Arctic Resilience Analysis Framework (ARA

Arctic Resilience Analysis Framework (ARA)

Developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. They use a “leverage comparative analysis” to analyse how Arctic communities can develop resilience to social and environmental change. The Arctic hosts some of the harshest environmental conditions for human occupation, making resilience paramount. The research found that the ability for a community to organise themselves and promote diversity are prominent themes found in most resilient Arctic communities. These are very difficult social systems to analyse, hence why they have relied on extensive research into existing literature and developed their own framework to accommodate the unique evaluation.

The main topic within resilience analysed by this framework was “Adaptive Capacity”. This was then split into four first tier then 12 second tier indicators using Berkes’ 21 existing research on the subject. The ARA team manager to split this down further into a fourth tier of 70 indicators. These could then be measured as having been implemented (True) or lacking (False). This was then combined to give an overall percentage of resilience in the evaluated community. The researchers could then use this to identify weaknesses in certain communities and advise on appropriate action with relevant examples of successful implementation.

“Communities with high capacities to self-organized, to combine multiple sources of knowledge, or who nurture diversity are more likely to maintain their livelihoods or transform towards new social-ecological configurations…. ….our methodological approach complements existing quantitative methods such as early warning signals to approximate resilience, and encourage the community to test and improve our coding approximation in other social-ecological systems” - ARA Report

Figure 11: ARA Scoring Wheel, 1-5

Figure 12: ARA Indicators