Recommendations

Coordination: Better coordination allows for increased value for investment in monitoring programs, better opportunity to compare results, and more ability to draw meaningful conclusions from data:

• Strategically locate Arctic research stations and monitoring vessels, and use all collected specimens, to allow the collection and analysis of as many CBMP FECs as possible.
• Ensure research stations operate all year to better study FECs year round.
• Combine national monitoring with collaborative approaches that allow for sufficient integration and standardization to conduct syntheses across the circumpolar region.
• Standardize how data are collected, managed and made available. This is a key component in ensuring circumpolar Arctic comparability and should be an important consideration in the implementation of monitoring plans.
• Encourage states to increase the implementation of existing internationally coordinated monitoring plans.
• Connect monitoring initiatives and report across scales so that results are meaningful for local, sub-national, national, regional and global decision-makers.
• Continue to increase coordination between CBMP and other regional and global monitoring initiatives e.g., the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON), International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES).

Seabirds

• Develop methods for assessing diet to increase our understanding of changes in the ecosystem and how they affect seabird populations.
• When selecting sites for new monitoring, consider proximity to hotspots for marine activities, access to the sea, and inclusion of plankton monitoring.
• Expand colony-based monitoring and strive to include a more complete array of parameters, in particular, diet and measures of survival.
• Consider a higher frequency of monitoring as current levels make it difficult to identify mechanisms or causes of change in populations.
• Conduct targeted surveys and individual tracking studies of seabird interactions at sea to improve our understanding of seabird interactions at sea, where seabirds spend most of their time.
• Continue to conduct at sea surveys on an opportunistic basis.

Birds: Most bird species are difficult to monitor and attribute change due to the large spatial extent of their breeding habitats and multiple threats throughout flyways. Current monitoring is uneven and inadequate. The START reports on herbivores, insectivores, carnivores, and omnivores.

• Sustaining long-term monitoring projects is the best opportunity to track changes in FECs and drivers of those changes.
• Expand monitoring of species and populations with unknown or uncertain trends such as waders in the Central Asian Flyway and East Asian–Australasian Flyway (under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative).
• Improve monitoring coverage of the high Arctic and other areas with poor spatial coverage (i.e., Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, and eastern Russia), including staging and wintering areas within and outside the Arctic.
• Adopt new and emerging monitoring technologies, including various tagging devices (for the study of distribution and migration, and identification of critical stopover and wintering sites), bioacoustics (for abundance and diversity sampling), and satellite data (for colony monitoring).
• Enhance coordination within and among Arctic and non-Arctic states to improve data collection on migratory species and critical site identification across species’ ranges.
• Harmonize long-term studies to improve the reliability of status and trends assessments, ability to report on FEC attributes (e.g., phenology), and possible effects of environmental change, including risks of phenological mismatch.
• Use research stations as platforms to increase data coordination, sampling, and analyses, of FECs and drivers, and ensure standardized bird monitoring is part of station mandates where lacking.
• Strengthen linkages with AMAP to improve contaminant monitoring at different trophic levels and facilitate cooperation on isotope and genetic studies.

Reporting Guidelines

• Provide appropriate opportunities for communication between those involved in carrying out the Strategy.
• Report annually to CAFF summarizing actions taken or planned under the Strategy.

Supporting Indigenous Community-Based Monitoring: Supporting community-based monitoring as an approach to active participation in biodiversity research and management of protected area is beneficial for conservation efforts.

Traditional and Local Knowledge (TLK): Utilizing Traditional and Local Knowledge and involvement of TK holders allows for increased understanding of relationships and changes underway in Arctic ecosystems, current and historical trends, and serves to build valuable partnerships on the ground in Arctic communities.

• Use Traditional and Local Knowledge within the design and implementation of monitoring plans. The Traditional and Local Knowledge of people living along and off the Arctic Ocean is an invaluable resource for understanding changes in Arctic marine ecosystems and its inclusion should be supported by national governments.
• Increase engagement and partnerships with local residents and easy to access technology in monitoring programs. Indigenous communities are important ‘first responders’ to catastrophic events. More importantly, their knowledge systems provide a wealth of knowledge that should be involved in the analysis of collected data for increased understanding of current trends and filling historical gaps.
• There is a need for TLK on a range of FECs and to engage networks of TLK holders and Indigenous organisations.
• Use both TLK and scientific information on the analysis of harvest levels and status when evaluating overall population health and managing hunts.

Coordination: Improved coordination of monitoring is necessary to implement a comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based monitoring program envisioned by the CBMP. Coordination is necessary to help achieve additional advice for monitoring presented in the START.

• Design statistically rigorous sampling methodologies and protocols.
• Encourage states to implement the CBMP Terrestrial Plan to secure long-term funding for existing monitoring.
• CAFF, including the CBMP, should take a coordinating role to follow-up on advice from this report. Specific tasks are found in the CBMP Strategic Plan 2021-2025.

Community-based monitoring networks and community relationship building:

• Increase the span of networks in the CBMP to include Community-based monitoring networks.
• Communicate information on changes and the results of monitoring between scientists and the public in both directions. This is crucial to the development of effective management strategies and human activities.

Indigenous Knowledge: The CBMP Terrestrial Plan aims to utilize both Indigenous Knowledge and science. Despite efforts, Indigenous Knowledge has not been systematically included in the START. To obtain a full assessment of the status and trends, better understand relationships and changes, and fill key knowledge gaps, there must be improved engagement with Indigenous Knowledge holders, Indigenous governments, and Indigenous monitoring programs not only in development of assessments but in collaboratively building more comprehensive monitoring programs and initiatives.

• Improve understanding of the research and monitoring priorities of PPs and Indigenous governments, organizations, and Peoples.
• Develop long-term partnerships between scientists and Indigenous Knowledge holders to co-develop mutually relevant research and monitoring priorities and programs with equitable participation in all stages of monitoring, beginning with research design, and continuing through implementation, analysis, interpretation, and communication of results.
• Seek guidance on how institutional resources can align with and support existing Indigenous-led monitoring efforts, the development of new Indigenous-led monitoring programs, and Indigenous models of land stewardship that include monitoring components.
• Consider and articulate the ways in which programs and findings can support Indigenous land stewardship.
• Support Indigenous-led monitoring capacity through investments in northern-based research, learning and digital infrastructure and by supporting education, employment, and leadership opportunities for Indigenous Peoples.
• Ensure monitoring agreements detail mechanisms for the protection and responsible use of data and Indigenous Knowledge, including basic principles of data sovereignty.
• Increase engagement of Indigenous Peoples within CBMP.
• Work with PPs to develop strategies to more effectively recognize and reflect Indigenous Knowledge in the CBMP.

Establishment of mutually beneficial partnerships with communities impacted by mining operations.

In order to operate effectively, the mining industry needs buy-in from impacted communities (i.e., Social License to Operate). This is especially important across much of the Arctic where Indigenous Peoples and/or local communities often depend on ecosystem services for food security, cultural and spiritual connections and other purposes. Because of differences in cultures and/or values, limited shared understanding and lack of trust, it can be difficult to meaningfully engage with Indigenous and/or local communities, develop positive relationships and work towards common goals. Although there are good examples of where the mining industry operating in the Arctic is working collaboratively with government agencies, communities and others to minimize their impacts on biodiversity, public perception of the mining industry in impacted communities is not always favourable.

Mining industry could:

• Engage in community partnerships where community members have real input and decision-making authority (e.g., co-management of resources) (Box 4).
• Provide tangible economic incentives for community residents (e.g., employment at mine or related support jobs and community enhancement efforts)
• Use of agreements (e.g., “good neighbour”/Impact and Benefit Agreements) (Tolvanen 2018) to attain social license to operate prior to mining activities taking place (Boxes 2 and 4). Agreements could designate, for example, how to monitor impacts and address compensation for unavoidable effects (Tolvanen 2018).
• Ensure protection of traditional uses of the surrounding area, including linkages to food security and the biodiversity it supports as an important consideration during all phases of the project.

CAFF could:

• Work with the mining industry and others to continue to develop and share good practices for community engagement and partnerships specific to mining operations.
• Continue to explore opportunities for further dialogue among Permanent Participants, government agencies and the mining industry to help identify and ultimately achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

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.