During the last half year, we have conducted capacity-building workshops in some of the case areas and are now finalizing the fieldwork with the data collection in the eight CliCNord cases. We are now in the phase of writing scientific articles, but one more CliCNord-related scientific article has been published in this period.

The project has also had several media appearances. Furthermore, eight short animations are now available, which will introduce each case in just 2-3 minutes.

In this newsletter, we have extracted the CliCNord highlights from the last six months.

In November, several CliCNord researchers participated in the 6th edition of the ”Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies” (NEEDS 2022) held in Copenhagen. We presented our work in CliCNord, saw some great keynote speakers, and engaged with all the interesting NEEDS participants

What challenges are the small Danish islands facing from future flooding risk? What possible solutions exist? And who is responsible for those solutions? These were the questions discussed at a CliCNord capacity-building workshop on Skarø, with participants from the three Danish islands: Skarø. Drejø and Hjortø, as well from Svendborg Municipality and Fyn’s Emergency & Response Team.

CliCNord researcher David Harnesk (from Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) at Lund University) has published a paper in Ambio titled “The decreasing availability of reindeer forage in boreal forests during snow cover periods: A Sámi pastoral landscape perspective in Sweden”. The paper presents an overview of two overlapping ecological dynamics that affect the hazard that we focus on in this case in the CliCNord project. Together with David’s fieldwork and research collaboration with the Maskaure reindeer herding community, it serves as the foundation for a physical climate storyline created for this case study. The normative discussion at the end of the paper provides an overview of ecological research and is highly relevant to, and informs, our overall work in CliCNord.

Eight short animations are now available, which will introduce each case in just 2-3 minutes

We conducted a major crisis management exercise in the Faroe Islands. The purpose of the exercise was to make the participants better prepared to handle crises that they may encounter through their work, such as traffic accidents, accidents at sea, or damage due to storms. At the exercise, they had to train how to best secure the critical functions in society, in collaboration with other actors from different sectors.

The scenario in the exercise was a strong storm which, among other things, caused damage to numerous houses in Hvannasund, and a tourist boat got into problems so that it had to be evacuated, as well as a rockslide that closed the access road between Klaksvik and Hvannasund.

After the severe wildfire season in Europe 2022, CliCNord scientist Johan Sjöström from RISE attended the science show “Vetenskapsradion fördjupning” (eng. Science Radio Deepening) on Sveriges Radio (Swedish Radio). The show discusses historic and future fire regimes in Europe and compared them to the Nordic situation (in Swedish).
 
The podcast “Beredskap” from Sveriges Radio (Swedish Radio) discusses civil preparedness in case of extraordinary events. CliCNord scientist from RISE Johan Sjöström guested one episode to discuss how homeowners can prepare their homes to better withstand an approaching wildfire (in Swedish).

CliCNord researchers from UiT- The Arctic University of Norway were in Ørsta (County of Møre and Romsdal) for fieldwork for the CliCNord project. During our fieldwork week in Ørsta, our research team from UiT talked to locals in two communities (Barstadvik and Vartdal) about their experiences with extreme weather events and how these events impact their daily lives and communities.

They were in the field trying to gain a better understanding of people’s adaptive capacity and place attachment to their local community and region, amidst ongoing and future extreme weather events, particularly those related to flooding and different types of landslides. 

They were interviewed by Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK), one of the national television stations, about the importance of our work, and they were the headline news in the local news and were also on one of the national news segments.

CliCNord has also been very present in Iceland. The Icelandic case was present at the European Researchers Night in Reykjavík with some 5000 visitors. This is a public outreach event all over Europe and in Iceland, it is a family event. CliCNord researchers Jóhanna Gísladóttir (University of Iceland) and Matthias Kokorsch (University Centre of the Westfjords) presented 3D models of the case study areas and brought voices from small and remote areas to the Capital. They also had inspiring talks about place attachment with people that once lived in the case study areas.

They were also invited to participate in a panel at the Arctic Circe Assembly, the biggest annual meeting on Arctic issues with over 2000 participants from more than 70 countries. And they took part in the session called Resilience and Community Decision Making and our presentation was titled: Resilience in Times of Risk and Uncertainty

Start talking about how you together can build resilience to climate change. This is the message CliCNord researcher Nina Baron from University College Copenhagen gives to the people living on the small Danish islands in an article in the member magazine of The Association of Danish Small Islands.

One of the Danish CliCNord cases was once again been mentioned in a regional newspaper in the research area. The focus of this newspaper article is that the citizens in the case area do not associate the previous heavy precipitation events with climate change - which is just one of the interesting findings on how the heavy rain event here in 2011 is viewed locally after a few months with in-depth interviews by CliCNord researcher Mikkel Nedergaard from University College Copenhagen

Interview in Politiken with CliCNord's project leader Rico Kongsager (University College Copenhagen) about the new scenarios for flooding in Denmark. The main message is that some islanders will most likely lose their homes as the water rises – and a national strategy toward coastal protection is needed, as this simply cannot be left to the coastal municipalities

This project has received funding from the NordForsk Nordic Societal Security Programme under Grant Agreement No. 97229