The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is one of the climate tipping points that would have local and global impacts. The GRISCO project is inspired by existing research on targeted interventions, an emerging research topic among strategic responses to climate change. The project aims to 1) engage local communities in a knowledge co-production process with scientists on a sustainable design of ice sheet conservation in Ilulissat, Greenland; 2) co-produce knowledge with local communities and hence promote hust and equitable societies; and 3) explore monetization of the ice sheet for conservation applying the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) concept for the benefit of Greenland.
The impact of climate change on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet diminishes the local ecology and harms traditional hunting and fishing ways of life. It furthermore lowers the attractiveness and natural state of Ilulissat Fjord, potentially reducing tourist income. Hence the project directly addresses the need for action on climate, and stimulates improvement in both local environment and employment. Wider benefits include better understanding of ice sheet preservation e.g. in Antarctica, and a hopeful means of engagement to global youth who crave the ability to take responsibility and act on climate. The project explores alternative income sources for Greenland beyond the usual resources extraction options that are unsustainable. Preserving and establishing a monetary value for the ice sheet is possibly the most sustainable way of promoting Greenlandic socio-economic development.
An important element of GRISCO is its focus on community co-design. Within the project, the team follows the IASSA Principles and Guidelines for Conducting Ethical Research in the Arctic and participatory research.
The GRISCO project is scheduled to end in October 2023.
Task 1: Modelling of targeted intervention for protecting the Jakobshavn Glacier
In the 1st stage, a community workshop is organized, where the concept and modelling of ice sheet conservation for protecting the Jakobshavn Glacier are presented and locals’ views, concerns, and questions on climate change’s impacts and ice sheet conservation are collected in focus group discussions. Additional interviews are conducted on the impacts on local and national levels, and the youth art competition is launched. Based on the community focus group discussions.
Preliminary ice/ocean modelling of impact of a sea bed anchored curtain with a top height 100 m below the surface. The ocean forcing here is idealized due to relatively lack of winter observations. We estimate that about a 45% reduction in basal melting of Jakobshavn would result.
Task 2: Community involvement in co-production of knowledge and in the identification of social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts
The project will organize community workshops for the focus groups of local stakeholders concerning applicability of seabed anchored curtains or other interventions. The community workshops will be organized in the 1st stage of the project for knowledge co-production with the locals, and in the 3rd phase for sharing the outcomes of the modelling. Based on the assessments of the effects of ice sheet conservation on the natural environment, the discussions will raise questions related to potential effects on the livelihood, ways of life, cultural issues, multiple-use, and recreational possibilities of local people. Furthermore, the discussions assess the distribution of pros and cons between locals near the Jakobshavn Glacier and Greenland in general as well as ways of minimizing the negative impacts. As a possible monetization and governance approach, ice sheet conservation could offer a new, alternative and sustainable source of income for Greenlanders if compensation for it was offered following the principle of PES (Wunder, 2007). An idea behind this approach is to use economic incentives for resource owners or other operators to help in environmental protection or the production of ecosystem services.
Task 3: Imagining new futures by co-produced knowledge and art
Greenlandic youth are invited to illustrate their concerns and wishes on the new climatic futures by the means of art. The techniques include photography, video, installations, paintings, drawings and sculptures. An exhibition will be produced based on WP5, and it will be displayed in Ilulissat and Nuuk in Greenland and at the Arktikum Science Centre in Rovaniemi, Finland. More venues will be contacted, with the potential of an international exhibition tour in mind.
Tasks 1 and 2 will be integrated together to produce a set of alternative interventions (possibly ranging from none at all) and ice sheet conservation strategies in the second round of focus groups and illustrated as part of the exhibition.
Targeted interventions refer to a set of relatively locally applied methods for slowing down or even reversing specific impacts of climate change. This contrasts with global solar geoengineering which seeks to control temperatures through increasing albedo (reflectivity) and is inherently challenging for governance, and adaptation whereby protection of specific assets relies on the wealth and other features of the adaptive capacity of the actors involved. In this respect a targeted intervention that seeks to maintain the status quo of the system is ethically justifiable and analogous to mitigation (Moore et al. 2020).
Ice sheet conservation by blocking deep warm saline Atlantic water from entering fjords and melting the Greenland ice sheet where it goes afloat was studied in some economic detail by Hunt &Byers (2019). However, their glaciological and engineering analysis was relatively crude. A key aspect of the methodology however remains - to take advantage of the fact that most of the ice sheet mass loss occurs via a small fraction of the ice sheet perimeter and area. Jakobshavn is a key glacier in terms of its impact on sea level (contributing 4% of 20th century sea level rise by itself), but also culturally being the fastest flowing glacier in the Northern hemisphere, and a regular target of cruise ships and other iceberg tourism. Furthermore it, and the Ilulissat fjord it calves into, are important hunting and fishing resources for local inhabitants.
While the global sea level rise commitment form Jakobshavn is tiny compared with that from West Antarctica over the coming century or two, the presence of active indigenous communities in the Ilulissat region means that there are also social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts to consider, as well as local ecosystem service benefits as well as global impacts. Furthermore designing the system provides an incremental step on the ladder of increasing importance and difficulty that would culminate in the unstable Amundsen Sea sector of Antarctica.
Professor John Moore, the project leader, has published about targeted intervention methods in e.g. Nature (2018), and some ideas in this project have been introduced in a recent article in Global Policy (Moore et al. 2020). The team has presented ice sheet conservation to members of the EU Parliament and EU permanent representatives in 2019. Preliminary modeling of Jakobshavn glacier and Ilulissat Fjord and Disko Bay waters has been made, including engineering plans and cost estimates. Climate intervention studies and other participatory research projects in Finnish Lapland (tourism) and Greenland (sand) have been conducted by the team. Team members have also done research in Ilulissat.
Studying ice sheet conservation in Greenland requires the inclusion of community viewpoints and impact assessments in the ice sheet conservation designs. Also the decision-making on any deployment of targeted interventions would be in the hands of Greenlanders as the deployment is within the national jurisdiction (Moore et al. 2020). Co-production of knowledge will take place by a three-stage research design, where researchers/scientists and locals co-produce knowledge on different designs of ice sheet conservation for incorporating local interests and concerns.
Producing knowledge on the regional impacts of different climate interventions is vital for meaningful participation in any future governance processes on targeted or other climate interventions. In this way, the GRISCO project serves the local communities and particularly the Greenland Government. The results of the project will be brought back to Greenland during the 2nd round of community workshops and other methods seen as appropriate by the Greenland Government, ICC Greenland, local communities, and as advised by the International Arktik Hub.
When studying community perspectives and co-producing knowledge on the possible designs of targeted interventions in Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, youth are in an essential role. We will pay special attention to inviting youth to the community workshops, for instance through schools and free time organisations. An art competition will be organized on the theme of illustrating the youth’s imaginaries on the future impacted by climate change and/or their wishes and concerns on the impacts of ice sheet conservation.
In what ways does GRISCO involve Greenlanders?
The residents of Ilulissat fjord in Greenland will co-produce the knowledge with the team, and be a fundamental part of the design via focus groups. The University of Greenland and Arctic Centre will interface with the Ilulissat area, Greenland Home Rule and ICC decision makers in exploring ice sheet monetization and social acceptability. Moreover, the project would explore how an ice sheet conservation would impact their ways of life and the local environment in comparison with continued ice sheet melt and retreat from the coast. Expertise in Greenland ice sheet from University of Copenhagen is unparalleled in the world, while the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland has developed mathematical tools for ice/ocean interaction and long experience of advanced ice sheet modelling. The multidisciplinary Arctic Centre runs the most-visited exhibition space (The Arktikum Science Centre) in the Arctic, and has one of the most extensive networks of Arctic social and cultural researchers in the world.
How does GRISCO contribute to the UN Agenda 2030 and the 17 SDGs?
By reducing inequalities and providing decent work via researching alternative income sources in Greenland to e.g. mineral exploitation via monetization of the ice sheet. This climate action is a unique partnership with local people to conserve the ice sheet which wants to improve individual and community health and wellbeing by helping preserve local ways of life and empowering choice in designing their own environment.
How does GRISCO contribute to improving equality?
We will ensure gender balance when recruiting focus group participants and other interviewees. This will be done for instance by paying attention to the schedules of local livelihoods and their seasonalities, the timing of the community workshops for enabling participation of different demographic groups, including parents of young children. The expertise of the University of Greenland and local collaborators will be relied on.
How does GRISCO contribute to improving children and young people’s rights and living conditions? How will children and/or young people be involved/participate in GRISCO?
Experience shows that young people are very motivated to do something positive about the climate crisis. They want to be constructive. This project provides exactly that opportunity. The community workshops will be designed to encourage participation of young people and children, e.g. by working through schools and youth organisations and by choosing collaboration methods that are interesting and appealing to Greenlandic youth. Interpretation between Greenlandic, Danish and English will be made available at the community workshops for enabling active communication. We will organize a Greenlandic Youth Art competition on illustrating their imaginaries on climate change and the expected or imagined positive / negative outcomes of targeted intervention in the Jakobshavn Glacier, Ilulissat region, and Greenland. A selection of artworks will be displayed as a traveling exhibition in Greenland (venue tbc) and at Arktikum Science Centre.
How will GRISCO be phased out?
The co-design and funding mechanism research will naturally reach a conclusion - expected after 2 years of co-work. Any following steps will depend on how welcoming the Greenland people and government are to the project findings.
How will GRISCO be evaluated?
Journal peer-review, Ilulissat participation and interest, Greenland governmental interest, international media and public interest in ice sheet conservation. These can be assessed in policy terms in the following years, however only after the project ends.
