Arctic Resilience Report Scoping Workshop

The document details the outcomes of a September 2011 workshop designed to scope the Arctic Resilience Report (ARR). It defines resilience as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while retaining its identity, and proposes a methodology to identify 'tipping points'—abrupt and potentially irreversible changes in social-ecological systems. The report outlines a preliminary assessment of Arctic drivers (such as climate change and resource demand), sources of general resilience (including biodiversity and governance), and potential regime shifts across local, regional, and pan-arctic scales. It concludes with a formal proposal to the Arctic Council to implement the ARR project between 2012 and 2015, emphasizing the integration of indigenous knowledge and the need for policy-relevant outputs.

• A resilience framework is identified as a useful tool for analyzing risks of thresholds that can lead to abrupt and sometimes irreversible changes in the Arctic across local, regional, and pan-arctic scales.
• The proposed Arctic Resilience Report (ARR) aims to identify risks of abrupt shifts in social and environmental systems, assess the Arctic's ability to persist, adapt, and transform, and determine strategies for governments and communities to build resilience.
• Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedbacks, thereby maintaining its identity.
• The workshop identified diverse drivers of change in the Arctic, categorised into physical changes (e.g., climate change, sea level rise, thawing permafrost), social drivers (e.g., resource demand, militarisation, geopolitical changes), and combined drivers (e.g., oil and mineral exploration, shipping routes, tourism).
• General resilience—the ability to deal with shocks without losing identity—is supported by factors including biodiversity, functioning government, education, diversified economies, cultural identity, and social capital such as family networks.
• Potential tipping points in the Arctic were identified across different scales, such as the 'Greening of the Arctic' and 'Methane release' at a pan-arctic level, and the 'Loss of sea ice' or 'Ocean acidification reaching critical pH' at a regional level.
• The report emphasizes that indigenous traditional knowledge must be integrated into the ARR process, suggesting five ways to do so, including the documentation of indigenous knowledge and the development of an indigenous conceptualisation of change.
• The ARR is intended to complement other Arctic Council activities, specifically the Arctic Change Assessment (ACA), the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the Arctic Ocean Review conducted by PAME.
• The formal proposal to the Arctic Council outlines a project timeline from 2012 to 2015, including the production of an interim report in 2013 and a final report in 2015, with funding for scientific leadership and secretariat provided by Sweden.

APA

Nilsson, A. E., & Olsson, M. (2011). Arctic Resilience Report Scoping Workshop. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Report-AnnikaENilsson-ArcticResilienceReportScopingWorkshop-2011.pdf

Chicago

Nilsson, Annika E, and Marie Olsson. Arctic Resilience Report Scoping Workshop. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2011. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Report-AnnikaENilsson-ArcticResilienceReportScopingWorkshop-2011.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Nilsson |first1=Annika E |last2=Olsson |first2=Marie |title=Arctic Resilience Report Scoping Workshop |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2 November 2011 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Report-AnnikaENilsson-ArcticResilienceReportScopingWorkshop-2011.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{nilsson2011arctic, author = {Nilsson, Annika E and Olsson, Marie}, title = {{Arctic Resilience Report Scoping Workshop}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2011}, month = nov, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Report-AnnikaENilsson-ArcticResilienceReportScopingWorkshop-2011.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }