A Proposal for Conducting a Strategic Planning Session of the Working Group on Rural Alaskan Self-Reliance

University Of Alaska Fairbanks Campus, Fairbanks AK

Investigators

Abstract

Rural Alaskan communities face pressing and daunting challenges in terms of their sustainability, resilience, self-reliance and adaptation in the face of climate changes, rising energy costs, and access to wild foods. This comes at a time of increasing U.S. federal debt, declining Alaska state oil revenues, and shrinking state and federal budgets. It therefore seems unwise for rural Alaskan communities to expect state and federal agencies to adequately address the challenges they face. Instead, it is more in keeping with Alaska Native traditions to seek solutions that provide greater community self-reliance. This project will support a strategic planning workshop to develop a framework for community-initiated self-reliance. It is widely recognized that Alaska is facing large directional changes to which communities must adapt. However, there is currently no framework for designing or implementing such adaptations. The proposed research will design such a framework and initiate steps toward its implementation. This constitutes fundamental research on the processes of social-ecological transformation. The proposed planning workshop provides an opportunity to integrate local and native wisdom and knowledge with western science (e.g., climate change projections) in the context of policies and institutions whose suitability to support adaptation is currently unclear. The workshop proposed by the Working Group on Rural Alaska Self-Reliance (WGRAS) will develop a plan for pilot community adaptation projects whereby University of Alaska resources are partnered with Alaskan communities to address locally identified challenges to self-reliance and sustainability through holistic, interdisciplinary, effective, and accessible processes. This provides a framework for adaptation planning by rural Alaskan communities that will enable them to develop and seek ways to implement their vision of self-reliance in a rapidly changing world. The proposed workshop will provide the framework by which that demonstration project could be implemented.