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Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—I was standing in the back of the sled when it broke through the ice, plunging into the frigid water of the Hulahula River. Just in time, Robert yanked the machine. The heavy sled, instead of falling on me, gradually moved out of the shallow water. It must have been about 40 degrees below zero. I began to settle into hypothermia. Robert Thompson and his cousin Perry Anashugak quickly set up the tent and lit both burners of the Coleman stove. Inside a sleeping bag, I began to warm up. That day, I escaped death, barely. “The river is supposed to have solid ice on the surface in November, not fragile like this,” Robert lamented. That was 2001, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in northeast Alaska.Five months before the Hulahula River incident, in mid-June, Robert and I were standing on the northern edge of Barter Island. In front of us was Barnard Harbor that extends to a barrier island, which meets the Beaufort Sea. On the south was the coastal plain of the Arctic NWR. A short distance away a mid-sized polar bear was approaching a whale bone left behind from the previous year’s hunt by the Iñupiat people of Kaktovik. The sea ice on the harbor was still frozen, but the snow on top was beginning to melt, creating puddles. There was no wind, and the evening sun was casting a warm glow on the white seascape and on the ivory fur of the bear. As the bear walked past one of the puddles, I noticed a perfect reflection and clicked the shutter. In 2001, almost no one, including the biologists, anticipated what was to happen to the bears of the Beaufort Sea.Dialing the clock back a bit further to April, Robert and I were traveling through the Canning River Valley in the western edge of the arctic NWR, when we came across a band of 13 muskoxen with a newborn calf, likely a day or two old. The woolly bovines were migrating from the foothills of the Brooks Rrange Mountains to the coastal plain. Muskoxen, one of the most adapted animals to the extreme cold of the Arctic, give birth on exposed land when the ground is covered with snow and temperatures dip way below freezing. A few hours after the sighting, a strong blizzard started to blow, the temperature around 35 below zero with windchills approaching minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Robert thought it was “unusual” that the band of muskoxen with a newborn calf would migrate like that.These incidents constitute a starting point, showing how varieties of environmental changes have arrived in a rather short time, since the turn of the 21st century, in a particular place—each representative of the many significant climate change impacts that affect the human communities and the nonhuman biotic life in the entire circumpolar Arctic. When land and sea are going through rapid changes, inhabitants of the area are usually the first to witness it. In 2002, the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, in cooperation with the Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institution, pointed out that the indigenous peoples “are already witnessing disturbing and severe climatic and ecological changes,” even though “the majority of the Earth’s citizens have not seen any significant climate changes thus far.” Thirteen years later, a majority of the world’s people are experiencing significant impacts of climate change. In the Arctic, the changes have only accelerated.Iñupiaq conservationist Robert Thompson and his wife Jane live in Kaktovik, a small town of about 300 residents on Barter Island. A decade ago, the conversations I had with residents of Kaktovik and Arctic Village focused on both climate change and oil development. The lakes were drying up, affecting subsistence fishing. The willow plants were getting much larger and bushier affecting migration of caribou. And wildfires were becoming widespread and more destructive. All this came from the Gwich’in people, while the Iñupiat people said the sea ice was retreating rapidly and the permafrost was beginning to thaw.In early August 2006, at the northwestern edge of Barter Island, a coffin was lying exposed with bones scattered nearby. The permafrost around the coffin had thawed. Robert told me in an email:The grave we saw on the other side of the island was of a child. Lon Sonsalla, Fenton Rexford, and I went over there when we heard that a brown bear had broken into the coffin and scattered the body. I picked up a foot. It startled me—it was so light, freeze-dried. We put all the parts back in the box, nailed it shut, and reburied the person. There are two other exposed graves with dates of 1932. These had names and dates cut out of sheet lead; snow had eroded the wood to where the lead was in relief. We also found a wooden marker with a non-native name over by Sungiksaluk, perhaps a whaler. There was also a body that came out of the ground to the east. It was reburied in our cemetery.The Arctic is warming at a rate of at least twice the global average. With this rapid warming, permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, is thawing. When permafrost thaws, the organic matter inside begins to break down and releases carbon dioxide and methane, the latter about 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide, as a greenhouse gas over a 20-year period. One of the most visible signs of thawing permafrost is “drunken forest”—trees leaning at odd angles as they lose their footing in the unstable soil. In November 2007, large areas of drunken forest were spreading near Nelemonoye, a Yukaghir community along the upper Kolyma River in the Sakha Republic. Thawing of terrestrial permafrost also has major impact on ecology, hydrology, and human infrastructures, as homes, buildings, roads, and runways can collapse as the ground underneath begins to buckle.In addition to carbon stored in the organic matter inside permafrost, there is also an enormous amount of methane trapped inside icy crystals known as clathrates. Scientists do not yet know how much clathrate is in the Arctic but think that much of the carbon stored in the Arctic is inside clathrates, which can be found either deep in terrestrial permafrost or beneath Arctic shelves offshore, according to a U.S. National Research Council Report. The release of methane from terrestrial permafrost is a slower process, but from subsea permafrost it can happen steadily, or in sudden, potentially catastrophic, pulses. More than a decade of research by Russian scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov shows that methane is being actively released from subsea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Based on their field observations, a team of physical and social scientists in Europe have shown that a decade-long 50-gigaton methane pulse from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf could cost the global economy an average of $60 trillion. To put this in perspective, the financial damage from just one extreme storm, Hurricane Sandy that hit the East Coast of the United States in 2012, was barely $60 billion. So the aggregate impact on property, infrastructure, and food production of a 50-gigaton methane pulse would be equivalent to 1,000 Hurricane Sandys.“I was rained on in February,” Robert said speaking of an experience he had in winter 2006. “To me, an Iñupiaq, residing on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, to be rained on in February is strange.” In the winter of 2005 to 2006, a thousand caribou from the Teshekpuk Lake herd came over to the Arctic NWR, a 240-mile journey. “It rained and then the tundra froze over there, and the animals came over to our area to find food,” Robert recalled. “But it also rained on Barter Island, and the tundra froze. I saw some caribou curled up. I thought they were sleeping.”Robert approached them, thinking “it’s strange that they wouldn’t be more alert. They weren’t because they were dead. The animals could not find food and instead ingested ice and died of hypothermia, a biological study later revealed. Several hundred caribou died on the island that winter. People had to remove the dead animals from the watershed of our freshwater lake so it would not get contaminated.”One of the most significant impacts of Arctic warming on tundra animals in recent years has been rain during autumn and winter months, followed by freezing temperatures that create a hard layer of ice on tundra that animals like caribou or reindeer and muskoxen cannot break through to find food. Earlier this year, Kim Holmén, the international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute told a Guardian reporter that, “Much of Svalbard is covered with ice on land, which is a fatal state for the reindeer,” while the fjords around Svalbard remained unfrozen. Holmén further said that they are experiencing “more icing events,” and when that happens the reindeer “can’t move around, and they can’t eat.”University of Gothenberg Professor Tyrone Martinsson first went to Svalbard in 2001. He circumnavigated Svalbard that summer at 80 degrees North latitude and was surprised to find “no sea ice in the Arctic Ocean around Svalbard.” He focused his research on the melting of glaciers in Svalbard. In Sweden, an Arctic country with no coastline along the Arctic Ocean, two prominent areas of climate change research are the rapid melting of glaciers that is redefining the highest peaks of Sweden, as well as climate change impacts on the Saami reindeer herders in northern Sweden.The increased precipitation and icing on tundra also contributed to the disappearance of muskoxen from the Arctic NWR coastal plain. The muskoxen, which once had a circumpolar distribution during the Pleistocene era from 11,700 to 2.5 million years ago, were exterminated from the North Slope of Alaska, including the Arctic NWR, after commercial whalers arrived there with guns in the 19th century. In 1969 and 1970, 51 muskoxen from Nunivak Island were reintroduced to Barter Island. The population increased steadily, reaching almost 350 animals in the Refuge by mid-1990. Then it began to decline. They once lived year-round in the coastal plain of the Refuge, and were considered an iconic species of the coastal plain. In recent years, deeper snow and icing made foraging for food difficult, which resulted in starvation and low calf production. The animals would then move to the foothills to find food on windblown ridges. But when muskoxen give birth in April, grizzly bears would wake up from hibernation in the same area. The muskoxen became an easy prey. So adult animals with newborn calfs moved from the foothills to the coastal plain—to avoid their predators. The last official estimate of muskoxen in the Refuge was 29 animals in 2003. It is generally believed that the number is zero today, although some of the animals moved east and west of the Refuge. This could be considered a case of local extermination caused by a warming Arctic. There are other areas in the Arctic, however, where muskoxen are surviving: more than 100,000 animals in the Canadian Arctic and about 10,000 each in Greenland and Russia. Muskoxen and caribou or reindeer are the only Arctic hoofed animals that made it from the Pleistocene era to modern times, but remain vulnerable to Arctic warming today.Even though thawing of terrestrial permafrost and icing on tundra are taking place on land affecting humans and nonhuman biotic life, the primary contributor to these changes is to be found in the warming Arctic seas—the rapid retreat of sea ice.Between 2001 and 2010, the polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea region declined by 40 percent. Polar bears critically depend on sea ice for finding food and mates, as well for transport and building offshore dens. But the Arctic sea ice is vanishing at an astonishing rate. Since recording began in 1978, the extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been declining steadily. Though it accelerated after the turn of the 21st century, by August 2007, more than a month before the end of the melt season, a new record low for the minimum sea ice extent was reached—1.7 million square miles, followed by lower yet, in 2012, some 1.16 million square miles, which is nearly half of the 1979-2000 average of 2.7 million square miles. The thickness of Arctic sea ice also declined 65 percent between 1975 and 2012. On February 25, 2015, the winter maximum Arctic sea ice extent hit a record low, and it too arrived nearly two weeks before a usual early March date. As the white surface of the ice is replaced by the dark surface of water, more solar radiation gets absorbed rather than reflected back into space, which contributes significantly to Arctic warming, and consequently to further melting of the sea ice, melting of the ice sheets and glaciers, and thawing of permafrost, all of which collectively is having profound impacts on life in the circumpolar north—the area comprising the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.“Waves are bigger, now that the pack ice is so far out,” Robert says. Thomas Gordon and his son, Simon, from Kaktovik were washed away by waves while they were onshore camping during a hunting trip about 30 miles west of the town. Robert attributes these two deaths to climate change. Storms are also becoming more violent with rapid Arctic warming. The aggregate impact of a reduced expanse and duration of sea ice, combined with stronger waves, intense storms, thawing of permafrost, and a rise in sea level is rapid coastal erosion. During March and April 2002, Robert and I camped along the Beaufort Sea coast at Brownlow Point on the Canning River delta in the Arctic NWR, 60 miles west of Kaktovik. Of the 29 days we were there, we had only four calm days. The rest of the time, blizzards blew steadily with peak wind speeds of 65 miles an hour and temperatures of 45 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, bringing the windchill down to minus 110 degrees. The spot where we camped has now been washed away by the sea.“Our family has a native allotment acquired by my wife’s mother who was born and grew up in the Brownlow Point area,” Robert told me. “A few years ago, we went there to see it. We found that the beach had eroded 400 feet, the houses and buildings that had been there were gone, an old boat built by my wife’s grandfather was destroyed by waves. Family members had lived there for 100 years. Now it’s gone. On Barter Island, where we now live, we have lost at least 100 feet of land on the ocean side of the island.”Kivalina is an Iñupiat community of about 400 residents, situated 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle along the Chukchi Sea. “We have been noticing climate change for several decades now, and we were adapting to the gradual changes,” Colleen Swan, tribal administrator of the Native Village of Kivalina, said in April. Kivalina residents started to notice coastal erosion in the 1950s and voted to relocate the village in 1992. But soon they found “there was no designated government body to assist communities with the process” of relocation, sociologist Christine Shearer writes. Federal funds are available only after a disaster, not while a community like Kivalina is going through what writer Rob Nixon calls, “slow violence.”In recent years, slow has turned into rapid. “Everything changed in October 2004,” Colleen says. After autumn storms in 2004 and 2005 caused serious damage to the village, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared Kivalina a disaster area. A sea barrier using sand bags was constructed, which “failed the day before its inauguration,” Shearer says. After another storm in 2007, which required evacuation, a barrier was built with rocks the following year. The rock revetment “was the only thing that saved the village during a severe storm in November 2011,” Colleen says with a sense of relief. “It was like a tropical cyclone, and those don’t happen here.”Relocation remains a The revetment would last about to years, and it’s already into years of its “We have no but to relocate the village to a Colleen indigenous in are being by coastal erosion and with of these and relocation, including Kivalina, according to two U.S. In February 2015, the U.S. of the million to assist the the is not for but and In other the funds more to the million is a small to of the cost of Institute of Research “there are no global of the of Arctic communities and to accelerated coastal a rate of coastal retreat is about feet but can up as much as to feet in some with the highest found along the Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska, the and in and the East Siberian and in Russia. The 400 feet of erosion over a decade in the Brownlow Point area along the Beaufort Sea coast no that the maximum rate could be as as feet year. however, much larger erosion than the decade-long as in the case of erosion in like Kivalina are relocation, other communities like along the Beaufort Sea coast of Arctic are The coastal areas of the East Siberian and are and there is no about how those human are by coastal and what they have about erosion has profound impact not only on human communities but also on Arctic The Arctic river are considered biological of the Arctic have and are in to the Institute These Arctic for species of and but remain vulnerable to rapid coastal erosion and sea level as well as oil and gas impact of Arctic warming to the Arctic, As the Greenland ice sheets and Arctic glaciers to melt an enormous amount of water is to the Arctic which steadily global sea During the first decade of the 21st century, the Greenland ice sheets times than during the last decade of the century, according to the on the Arctic and the are to rapid Arctic warming, with potentially serious One study this the recent cold on the East Coast of North and severe in to the of the while another study a larger rise in sea to the As physical of the Arctic to sea ice and thawing create which lead to further as the Arctic is going through rapid and changes to the of it would even to the Arctic Ocean for as it would to further warming of the Arctic and rest of the that is what the Arctic are for ecological and human In the United States released the of oil and gas in the Arctic, of feet of and of gas 13 percent of the world’s oil and about 30 percent of percent of it is found the warming Arctic the and U.S. of has that percent of these are in percent in the United States, percent in percent in and percent in A majority of the world’s gas is in the Russian Arctic, while the U.S. Arctic the oil some 30 of like and are to their of Arctic as In at the Arctic Council in Sweden, were to the Arctic Council as and have in the region and in the Arctic Council as a of the of its The at the The Arctic in is of members Sweden, and the United and a number of Arctic have a of offshore going back In the United States, began in the and in the early These as not lead to production in one North by on the Beaufort Sea. In the Canadian Arctic, starting in through the about were in the Beaufort in Arctic and in the Arctic not lead to and oil up the in the began in Greenland in the were the last in but to production. began the Sea in the same the gas still the only gas north of the Arctic the past decades and other have more than 80 in the Sea. In recent years, the Russian in with and the oil have been the gas in the Russian Sea. Since of Arctic so are in in in Alaska, and one in The offshore is believed to in the Russian the East and Chukchi the turn of the century, with the rapid retreat of sea ice, Arctic are once to Arctic for oil and but the from this so far more like a than a Though made a to the Beaufort Sea from 2005 through as of there was no there according to the National of year, put its to in the Canadian Beaufort on Earlier this year, its in the Sea and back the it had in the west coast of although one in the Greenland Sea the east coast of in Arctic not lead to commercial the and on was from with to in the Sea in the Arctic this year. The oil walked away from the Arctic in 2012, that there could lead to a some Arctic the their for oil and gas is beginning to the about oil and gas was all on the of becoming of getting out of the says who has also in research were by the left almost a it. The who was on the was in social for being But times have been The by in their last to oil oil is left in the bit as research have been to and can be to from what they In they have been for oil for years, but no research is on the this year. Greenland and the oil far and have in both oil are away from Arctic because of the low of oil with of environmental is to the Arctic of following a of in the Beaufort and Chukchi in 2012, which of one of its and and the and its for environmental was the for to greenhouse gas to the United on in for the climate in in the arrived of a 40 percent cut from the at least 40 percent from and percent from from On the last day, the United States its to percent by But that number is on from the 2005 which when to the level that other are would to about to same day the United States its greenhouse gas cut however, the of a bringing to in the Chukchi Sea of Arctic during summer one But oil in the Arctic Ocean is with climate change A study in that of in the Arctic and any in oil production Canadian are with to average global warming to degrees the to as a community in the Iñupiat village to the oil that between and there was a percent in in a village of 400 that this could be to the that had to “The on were when many gas release that to of matter from during a with cold trapped by warm gas also significant methane and carbon dioxide into the which contributes to further warming. “We are beginning to that oil and gas more than just the of says. “It also contributes to climate have to change how I my and as ice they to how to food than I was is of being “the first and his wife live in the Iñupiat on the Arctic Slope of Alaska, with about is situated where the Chukchi and the Beaufort he the from to was where our food and that had to be at all The in the The Iñupiat people the Arctic Ocean as their and depend on it for and is well known that the Chukchi Sea where is to to for oil during summer is one of the and most on migration of ground of for and for of polar of of and and of not to all the subsea that up the food but our in the Chukchi Iñupiat came back with of of miles by four miles “The Chukchi Sea is a for of the world’s many Iñupiat people, Arctic warming and oil and gas in the Arctic are Robert that, must of what is to us and to the animals in our and do to the so our have a place to The that Robert a significant of the in the The Arctic Ocean to be the most place to a of But that is not On the to in the Chukchi Sea this which It is a for the and likely the way for in the The In other the United States, which the of the Arctic Council in April, is the of of the Arctic Ocean, not that at the Arctic Council in In of this significant it is not to that the climate which soon after the in the Chukchi be more about to not the to climate change.

Artisanal fisheries contribute substantial animal protein to people in many developing countries, yet government resources for fisheries management are limited and typically allocated to larger commercial operations. This leaves artisanal fisheries vulnerable to overfishing and other anthropogenic threats. A co-management arrangement, whereby government agencies delegate management authority to fishing communities, is a solution. However, local communities lack standardised data required for informed management. To address this information gap, we developed a citizen science programme for artisanal community fishery jurisdictions of the Sre Ambel River freshwater system in southern Cambodia. We recruited 15 fishers from four villages distributed within the drainage to collect year-round data on their fishing activity and catch. Herein, we describe the implementation of the programme and use the first complete year of data to determine the current harvest characteristics of the Sre Ambel River system on both spatial and seasonal scales. Fishers captured 153 fish species belonging to 109 genera, 62 families and 25 orders or series, comprising 75,702 individual fish, with an overall catch rate of 3.75 fish per hour. Catch varied across space and time, particularly in species richness and catch rates. Effort was significantly higher during the wet season, despite greater catch rates and species richness during the dry season. These data can be used to evaluate the fishery response to future management actions, allowing for an adaptable approach to management. Furthermore, this standardised data collection through a citizen science programme, paired with a co-management approach, may serve as a model for other systems where management investment is limited, such as other South-East Asia counties, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and small island developing states.

Northeast Asia remains largely a geographic referent, not a political entity or even an economic unit. To explore the reasons why this region lags far behind other areas of the world in developing a regional identity and to explore areas where international cooperation is both desirable and possible, the Center for East Asian Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies held an international conference in June 1997, with participants from China, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, and the United States. This article introduces the presentations and discussion at this conference and explores the prospects for regional cooperation. It identifies historical and contemporary sources of obstacles to regional cooperation, including those in the political, economic, security, and civilizational/cultural realms. It notes the fluidity and uncertainty in major power relations since the end of the Cold War and discusses the regional security implications of growing economic ties among the Northeast Asian countries. It also examines the potentials and limitations of regional cooperation at the nongovernmental level. Finally, it calls for further collaborative international research and discussion of problems, both continuing and emerging, that stand in the way of regional cooperation, particularly the issues of nationalism vs regionalism, political costs of economic interdependence, environmental security, and demographic changes and their economic, political, and security implications for the region.

Coastal communities worldwide rely on small-scale artisanal fisheries as a means of increasing food security and alleviating poverty. Even small-scale fishing activities, however, are prone to resource depletion and environmental degradation, which can erode livelihoods in the long run. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify viable and resilient artisanal fisheries, and generate knowledge to support management within the context of a rapidly changing climate. We examined the ecosystem-level consequences of an artisanal kelp fishery (Macrocystis pyrifera), finding small-scale harvest of this highly productive species poses minimal impacts on kelp recovery rates, survival, and biomass dynamics, and abundances of associated commercial and culturally important fish species. These results suggest that small-scale harvest poses minimal trade-offs for the other economic benefits provided by these ecosystems, and their inherent, spiritual, and cultural value to humans. However, we detected a negative impact of warmer seawater temperatures on kelp recovery rates following harvest, indicating that the viability of harvest, even at small scales, may be threatened by future increases in global ocean temperature. This suggests that negative impacts of artisanal fisheries may be more likely to arise in the context of a warming climate, further highlighting the widespread effects of global climate change on coastal fisheries and livelihoods.

Marine fishery sustainability depends, among others, on broader governance factors affecting fishery value chains, including the division and distribution of gender roles. This study investigates the roles of women in artisanal (billfish) fisheries in Kenya, identifies the constraints to their participation, and makes policy recommendations to enhance women’s contribution to the growth and sustainability of this important sector. Qualitative and quantitative data through surveys (n=25), semi-structured interviews(n=75), group discussions (n=104), and observations in the selected study sites on the Kenya coast show that key factors influencing women’s involvement are market access, financial resources, and skillsets. From a value chain approach, women primarily engage in secondary activities like processing and trading, while their involvement in primary roles, such as managing fishing crews, is minimal. Historical social, cultural, and economic barriers, including lower education levels and traditional gender roles, contribute to this disparity. Existing gender dynamics reinforce inequalities in resource access and decision-making. This study seeks to fill knowledge gaps regarding women’s participation in billfish fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean, using Kenya as a case study. While women are known to participate in sport and recreational fisheries, their roles in artisanal fisheries are underrepresented in research. The analysis underscores the need for context-specific policies to enhance women’s roles and for integrating gender considerations into fisheries management, so that women can become crucial stakeholders in billfish fisheries. Overall, the findings have significant implications for promoting gender equity and sustainable fisheries practices in artisanal fisheries in Kenya and beyond.