4. Physical and socio-economic environment
4.6 Discussion
This section summarizes the key findings arising from this quantitative (where possible) description of what is likely to shape the future Barents area in terms of its regional climate, and the physical and socio-economic environment. The aim is to provide a starting point for the following chapters on resilience and adaptation actions. This summary highlights (1) those changes of greatest relevance for ecosystems and society, (2) positive and negative impacts on environmental and socio-economic conditions, (3) possible feedbacks between environmental and socio-economic processes, and (4) knowledge gaps (uncertainties).
Strongest impacts. Those changes in the Barents area likely to have the strongest impacts on ecosystems and society include:
• Present day to 2030: faster warming at higher latitudes; a shift to seasonal ice cover and a substantial reduction in sea-ice cover in winter; increased frequency of natural hazards, linked with overall warming: polar lows, storms, rain-on-snow events, avalanches, extreme wave heights, and icebergs;
and stronger trade and investment in transportation, fisheries and natural resource extraction.
• Near to mid-term (2030–2080): a plausible picture will be an ice-free sea all year round; a substantial increase in ocean acidification; different ocean currents and hydrographic conditions; a substantially shorter snow season; substantial degradation of permafrost; increased urbanization; and increasing risk of pollution, degradation of ecosystems and irreversible biodiversity loss.
Tankers in convoy behind icebreaker
iStock.com/Vasilvich
Positive/negative effects of change. With respect to environmental and socio-economic conditions, many of the impacts of the continued warming projected for the Barents area can be considered simultaneously positive and negative. For example, a steady increase in surface air temperature, especially in winter would make the climate milder and thus more comfortable for living, but would also enhance permafrost degradation with serious consequences for infrastructure (roads, buildings etc.). However, things are not always as clear cut as they appear. Although more comfortable living conditions seems unquestionably positive and damage to infrastructure seems unquestionably negative, it is also the case that improved living conditions at a time of fast growth in world population could also increase the attractiveness of the region for migrants, with as yet unknown consequences for local communities and the environment.
Whether, in reality, the consequences are mostly positive (economic growth, increased living standards, more openness to the wider world) or mostly negative (increased social tension, more unemployment) is an open question, one that could to some extent be resolved through adaptation policy.
The same could be said for permafrost thaw and damage to infrastructure. Anticipating the problems that thaw could bring would foster the development of new technologies in the construction sector, providing new jobs and eventual improvement in living conditions through good business planning and implementation. Again, this is a matter of timely and correctly implemented adaptation actions and rational regional governance. Thus it is clear that the key findings of this chapter should be used with great care and should be thoroughly considered in relation to their mixed (and sometimes opposing) impacts on the environment and society. It must be stressed that the changes expected in the Barents area will be multifaceted, and future warming (as the major global driver) cannot be considered in isolation from changes in precipitation patterns, declining snow and ice, thawing permafrost, shifts in the storm tracks, waves, ocean currents, and impacts on ecosystems and socio-economic conditions. These changes are all interconnected, and their combined impacts may be substantially greater than the sum of their parts. Two incidents on Svalbard serve to illustrate this point. Both the rain-on-snow event of 2012 and the avalanche of December 2015 (Section 4.2.3.2) were the compound outcome of several elements. Such possibilities must be considered when planning adaptive actions.
Feedbacks between environmental and socio-economic processes. The various elements of the climate system interact in a nonlinear and mutually interdependent manner.
These interactions, known as feedbacks, can generate cyclical variations or shift the whole system to some new thermodynamic state (reinforcing feedback). The possibility of feedbacks occurring increases with growth in the amplitude of internal or externally-forced oscillations within the system, and makes predictions extremely challenging.
In terms of entire ‘environment-socio-economic’ systems, formulating reasonable predictions of their behavior under the influence of direct forcing and possible feedbacks is even more challenging. In a very general sense, an increase in atmospheric levels of human-produced carbon may be considered a direct impact of the global economy on the
environment and Earth climate. This ‘external’ condition to the climate system forcing may interact in some unknown way with natural (internal) climate oscillations. In all long-term predictions it is taken for granted that anthropogenic forcing is strong enough to substantially affect the climate system;
namely that it either dominates over natural variability or acts in phase with it. By default this thesis accepts the notion that interaction between the anthropogenic forcing and natural modes of climate variability is linear and that their combined effect may be calculated in terms of simple superposition without any significant feedbacks. This simplistic concept is not challenged here, because no better substantiated theory exists and such exercise is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, the message conveyed here is that if it can be accepted that from the latter half of the last century the anthropogenic forcing on climate and the environment became strong enough to substantially warm the planet, then it must also be accepted that at a certain point the climate system and its natural phenomena may change character. The problem is that when, and in what form this feedback will occur is not known. In downscaling this general speculation to the Arctic (and in particular the Barents area), it is important to highlight that this is a region with an extremely vulnerable environment, one which often responds in an exaggerated manner to any atypical external forcing.
The often-used example is catastrophic pollution following an oil spill at a production platform or during transport.
The Arctic environment is particularly vulnerable owing to the extremely cold conditions and to the ice-snow cover, Figure 4.18 Example of positive feedbacks in the ‘environment-socio-economic’ system with possible intervention via adaptation actions. Human actions (green and yellow boxes), environmental responses (blue boxes).
10 Decrease in albedo 9 Increase in black
carbon emission 8 Increase in
wildfires 7 Draining
Adaptation actions 6 Waterlogging 5 Increase in
methane emissions
4 Permafrost degradation 3 Local warming
2 Global warming 1 Global increase in
greenhouse gas emissions
BARENTS AREA
which suppress the natural restoration of the environment.
To some extent this speculation might also be applied to pollutants; for which the amount and type found might also increase with population and economic growth in the region. In contrast to feedbacks, which occur in the climate system and may be predicted (at best) but not changed, those in the joint ‘environment-socio-economic’ system could theoretically be affected in advance, in order to reduce any negative effect. This is conceptualized in Figure 4.18 where human actions are shown in green and yellow boxes and environmental responses in blue boxes. The sequence of environmental responses in the Barents area is shown in boxes 3 to 6 and 8 to 10. The pure environmental feedback from box 5 to box 1 is probably an inevitable outcome of permafrost thaw. The other feedback (box 10 to box 2) is triggered by human activities aimed at draining waterlogged areas (7). The negative result of this action (more wildfires) could be mitigated by adaptation actions, thus eliminating the entire chain (boxes 7 to 10) and the corresponding feedback. Similar chains of actions, responses and feedbacks could be also constructed for the other drivers discussed in this chapter. A detailed analysis of whether these possible feedbacks are realistic and what adaptation actions could be used to avoid/enhance their negative/positive consequences, is beyond the scope of this chapter.
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