Climate responses in northern Sweden focus on adaptation, but less on transformative change

“We are dependent on the benefits that we receive from nature, like food or drinking water. For our societies to be able to continue harnessing these benefits despite climate change, we need to build their resilience,” explains Centre researcher Moa Ohlsson, lead author of a new study published in Communications Sustainability.

Moa Ohlsson interviewed actors in the Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka Biosphere Reserve in northern Sweden to explore the diversity of responses to climate change challenges and talked to representatives from forestry, reindeer herding, agriculture, and tourism.

Cope, adapt, transform

According to resilience science, responses to navigate climate change are most effective if they are diverse. Ideally, these responses should also contribute to the three dimensions of resilience, that is, to cope, adapt, and transform under changing conditions.

“Across the study area, most responses to climate change were adaptive, fewer contributed to coping, and none were explicitly transformative,” says Moa Ohlsson who co-authored the article with Centre researchers Cibele Queiroz, Magnus Nyström and Erik Andersson.

Coping means dealing with acute shocks, adapting means learning and adjusting to changing conditions, and transforming is to fundamentally restructure the system to reduce the root causes of vulnerability.

Sámi reindeer herders for example use supplementary feeding as a coping strategy to deal with a new climatic reality which sees local temperatures increasingly moving from freezing to thawing to freezing again – with negative effects for forage availability. They are also adapting to changing conditions through seeking out grazing grounds that offer alternative forage and by developing adaptation plans together with the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI.

Actors within the forestry industry use several coping techniques to stabilise soils, as well as adaptive responses such as investing in lighter logging equipment as wetter winters result in less ground frost. Many forestry actors also emphasize the need to plant “the right tree in the right place” to improve forest health and better withstand a range of climate-related changes.

No transformation (yet)

However, none of the actors interviewed currently focus on transformation, which could reflect that climate change effects are not yet seen as severe enough to warrant transformation. For reindeer herders in particular, the absence of transformative responses may also reflect constrained agency shaped by structural power inequalities and pressures beyond climate change alone the authors reflect.

“Our results show that more responses do not necessarily mean greater resilience. When disturbances become more severe, frequent, and unpredictable, systems will require more than coping and adaptation to be resilient,” explains Moa Ohlsson.

She concludes with a thank you to the Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka Biosphere Reserve and all interviewees:

“Without their expertise and engagement, as well as time and knowledge, this study would not have been possible.”