Recommendations

Evaluate the range of services provided by Arctic biodiversity in order to determine the costs associated with biodiversity loss and the value of effective conservation in order to assess change and support improved decision making.

12.1. Prepare a scoping report on the potential for applying the TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) approach to evaluate the benefits people receive from Arctic biodiversity.

12.2. Evaluate ecosystem services.

a. Complete the TEEB scoping study.

b. Follow-up as appropriate on valuation of ecosystem services.

12.3. Enhance the use of both existing traditional and local knowledge and community-based monitoring approaches in the work of the Arctic Council.

CHALLENGE Funding is inconsistent, often leaving out the involvement of Arctic Indigenous peoples.

POTENTIAL ACTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES Funding aimed at actively engaging Indigenous peoples and organizations in scientific activities and to improve the understanding and use Traditional Knowledge and Wisdom

A number of additional options, some of which address fundamental issues and challenges to the application of the TEEB approach in the Arctic context. 1. Guidance, methods, tools and information to support policy

1.1. Raise awareness of the roles and value of ecosystem services among Arctic communities with the aim of empowering communities, grass roots organizations and local administrations for better discussions/negotiations with sub-national/federal governments and corporations on policy related to Arctic development.

1.2. Through collaborative processes, raise awareness of the ways that Arctic Indigenous Peoples value nature. For example, facilitate discussions between Indigenous Peoples and economists, aimed at informing ways to accommodate indigenous values in economic policies and practices.

1.3. Make the role of natural capital and ecosystem services explicit in relation to adaptation and adaptive capacity. This is best done through bringing results from this scoping study into, and working in collaboration with, Arctic Council initiatives, for example, bya) considering adaptation options for policy makers that include the non-monetary and economic aspects of biodiversity, through the Adaptation Actions for a ChangingArctic (AACA); and b) creating resilience indicators that would encompass ecosystem processes (building on the human development indicators) through the Arctic Resilience Report.

1.4. Make visible (in economies) the wider value of Arctic biodiversity conservation and sustainable biodiversity use schemes, and identify financing opportunities for such schemes that are based on recognizing ecosystem services.

1.5. Apply economic analysis with the goal of a) accommodating the multiple value systems underpinning mixed and livelihood economies in the Arctic, such as reindeer herding and community economies based, or partly based, on subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering; b) capturing Arctic social and ecological resilience in economic information and valuation; and c) facilitating investment in the insurance value of Arctic natural capital.

2. Knowledge base.

2.1. Complete and maintain the Arctic Ecosystem Services Inventory. A draft ecosystem services inventory was prepared as part of the scoping study (see Ecosystem services section above). The inventory is a start on a structured and synthesized literature review of Arctic ecosystem services, the ecosystems they are derived from, their associated benefits, status, trends, threats, uncertainty, knowledge gaps, and what work has been done on valuation. To be a useful source of synthesized information, and a basis for further information tools, the inventory requires further work. The inventory could a) be a ready resource for information and overviews of available information on ecosystem services and what is known about them in relation to beneficiaries, threats, trends and valuation, both to raise awareness and to provide an entry point for policy-related assessment work; b) serve as a metadata center and service through CAFF’s Arctic Biodiversity Data Service; and c) provide input to research and monitoring plans and agendas, and potentially also to industry monitoring and research planning

2.2. Take steps to capture or present new research results in ways that make them useful to ecosystem-services-based policy development. This could be awareness raising through research meetings of the need to make this connection, increased expert networking, such as through a community of practice on ecosystem services, and/or through changes to funding mechanisms for research.

2.3. Clearly identify knowledge gaps (both at the broad underpinning and methodological scale, and for specific geographic scales) and develop mechanisms to bring them into discussion of research agendas.

2.4. Facilitate and coordinate monitoring of the social and economic importance of ecosystems (through the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program). 3. Synthesis, analysis and information products

3.1. Analyze linkages over scale, time and actors that affect when, where and to whom the costs and benefits of industrial development in the Arctic on biodiversity and ecosystems occur, considering also current and future use and spatial subsidies, to demonstrate the value and help frame the distributive impacts of decisions.

3.2. Prepare ecosystem services inventories with regular status reporting. Include interdisciplinary valuation of ecosystem services at the level of LMEs and national scales, but also initiate a regular review and assessment process at the pan-Arctic scale. Review and assessment would be in collaboration with existing Arctic Council processes, including the framework for assessment of biodiversity status and trends established through the CBMP.

3.3. Develop indicators to help describe the status of Arctic biodiversity and ecosystems. Include indicators that convey the proximity to potential thresholds or tipping points and attach confidence metrics to all indicators reflecting the level of knowledge and understanding. Development of such indicators needs to be done through co-production of knowledge based on a collaboration of Traditional Knowledge holders and scientists. (Indicator development is underway through the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program.)

3.4. Develop resilience indicators that make explicit the role of natural capital and ecosystem services in building of adaptive capacity. These would have similar use for policy making but be more encompassing of ecosystem processes than human development indicators.

3.5. Develop and test tools to evaluate Arctic ecosystem services in local and sub-national EBM, marine spatial planning, land-use planning and management, and in co-management schemes where they can directly contribute to co-producing knowledge and adaptive governance.

Increase knowledge about the colonies in the Arctic.

4.4.1. Finalize an overview of the location of all breeding colonies in the Arctic.

4.4.2. Identify important areas and generate sensitivity maps around the Arctic.