JPI Climate: Social-Ecological Transformations: HUMan-ANimal Relations Under Climate Change in NORthern Eurasia

21世纪持续的气候变化将在21世纪引发深刻的社会变革。然而，我们对如何以公平和可持续的方式实现这种转变的了解有限。HUMANOR项目调查流动牧民社会生态系统(SESS)的历史变化，以寻找可能导致这种变化的途径的线索。我们比较研究了在过去几个世纪里经历了深刻气候波动的Sess(土著S、涅涅茨人、埃文基人和蒙古牧民)，同时通过一系列渐进式和质变来维持他们的生计。虽然这些系统越来越多地受到快速气候变化的影响(例如，北极变暖比低纬度地区更快)，但我们对SES响应能力的了解仅限于当前系统内的适应。我们认为，长期关注人与动物的关系和一般的社会经济背景，可能会说明人们如何应对突然的变化(包括大规模的环境冲击)并重新创建这些系统。我们的重点是最近几十年和几个世纪社会生态变化的复杂驱动因素，包括气候变化、土地利用变化、治理形式、制度变化(包括立法和社会规范)和市场。我们希望表明，尽管牧业是一种古老的生计，仍然存在于欧亚大陆的广大地区，但畜牧业正在不断经历人、动物和环境之间反馈关系的变化。这种跨学科的比较研究跨越了几个时间尺度(中世纪以来的百年变化--标志着芬诺斯坎迪亚和西伯利亚驯鹿的驯化和牧民蒙古帝国的鼎盛时期，以及自20世纪中叶以来的十年变化)，以说明变化的历史背景，并提供对作为变化的积极动因或被动接受者的人的关键洞察。例如，我们知道，即使在人口密度较低的情况下，大型畜群也可以改变生态系统的结构和功能，但我们对社会、经济和政治变化如何促进或阻碍这些变化背后的生态系统和社会的有意和可取的变化知之甚少。我们认为，预测未来的变化将受益于对以下方面的回顾划分：(1)十年尺度上气候驱动因素的社会经济和政治因素；以及(2)百年尺度气候驱动因素的人-动物机制。我们使用跨学科的混合方法，首先通过记录当前的口头环境历史(神话、传说、生活故事)以及根据花粉记录和其他土壤签名重建环境，来重建历史上的人-动物-环境关系和环境历史。我们利用原居民当前的环境知识来揭示最近的变化(气候、植被等)。在他们的环境和参与者的观察中，以揭示其自身复杂的社会经济现实。我们的分析的力量来自：(1)对比不同地理范围的SESS；(2)考虑到对欧洲研究区(驯鹿)牧业未来生存能力的不同风险看法。我们预计我们的项目将为欧洲和其他地区的Sess的道德和可持续转型的设计做出重大贡献。

Ongoing climate change in the 21st century will instigate profound societal transformations in the 21st century. Yet, our knowledge of how such transformations can be achieved in an equitable and sustainable manner is limited. The HUMANOR project investigates historical transformations of mobile pastoralist social-ecological systems (SESs) for clues about which pathways may lead to such transformations. We comparatively study SESs that have undergone profound climatic fluctuations in the last centuries (indigenous Sámi, Nenets, Evenki and Mongolian pastoralists) while maintaining their livelihoods through a host of incremental and qualitative shifts. Although these systems are increasingly being exposed to rapid climate change (e.g. the Arctic warming faster than lower latitudes), our understanding of SES response capacities is limited to adaptations within the current systems. We propose that a long-term focus on human-animal relations and the general socio-economic contexts may illustrate how people can deal with abrupt changes (including massive environmental shocks) and re-create these systems. Our focus is on the complex drivers of social-ecological transformations of recent decades and centuries that include climate variation, land use change, governance forms, institutional change (including legislation and social norms) and markets. We expect to show that although it is an ancient livelihood, still practiced across vast areas of N Eurasia, pastoralism is constantly undergoing shifts in the nexus of feedbacks between humans, animals and the environment. This comparative trans-disciplinary study is performed across several timescales (centennial changes since the Middle Ages- marking reindeer domestication in Fennoscandia and Siberia and the height of the pastoralist Mongolian Empire, and decadal changes since the mid-20th century) in order to illustrate the historical context of change and provide key insights into people as active agents or passive receptors of change. For instance, we know that even at low human population densities, large livestock herds can alter ecosystem structure and function but we know comparatively little about how social, economic and political changes foster or impede deliberate, desirable changes in the ecosystems and societies underlying these SESs. We propose that projecting future transformations will benefit from the retrospective partitioning of: (1) socio-economic and political from climate drivers over decadal scales; and (2) human-animal agency from climate drivers over centennial scales. We use an interdisciplinary mix of methods to first reconstruct historical human-animal-environment relationships and environmental histories by documenting current oral environmental histories (myths, legends, life stories) and environmental reconstruction from pollen records and other soil signatures. We use indigenous residents current environmental knowledge to uncover the recent changes (climatic, vegetation, etc.) in their environments and participant observations to uncover the complex socio-economic realities of their SESs. Our analysis draws strength from: (1) contrasting SESs across diverse geographic scales; and (2) accounting for heterogeneous perceptions of risk concerning the future viability of (reindeer) pastoralism in the European Research Area. We envision our project making a significant contribution to the design of ethical and sustainable transformations of SESs in Europe and beyond.