Climate change in Northern Norway: Toward an understanding of socio-economic vulnerability of natural resource- dependent sectors and communities

Abstract

The work in this report is a contribution from CICERO to Theme 4 of the NorACIA project, a Norwegian follow-up to the Arctic Council’s Arctic Climate Impact Assessment: http://acia.npolar.no/

It has been recognized that there is an urgent need for better and integrated knowledge of the social, economic and environmental conditions that underpin vulnerability to climate change at the local level. Such knowledge is necessary in order to develop credible vulnerability and adaptation assessment methodologies that can in turn inform local, regional and national planning processes and adaptation strategies. We examine two indicators of socio-economic vulnerability to climate change in climate- sensitive sectors in Northern Norway: share of employment and gross value added. Using these two indicator examples, we show that vulnerability to climate change in different economic sectors varies depending on the scale at which analysis is undertaken, the unit of analysis and the indicators employed. Given the identified limitations of applying a top-down approach to assessing socio-economic vulnerability, we suggest elements of a strengthened methodology for vulnerability studies that incorporates stakeholders’ own information on their exposure-sensitivities and adaptive capacity to climate change. We conclude that a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches for assessing the vulnerability of climate-senstitive sectors is waranted.