Collaborative Research: Water, Energy, and Food Security in the North: Synergies, tradeoffs, and building community capacity for sustainable futures (Sustainable Futures North)

北方可持续未来项目解决的问题是，在北美北极地区的粮食安全、水安全、能源安全和资源开发等相关目标之间是否可以找到协同增效作用。从历史上看，在这些领域中的一个或多个领域的发展在其他领域中是有代价的;例如，石油勘探和开发往往与对传统生计物种和做法的负面影响有关。同样，阿拉斯加州布里斯托湾地区的居民目前正卷入一场关于开发铜金矿的风险和好处的辩论，这座铜矿和金矿表面上将提供就业机会和经济发展机会，位于支持世界上最大的红鲑鱼运行的分水岭的源头。为了寻求社区发展和资源管理的最佳做法，以协同作用为目标，而不是权衡取舍，研究小组计划在北方三个地区将联合收割机对水、粮食和能源系统的综合区域评估结合起来：布里斯托湾（阿拉斯加）、巴芬岛（加拿大）和科策布湾（阿拉斯加），那里的人民和社区共同面临着与气候变化有关的各种挑战，社会经济变化和工业发展。构成该项目跨学科工具包的研究方法包括关键信息提供者访谈、二级数据集的整合和分析、气候变化降尺度、工程最佳实践和差距分析以及城乡网络分析。研究小组将把这些定性和定量研究方法结合起来，探索发展活动与社会和环境变化之间的因果关系，并将社会和生态数据集与气候变化情景相结合，预测未来社区对气候和环境变化的反应。这项研究的结果将为旨在通过劳动力发展，STEM实习以及环境管理和工程方面的中学后课程和计划建立能力的合作教育和推广计划提供信息。

The Sustainable Futures North project addresses the question of whether synergies can be found among the related goals of food security, water security, energy security, and resource development in the North American Arctic. Historically, development in one or more of these areas has presented trade-offs in others; for example, petroleum exploration and development is often associated with negative impacts on traditional subsistence species and practices. Similarly, residents of the Bristol Bay region of Alaska are currently embroiled in a debate over the risks and benefits of developing of a copper and gold mine, which would ostensibly provide jobs and economic development opportunities, at the headwaters of a watershed that supports the world's largest sockeye salmon run. With an eye toward eliciting best practices for community development and resource management that target synergies rather than trade-offs, the research team plans to combine integrated regional assessments of water, food, and energy systems in three regions of the North: Bristol Bay (Alaska), Baffin Island (Canada), and Kotzebue Sound (Alaska), where people and communities share a variety of challenges relating to climate change, socioeconomic change, and industrial development. The research methods that make up the project's interdisciplinary toolkit include key informant interviews, integration and analysis of secondary datasets, climate change downscaling, engineering best practice and gap analysis, and rural-urban network analysis. The research team will link these qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore cause-and-effect relationships between development activities and societal and environmental changes, and will integrate social and ecological datasets with climate change scenarios to project future community responses to climatic and environmental change. The findings of this research will inform a collaborative education and outreach program designed to build capacity through workforce development, STEM internships, and post-secondary curricula and programs in environmental management and engineering.