The critical geography of community-based participatory research for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Alaska

气候变化对土著社区的影响预计将比对非土著社区的影响更为严重，因为土著社区与环境的联系更为密切。然而，土著社区对他们的环境也有深入的了解，这些环境是经过数千年的创造和调整，并代代相传的。这些社区利用这些知识来应对气候变化以及其他风险（如火山爆发、暴风雪和污染）的方式已成为气候变化研究的一个重要领域。认识到这一点后，有更多的项目寻求了解土著知识，以便更好地为应对气候变化和环境风险的方法提供信息。其中大多数还寻求将土著知识与科学知识结合起来，因为两者对于应对风险都很重要。他们使用让当地人参与的方法，并试图接触到那些本来不会参与研究的人。这对于更好地理解那些面临最大风险的人所面临的挑战非常重要。除此之外，当地人和研究人员都被鼓励相互学习，特别是因为这在两者之间建立了信任。尽管这些项目本身是有价值的，但它们带来的重大挑战并不总是得到妥善解决。例如，虽然这些方法试图接触到通常不会参与这些项目的社区成员，但社区有自己的政治，这意味着一些成员可能会阻止其他人参与。研究人员如何处理这一问题是一个有争议的话题：一些人认为，非社区的研究人员应该挑战这些情况，但这并不总是有效。在北极的阿拉斯加土著社区，这可能是一个困难的地方，那里的压迫历史导致了对社区以外的人的不信任，特别是那些经常进入社区收集数据，但未能分享他们的结果或为社区提供利益的研究人员。还有人担心，一些项目声称使用了社区参与的这些方法，即使他们没有，这导致了误导性的结果和道德问题。北极地区对气候变化的感受更早、也更强烈。在阿拉斯加北部，季节的变化降低了猎杀鲸鱼和鹅的安全性，而土著社区依赖鲸鱼和鹅作为食物。除此之外，海冰的减少使柔软的海滩暴露在风暴之下，风暴会淹没社区，造成破坏和潜在的生命损失。人们生活方式的变化影响了他们应对风险的方式。例如，现代住房（是永久性的）意味着人们不能随季节迁移，这曾经是应对恶劣环境的一种方式，以增加找到食物的机会。许多项目已经研究了当地人如何应对阿拉斯加的气候变化风险和环境风险。然而，很少有项目关注这些项目是如何进行的，以及不属于研究群体的研究人员对群体的影响。为了更好地利用已经在阿拉斯加进行的有价值的研究，需要更好地了解当地社区使用（和不使用）科学研究的方式，其中包括这些社区如何看待研究人员。这是许多从事气候变化和环境研究的研究人员所呼吁的。因此，这个项目的目的是检查阿拉斯加北坡自治市的土著社区如何利用科学研究和外部研究人员来应对气候变化和环境风险

Context The impacts of climate change on Indigenous communities are expected to be more significant than on non-indigenous communities, as they have closer ties to their environment. However, Indigenous communities also have in-depth knowledge about their environment, which has been created and adjusted over thousands of years, and been passed down through generations. The ways that these communities use this knowledge to deal with climate change, as well as other risks (e.g. volcanic eruption, blizzards and pollution) has become an important area of climate change research. With this recognition, there have been more projects that have sought to understand Indigenous knowledge to better inform ways of dealing with climate change and environmental risk. Most of these also seek to combine Indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge, as both are important for dealing with risk. They use methods that involve local people, and try to reach those that would not otherwise be involved in research. This is important to better understand the challenges that those who are most at risk face. As well as this, both local people and the researchers are encouraged to learn from each other, especially as this builds trust between the two. Although these projects are valuable in their own right, they pose significant challenges that are not always properly addressed. For example, although these methods try to reach community members that would not usually be engaged in these projects, communities have their own politics, which mean that some members may prevent others from taking part. How researchers deal with this is a topic of debate: some argue that researchers who are not from the community should challenge these situations, but this does not always work. One place where this could be difficult is in Arctic Alaskan Indigenous communities, where a history of oppression has led to distrust of people outside of the community, especially researchers who have often entered a community to collect data, but have failed to share their results or to provide benefits to the community. There is also concern that some projects are claiming to use these methods that involve the community, even where they do not, which has led to misleading results and ethical problems. Climate change is being felt earlier and most intensely in the Arctic. In Northern Alaska, seasonal changes have reduced the safety of hunting for whales and geese, which Indigenous communities rely on for food. As well as this, less sea ice has left soft beaches exposed to storms, which flood the community, causing damage and the potential for loss of life. Changes in how people live have affected how they deal with risk. For example, modern housing (which is permanent) means that people cannot migrate with the seasons, which was once a way of dealing with the harsh environment to increase chances of finding food. Objective Many projects have already looked at how local people deal with climate change risk and environmental risk in Alaska. Yet, few projects have looked at how these projects were conducted, and the impact that researchers, who were not a part of the studied community, had on the community. To make better use of the valuable research already conducted in Alaska, the ways that scientific research is used (and not used) by local communities needs to be better understood, which includes how researchers are viewed by these communities. This is something that a number of researchers working in climate change and environmental studies have called for. Therefore, the aim of this project is to examine the ways scientific research and outside researchers are used in Indigenous communities in the North Slope Borough, Alaska, for action on climate change and environmental risk