solnit and Young Lutunatabua2023; Tuana Reference Tuana2022). Accordingly, we amplify the necessary work of paying more attention to marginalized experiences and narratives from yonder, from the non-Western world, through an ethic of plurality that emphasizes lived experiences. Making such a movement and recognizing how the Anthropocene is framed in reference to a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity (or rather a certain portion of the humanity), we are also tempted to question even further the boundaries of what life matters.

7.4.2 Open Up Space for Other-Than-Human Experiences

The hegemonic way of experiencing the world threatens diverse ways-of-being by exacerbating oppression over some people because of their class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. If we take a critical look at the anthropocentrism of anthropocenic discourses, we might raise the question of how we open space for more-than-human ethics that takes care of non-human beings, as Christine Winter does, in her Chapter 4 on ozone, in this book. Even if Rockström et al. (Reference Rockström, Gupta and Qin2023) recognize that non-humans have been under-considered within the framework of PB, their attempt to provide a theoretical frame for just and safe PB remains limited to a nature/culture divide and a capitalistic model wherein non-human animals’ relations are envisioned through the lenses of appropriation to the profit of humans and where ecosystems are valued for their ability to sustain humanity potentialities. Although the stories we collect are told by humans, it now seems important to us to observe attentively what is at stake for the animals that are part of human practices and activities that we encounter. Additionally, when working with marginalized communities, our ethics regarding caring for the suffering of human beings guide us in questioning and reframing the scope of our moral considerations. This question is notably addressed by non-hegemonic ontologies (for example, animism) (Willerslev Reference Willerslev2007; Escobar Reference Escobar2014; Rivera Andía Reference Rivera Andía2019), multispecies ethnography (Kirksey & Helmreich Reference Kirksey and Helmreich2010) but also anticolonial critical animal studies (Montford & Taylor Reference Montford and Taylor2020). The aforementioned perspectives involve ethical experiences that guide certain attitudes towards non-human animals but also privilege certain political responses that distance themselves from the ideology of control and mastering. Furthermore, as noted by Bauer (Reference Bauer2016: 416), ‘by reproducing the concept of nature, it also ushers in an implicit politics of knowledge production, creating a political epistemology that often gives Western scientists and technocrats a privileged position to define natural and desirable environmental conditions’.