Boundary-spanning collaborations to facilitate community-led adaptations for self-reliance and sustainability in Alaska

Background/Question/Methods

Both climate and socioeconomic conditions are changing rapidly in Alaska. Rural Alaskan indigenous communities, which are disconnected from the road system and electricity grid, face the highest cost of fuel and other commercial goods in the U.S. but have few jobs and insufficient income to pay these costs. The Alaska Native Science Commission (ANSC), the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and four Alaskan indigenous communities (Igiugig, Koyukuk, Newtok, and Nikolai) recently initiated a Community Partnership for Self-Reliance and Sustainability. The goal of the partnership is to foster inreach from communities to the university to develop collaborations that implement each community’s vision for self-reliance and sustainability. During three visits to each community, two ANSC leaders and a UAF graduate student and faculty member (1) listened to sustainability issues identified by tribal leadership and the community as a whole and asked questions to clarify understanding; (2) listened to community priorities and offered suggestions of ways that UAF expertise might address some of these; and (3) established collaborative connections between community leaders and appropriate UAF research groups to guide and implement community solutions. The graduate student and tribal liaisons were critical to effective communication and progress at every stage.

Results/Conclusions

Each of the four communities had at least one critical self-reliance issue that differed from issues identified by the other three communities, was critical to community self-reliance, and was not addressed by any government program. This included village relocation in Newtok, acceptance of Koyukuk’s strategy of adapting to flooding by protecting infrastructure in place, secure rights to pure water in Igiugig, and rights to fish for salmon in Nikolai. In addition, all communities share common concerns about some issues such as the high cost of energy. Each community found different ways to address this problem. Nikolai installed smart meters that enabled each household to monitor their electricity use to avoid high payments above some threshold; Newtok designed energy-efficient housing; Igiugig integrated multiple forms of renewable energy in their energy system. All communities identified and initiated key innovations before the collaboration began, and the partnership served primarily to facilitate further design refinements and implementation and the sharing of innovations among communities. The major product of the partnership has been to build trust and enthusiasm for collaboratively addressing community-identified opportunities. The success of individual projects remains to be determined.