Industry sign banking alaska presentation fast
we at the Jocelyn Institute for sustainable communities are most pleased to kick off the first slps webcast of 2015 with an excellent presentation by Jim tell assistant professor at the University of Alaska southeast and a member of the Jocelyn Institute board of directors the sustainability leadership presentation series is a partnership between Central Community College Jocelyn Institute for sustainable communities Metropolitan Community College and waste cat Nebraska we hope you continue to join us in the first thursday of each month jim is joining us from Juneau Alaska where he teaches natural research resource policy sustainability in public administration as research includes community and institutional responses to climate change in Alaska including Alaska Native observations and adaptation total environmental changes the forest position with UAS Jim spent 28 years in environmental management focusing on water quality issues in wetlands management among other appointments Jim served Alaska state government as special assistant to the Commissioner of Environmental Conservation an assistant director for the Division of Environmental Quality his public service includes nine years on the city and borough of Juneau assembly with three years of deputy mirror the deepened understanding of municipal decision making and local environmental systems he gained during his years on the assembly inspired his passion to improve city level planning through sustainability assessment monitoring and adaptation jim has a PhD and natural resources and sustainability science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks a master in public administration from the University of Alaska southeast and a bachelor of science and environmental studies from eisenhower college at Rochester Institute of Technology Jim will also be making it draining the HIBE lecture series panels in Lincoln Nebraska on Sodor a 20th at four-thirty at the Ross theater the panel will be discussing current sustainable design research at that time as far as questions go for please save your questions for the end of the presentation you or whomever is convening watch party at your location they type questions through the chat box to the host or share them via twitter using hashtag slps Thursday I now turn it over to Jim welcome Jim thank you can you hear me ok you can all right I'm going to go go ahead first greetings to everyone and I'm so pleased to be able to link into fellow in Nebraska's and thank you Kate for the wonderful introduction and good afternoon Nebraskans Alaskans and other viewers that might be out there it really is a pleasure to speak about climate change in Alaska we have a saying we burned first up here and things are changing very rapidly and it's neat to be part of this leadership sustainability leadership presentation series I also like to thank the organizers of the event it's central college and community college and the Jocelyn Institute they've been great setting this up because if I get older my technical skills tend to be challenged so they've done a great job this afternoon I'd like to present the major some of the major changes the rapid changes that are were actually observing it's happening here observing in Alaska and how we're adapting and mitigating to the impacts this is not an exhaustive review do however I hope to give you a sense of the kind of rapid changes of the recurring so part of what's really neat about this and actually unique about this presentation is i'll also be showing a video a short video of indigenous and local residents in southeast Alaska and they'll be sharing their observations of climate change the things that they are seeing on the ground this is the first public showing outside their communities where it was filmed they have seen the films and approve them as part of the research process so you guys will be first to see it and what's interesting about that and we'll talk more about this through the presentation is we'll compare those observations with Western or science or instrument measurements so we'll be looking at traditional local as well as scientific knowledge that's one of the takeaways from the research side been involved with and then we'll discuss approaches of how and what we've learned so far and last with the what knowledge your information is transferable to Nebraska about climate change because you guys are experiencing those are likely to experiencing those in the near future so this is who I am here's the title page and thanks to you is and actually a lot of this information you're seeing in front of me was done under a past postdoctoral studies with the University of Alaska Fairbanks so thanks to them and also the u.s. Forest Service so I should thank them I always I always like to and this is the hard part I think if you get the questions right maybe you have half a chance to maybe get to the answers but first these are some of the questions that have come to my mind in preparing this presentation first what are the environmental changes that are happening in Alaska what can we learn from Western measurements Western science and indigenous perspective and up here we the lower 40 i think you call indigenous populations natives or Indians up here indigenous folks and there are many tribes we call them alaska native so i will say alaska native to mean all of the the indigenous tribes in Alaska how are Alaskan communities in institutions adapting how our alaskans mitigating those impacts and what information or knowledge is transferable those are the kind of things that I'm hoping to hit so my objective is really to give you a sense of how Alaskans are adapting what kind of rapid social and ecological changes occurring and third I hope this presentation triggers new ideas hunches or maybe different ways to approach issues you may have been facing and how we can learn from each other about this climate change and maybe trade some secrets amongst us so this is the questions I've organized my presentation in 25 basically five different parts first I'm going to give you some context in case you haven't been to Alaska I'll go over that pretty rapidly but just to give you a sense of who we are and what we do and some of the major things about Alaska to make us unique and then secondly we'll go into those observations and what's happening and how science is measuring those changes and then we'll have the video and then we'll talk about adaptations that are occurring in the communities which is really that video and in institutions and when I say institutions I use the broadest sense the word that meaning that means agencies NGOs all those kinds of organizations that are out there it's not just city government it could be federal local state NGOs and and those folks that are stakeholders here what are they doing how are they organizing themselves to adapt to these changes and forth potential approaches and transferability we'll talk about sustainability and we'll talk about since systems thinking those kind of things i think you know we don't know what those changes are going to be in the future we don't know we're predicting some and those tend to be coming true but we don't know there are what we call in a resilience theory surprises and so not knowing what they are it's going to have maybe an approach of looking at the changes so we'll talk about that then we'll end with I think we'll have about 15 minutes for Q&A questions and answers so first I wanted to start with a pole all that was reported in the New York Times I think was in New York Times last week and it was it was pretty interesting we have a new york time Stanford University and resources for the future they conducted as polls on views of climate change and it was reported like I say last month and it was interesting seventy-eight percent or more felt like it was a you know global global warming is serious very serious or somewhat serious so I think that's important because I think if you took that same poll ten years ago or maybe even five years ago you'd have gotten a different different result so I think public opinion is changing and it's getting towards it's getting on the radar screen and its really i'm a radar screen it's on in front of folks that are in the coast areas as you know those folks that are experiencing extreme weather events and other things that are happening the last google going to but I thought I'd just bring that up I thought it was interesting that happen last week moving to facts about Alaska all right you've heard this before you probably know but I don't it's hard to imagine how big we are so I was going to give you a sense of that we're more than twice the size of Texas Texas you know we got a lot of Texans in Alaska it's pretty interesting they're pretty proud folks but this kind of it isn't interesting part of the discussion so we're more than twice the size of Texas we are eight point five times as large as Nebraska so we're eight Nebraska's and we don't have many people you know we're only seven hundred and that says 710,000 should be 730000 now so it's a small population and more than half of that population is really around um Anchorage and the urbanized areas around Anchorage so they have over 30,000 half of that and the rest of it is really split out to the other urban areas in Fairbanks you know and south of Anchorage so that's what where the population is another thing about Alaska that i'll say it real quickly is forty percent of the land is owned by the feds so they have a lot to do with thanks and I'm sorry forty percent of federally recognized tribes are in Alaska and it's actually even bigger where the feds when I come up with that factoid a little later we're home of the largest salmon runs and I'll give you a factoid on there we're in our third year of a moratorium on the Kenai River where you get the biggest kings in the state and we put a moratorium on that we really don't know why we're getting less return could be management could be climate change we're not sure and we have we have half of the nation's of fish cat we have thirty two distinct ecoregions it's like looking at Florida and northern New York State or Nebraska and trying to talk about them all at once we are very diverse and very very different now looking at the changes what we know which science knows since the nineteen nineteen forty nine to two thousand 11 on this map it shows the change in temperature alone look at the north part of the Alaska it's 4.9 look at some of the southern parts 0.9 and where i live in juneau down in southeast it was 3.1 so yes the check that the temperature is changing that's almost five degrees and that's an annual mean temperature will get a little bit more more detail more temperature change with a local level this is one of the towns that we're going to be looking at as far as a video and this is Yakutat that's basically up in between acreage and it's in between Southeast Alaska and you'll see on a map in the video and Anchorage it's a coastal community these trends the the gray bars are 1961 to 1990 and the red bars at the top are projected to 2099 they're all in an upward projection these are based on models um and also uh different climate models that have been regionalized the big GCM models quite global climate models have been regionalized by the university of fairbanks to get a little bit more specific on how we're going to be hit precipitation so you have temperature and then you have precipitation those are two the big drivers Yakutat again this is precipitation precipitation is going to go up precip and rain going up going to increase and again you have the different bars different timeframes their drivers have changed okay if you got warmer weather and we are warming twice as fast as the rest of the nation okay it's expected that you know right now we're at an average of three to six degrees and the problem is is that it's not equal through the year this is happening during the winter and we have certain traditional things we do during the winter and we depend upon that coal like permafrost if permafrost goes away what happens to the roads they sea ice is rapidly receding and glaciers are shrinking thawing permafrost drying landscapes I've got some neat pictures of that will go into that loss of ice need that for in the village where you have permafrost they use that fact and frozen ground to help us with cold storage those are that's just a one example of adapting to that but now we have to adapt to something different here are some other projections for change temperatures projected as I said going up and in the northern parts it's going to rise remember it was five almost five degrees right now well it's going to is projected to rise 10 to 12 degrees that's a big difference and this philosopher and is is going to going to change things the growing season because it's getting warmer that maybe is a positive thing it's increased 45% we're going to get 20 to 40 days more of growing season and you Nebraskans maybe he can appreciate that being in a very agricultural state that's huge that's maybe a benefit for us the increase in precipitation is going to increase fifteen to thirty percent we already get 30 to 60 inches of rain in Juneau I'm not looking forward to the increase myself but and I'm not lookin at lookin supports no I see I need more rain than snow and it may it may impact other things that we do like in depend upon like hydroelectric ninety-nine percent of our towns powered by hydroelectric and the way the amounts and occurrence when how much affects our hydroelectric we hope it and then the other thing we have is live insects up here and I don't know if you've ever heard of this another factoid of Alaska what's the state bird it's a mosquito because we've got lots of and they are big they are you dear incredible well they're supposed to get worse as the as things get warmer here's a image hopefully it has come out all right this is what happens our public infrastructure is impacted this is a road picture taken by eot this is a couple years ago you can see by the road there there was a theres a river well as permafrost melts it seriously compromises the the road structure underneath and we get this this kind of stuff happening other things and some factoids for you it's projected that infrastructure as it wears out normally that's going to actually be increased in in costs because of climate change near some estimates we estimate that it's three to six billion dollars more due to the cost of climate change and that's just between 2006 and 2030 2006 and 2080 it gets up even more and here's the likely share of lizotte of those extra costs by nine secure 2030 that pie chart you see that runway roads a water and sewer all those things are all those things are affected and those are some estimates about how they are affected here's a nice picture to illustrate in a graphic or image way of how things are affected when hotter fires you guys probably heard that you've got it in the lower 48 what's different up here is we have permafrost and under the permafrost what happened is they're burning hotter and and that's not so good because there's an there was a natural cycle to forestry and I'm not a forester but what happens is when it burns hotter and you're changing from permafrost tuned on permafrost you're getting more burns and they aren't recovering as fast so it's different as we get warmer DD evergreens the of you're moving to more deciduous forests probably we predict infrastructure we have a thing called a pipeline you know ninety percent of our over ninety percent of our our wealth comes from the North Slope and it's piped through a line and that line was built on permafrost if you see in that image you can see these little spikes that go up those were to dissipate the permafrost below what happens when there's no permafrost you're going to have a line that's going to be it might be repaired but that runs from the north part of Alaska down to Valdez that's going to cost something subsistence resources fish and wildlife that's an important aspect and I say the word subsistence is an important word to Alaskans and also very important to Native Alaskans that's a concept it's a relationship it's not just foo
and sustenance it's a relationship natives have with their environment and their food and way of life that's going to be affected you guys are going to hear you're a little about that in the video soon sis my ass there are three villages and we'll name all of them you'll see slide on it but this is a picture it's a classic picture you can find online at shishmaref where we've had to relocate villages three are being woke relocated now and there's many more and I've got some factoids to show you on relocation of villages because a lot of villages are on the coast or on water where permafrost is melting and it's changing on the ground which upsets infrastructures where they are closeness to the shore those kind of things what happens is there's a lot of ice that traditionally was there but now is melted so it doesn't protect the coast so you have no protection and underneath its melting so it's just withers away the shorelines hydro little see total amount seasonal water availability snowpack all those things may have a impact to us other impacts changes with location dramatically we have a lot of micro microenvironments and that's important to recognize and that also goes to species we may have as if it gets warmer many things could be impacted that's why I think when you're looking at and we'll hit this hard at the end that's why we're really looking at have to look at this stuff through a systems approach so we look wider than just one impact we've got to start looking broader and more of assistance approach and we look at climate case as we're finding out anyway anyway there's impacts for wildlife there's impacts to economics it's it's a really cross footboard here's a nice picture of Alaska these are there are many villages in Alaska the red dots show where there's potential erosion or flooding that will occur 184 out of 213 eighty-six percent of the Alaskan village to some extent are going to be fit 31 of those communities has put in a GAO report that's a Government Accounting Office I think I got that word right in 19 or I'm sorry in 2009 considered 31 those villages eminently threatened and 12 we need to relocate extremely expensive to move villages what let's look at pencil then benefits we need to look at that side of the equation increase in agricultural production we do have agriculture and incredible agricultural production not much of it because of our long days to get this humongous big I should have put some pictures of vegetables you ever see them they look like they're out of Alice in Wonderland because of the extended growing season that may be a positive expand the window for tourism and parts of the state that could be considered positive scientists predict ice-free Arctic by 2020 everybody's going to the Arctic we have one of the we have the largest zinc mine in the world on the coast on the western part of Alaska getting those of commodities to market will be very important and will change when we have one start open up those routes over the Arctic and the impacts of that to the impact in distance people may in fact be more severe as you can see by the images sushma ref okay turning to the video or almost I think we're staying right on time pretty good as we lead into the video you're going to see it's only eight minutes long eight minutes and seven seconds it's really about a conversation this video when i started doing my research i was recording this is i was recording interviews and I thought men were 90 I did 90 interviews of locals and villages and southeast and I'll show you where they are in the video and I thought well what why don't we make a video out of it and leave something that leaves something like that for the communities as opposed to a presentation and an academic paper and that was my motivation well it's pending people at big production because you want to do a good job and there's such a high standard of videos now because everybody's doing them it took a long time it was word in two years but anyway I think it turned out good this is the shortest of three I understand eight minutes a long time for people to people's attention but hang in there I think you'll get something out of it I think it's tough like it's okay and we talk about total environmental change because we use that in research in Alaska because we don't know if it's management or over catch by man and they will talk about climate change because they they'll be able to distinguish some of that so we include climate change and environmental change up here as a matter of doing research and you're the first audience so no data if you want to go ahead with the video you well there's there's the video and I hope you enjoyed it what I was trying to get across is some of the observations that indigenous folks have and the one of the assumptions going into the research was that these folks who lived on this land for tens of thousands of years in those same communities they are linked hard to the resources and so they know this and the assumption is if they are changing they would could talk about those changes researchers go out a matter of weeks or maybe even months and then we go home they live with the resources so they have that close connection to the resources there are a lot of other comments but in eight minutes i can only that's the best we can do so i'm going to show the next slide which i want to walk through it looks like i have some time in front of me so I'd like to walk through three of these slides that you see on the left side are characterized very briefly the local perceptions their observations and perceptions of change and this is the first one about climate and then on the right side are what I call instrument measures measurements or Western science you could say so I'm going to walk through the evening and see how they compare weather is unpredictable you heard that a lot from that I used to be able to read the clouds I used to be able to go out in the ocean go fishing and read the weather know when to go out when it come back remember the lady said she could almost buy the day go out and pick and gather her bark to do weaving she can't do that anymore it's hard so that's unpredictable sign says no hard evidence regarding unpredictability we don't have enough to say what's going on it's too erratic Kohler Springs there's mixed add on that okay so not sure that was her observation let's no cover yes warmer temperatures are reflected in less known we both agree on that there's a strong correlation there no more ice and bass they used to be able to go out in some of these days and use the ice for transportation can't do that anymore yes large increase in temperatures they've noticed also measurement ice has has also occurred that there's less ice winter is not as harsh yes we also see that in measured science fish and wildlife were they seeing local perceptions sea otters going up yes more than sea otters however I'll tell you basically when Alaska was settled in the southeast we got we basically over hunted them and now they're coming back because we don't hunt them anymore so that's maybe a management less of a climate change and people realize that but we both agree with that that observation as far as that measurement no change in seals yes it looks like science measurement science would agree with that too harbor seals are stable increasing or unknown depending upon the specific southeast location fewer bees that's interesting I think you guys may have be experiencing that more for Nate yes virtually none known in in bee populations declines in Canada and us deer population fluctuate it's going up and down big no known meant to but it depends upon the timeframe that you're talking about if you talk about pre-contact or say previous to 50 years ago you get a different story like the story that the individual is saying we saw 50 dear I heard that too there were so many you know you'd run out of ammunition and you start throwing rocks at them I mean there are these stories about incredible populations we're still a strong population for generally speaking next salmon abundance we're all about salmon in Alaska even more so than oil we are we run on oil but salmon or that's a cultural strong cultural thing and there's a downturn and they're moving as far as where they're migrating to and and stocks so stocks abundance are down however some are you know there's there's some next information on that hearing abundance herring is huge used to be really huge before the 1930s they were fist there were hard fists in the 30s but pre um theories are some great stories about putting nails and a board and then just raking the board through the water to catch caring there are so many of them um they're coming back a bit now because they're being protected and we're managing them better well population going way up you're increasing and we both agree with that and there's some hear about that because they tend to feed a lot and they feed a lot on organisms are part of the Eagle obstacle net if they're if they're increasing and something else maybe decreasing which may affect our fish so we don't know we don't know but we know the whale population is increasing threat drastically so that was neat to find out and to do but what about us and what about the communities what can we learn from natives and others and what we're doing up here well Ron Brunner who's a writer on adaptive governance and adaptive governance and climate change he's put out a couple books great guy from university of denver at think one thing i think it's really important they emphasize that the film's to was uh we need to decentralize and i think that his statement human cognitive constraints alone are not enough to force decentralization of decision-making we need we are too confined we're too centralized and too specialized we need to go community-based because we were and we need to recognize that local knowledge that being local and orange traditional native and non-native because we're around it we have connections to it the federal government has helped us the state government's help us but we need to we need to do that I think that's one of the takeaways at least learning by doing a networking taking wrist to be taking risks more because things are moving fast we need to try things we need to learn by doing coordination integration talk more about that integration and sustainability theory and systems thinking small organic steps that was mentioned in the film too I think that's really important to take small steps many types of knowledge we have to leverage everything we can get all right I'm going to go into institutional change you saw the film on Community Change and some broad things that we're seeing this date so what's the government doing well government doing federal government's doing a lot in Alaska and there's a reason sixty-nine percent of the land is federal it's managed by the Forest Service Park Service BLM Fish and Wildlife Service they just came out with a report fairly recently it's called state of change nice play on words and in that they talk about the Denali Park and how that's changing the roads are eroding away vegetation is changing rapidly because of the precip and the warmness denali is in the middle of the state if you know it's very very popular one of the most popular parks to go to in the state so they are doing something and the different agencies are doing a lot I'm interviewing those I did some focus groups of those and the u.s. Forest Service for example does a report card um that's mandated every year what are you doing as an individual what are your units within your organization doing so the feds are doing a lot it seems like at least in Alaska they're trying to weigh in there's a lot of committees there's a I'm trying to figure it out state government different story I hate to bring up that name but the in 2008 governor Palin did a lot of different things but one thing she did was she started a climate strategy group and she signed an administrative order the former government Palin and she started this huge many committees over 100 committees on the science the immediate needs adaptation to mitigation they came out with a report the report was finally delivered in 2010 2010 five years ago under this past governor now we have a new governor Governor Walker and under the previous one it's sat on a shelf I don't think I'm overstating that there was nothing done they came out they did an incredible amount of work on impacts and so that was set on the shelf so we really haven't done anything much at all as far as a state strategy or organized approach towards climate change since 2008 and the report came out in 2010 the things we have done and it's a collaborative work it had to be because we had to move removing three villages new tuck cavallino and una deplete those three villages on we're being eroded away and they needed to move they define shelter roads all the things that you need in a village very small villages 31 more villages that is said earlier in a slide are in imminent danger from shoreline erosion and fine permafrost so we have a lot more to do we're working collaboratively with the feds the locals the state so they are doing something in immediate needs of the impacts of climate change but there's no kind of strategy pushing us forward this is the report that came out and that was the report on adaptation the advisory group that and um former governor Palin set up this sub-cabinet she said it was the import you can't mess around with this issue let's have a sub-cabinet which is basically the heads of a few agencies there's 14 agencies state agencies in the state of Alaska and that represented about five the resource agencies in this state we set up our resource management with a Department of Fish and Game a division I'm sorry Department of Environmental Conservation bride works I also work and also Department of Natural Resources so its natural resources fish and game and environment conservation we have three separate big agencies to look at the resources and for all kinds of reasons were resource state so they came out with this adaptation report and these are the things they came out with they said you know permafrost thawing and sea ice melting sure these are four things that they said we got to do something about threats its coastal communities or 31 that were were identified sensitivity to marine ecosystems and Fisheries increasing acidification and change it to the diversity range and distribution of species we don't know about studies are done we know some things but acidification is one thing that comes up a lot when you talk about scientists you know it's not a secret but I think there's a lot of concern there's great concern of what that's going to do and the impacts to the ecological web from the acidification which is really an outcome of co2 in a deposition into the ocean so realizing that the sensitivity of those because we're so dependent because we are a fish state and and a lot of our industry is around it too it's just under oil actually as far as bringing money and employing employing a lot of people and then the impact and stressed as subsistence lifestyles and livelihoods that's of course that's a big concern are our villages and we have many many many villages how are they going to adapt and and move and you can see in in the video that the statement was made a couple times you know we've been here a long time we're going to figure this out too and we will change with change it's going to be harder and we're put on we're going to go back to our some of our old ways they know they can't go back to all of them but they can they can use some of the local knowledge and the strong relationships they have among themselves there's some the isolation of communities in Alaska what is I'm digressing just a little but it's a really important thing about Alaska it was interesting i was in a meeting the other day and there was a historian that said all ask is really not unique it's really not unique and the Constitution reflects that the Constitution of the State really came from other states well yes it did we tried to take the best from the other states but it is unique in the way our culture is unique
don't know if we learned it I think I kind of think it we learned it from the years that were interdependent upon each other they needed they needed each other and there was a dependency and relationships that that occurred I think that's our uniqueness in Alaska I think some other states have that where there's a lot of civility still and there's a lot of social capital you could call it social networking as research researchers call it there's a lot of fringing and bonding going on I think that is what's really unique and it's going to that will take us through hard times and that's what they were trying to express their that they're going back to their old ways depending upon each other and depending upon the resources and and and capitalizing if you will on their knowledge the local resources it's going to get them through there's a saying in Alaska also if you don't know the governor Europe you know someone that does that's a good thing that's accountability and governance and institutions at the local level I just talked about the feds the state not moving to the local as far as the local level there are examples of climate change actions and sustainability actions as far as community-wide in Juneau there was a stain ability commission that was started back in the 1990's um it was right after i got off assembly when i served for nine years and so we have a commission we're trying to do something about that we're trying to measure sustainability we're still trying to do that another town homer you may have heard it's a wonderful picturesque town in south central Alaska to coastal community and then there's other collaborations have been put together as nonprofits is sustainable southeast is started and that's a collaboration of a think of a couple conservation groups and and part of a kind of a state agency and they're into energy conservation okay here's some adaptations that specific adaptations have occurred we're into energy conservation because it's gold up here and it takes a lot of energy to heat our shelters so we're doing some interesting things super insulated places and there's a picture of it an example here's another shot this is what I call family adaptation I think that's kept thinking about that word they have won a World Record and having the tightest residential building in the world you're in Dillingham Alaska and which is by in Bristol Bay if you have ever heard of the mind that they're trying to put in there um anyway these guys smart guide dr. Tom and and Kristen have an extremely energy-efficient home and its measured in air tightness and I don't know a lot about this but I you know I of course I did my thing in my my house and did the test beer test of course tightness but they have one of the D tightest house and consequently they use a lot less fuel and fuel is it very expensive we take six dollars a gallon for eating fuel in Bush Alaska it's really difficult and expensive on the rail felt a lot less because we have natural gas that's distributed other than Fairfax your base different story okay kind of turning towards up some thinking okay so i went through institutional thanks some of the things they're doing and not doing arm and then federal government real briefly going as fast as I could in an hour but where does this leave us I think what I think is most important is to start thinking about having a assistance approach towards problem solving I kind of do it in two ways i use some of course I'm you know on the board of the Jocelyn castle Institute so I've been heavily influenced by those folks in a good way and I agree with what they're doing there are sustained of metrics book that they came out with in their framework that they use the five domains I think that gives you a really good starting point on how to frame in more of a systems approach towards problem solving United States and our culture we've gotten really good at specializing silo thinking as opposed to systems thinking we're really good that we've got to get up out of those silos and look more broadly if we're going to be more innovative for example we've got to look at the interconnections and the and we've got to learn how to integrate these tech different domains I like these domains because the sustained of metrics approach towards a problem and this could be this is very module you can use this for an office you can use it for building to use it for a community I like that aspect of it it's very transferable when you're looking at adaptations it's good to look beyond a particular slice of a problem think of it one systems thinking and this is demonstrated in this image where there's intersections between them and I like to that just this Venn diagram of the different domains and how they should intersect and integrate well I go one step further or and I think some of this is implied in the sustained metrics but I like to bring it out I teach sustainability at us and go write paper on this a good Cecil to help you with it Systems thinking to me since systems thinking is a couple things these are starting approach your framework and I use sustain of metrics and sustainability for climate change adaptation and I look at it in these in these worlds these dimensions domains and I use three things that are important if you look at if you use these three approaches and if you cover or consider those five domains that I think you're doing systems thinking and sustainability thinking is it long term that's huge not just 50 years but a hundred years or 150 years out how are we going to change even though things are changing rapidly we have to think long term and context context is is all about this presentation that is different types of knowledge local knowledge the context is really important and in time and space with what context is all-important consider the context you're in and use the knowledge you can local traditional scientific knowledge and integration is another key I think it has approached where can you integrate those are the opportunities and where you need to capitalize on we're working leverage so i use those three approaches with that framework here's what we do in Alaska this is more of a kind of an overview and I just kind of put this together it's the first time ever kind of but this is kind of new so it'd be nice to get some feedback on this because we are so different because we have over thirty two separate distinct ecosystems in Alaska we look at things regionally and it's been stated I was with some other researchers in Fairbanks and we sat down with some elected officials and scientists and we said how do we do sustained ability how do we think about sustainability in Fairbanks Alaska we have this incredible energy costs it's almost moving people out of that community um and and we have people that if they hear the word sustainability they're turned off and I'm just being very blunt so we came up with these four kind of things think about that are just undeniably needed as a human shelter innate the energy you need food you have a culture so that's a starting point and these cross social-ecological systems you need to cross those systems to the adaptive and to sustain where do we do is how do we do this they're different different contexts that we see in Alaska we have a road system it goes from Anchorage and below Anchorage up to Fairbanks that's considered a road system that's number two now nurses and and so that's Fairbanks Kenai Peninsula um in Anchorage and we look at things like we're trying to improve and adapt through energy conservation is huge innovations education we're urbanized we're not urbanized off road system and sit on hard those are those small communities coastal communities what do we do with them hard to get to very expensive energy isolation though creates opportunities and innovation coastal we're looking at title power sharing amongst ourselves trying to integrate we even have windmills and in Kotzebue and we're getting more windmills and known we're trying to leverage as much as we can of interior in the off-road system now if your bank result that's on the road system but interior communities and these are very small communities 150 people to 2000 very small communities highly insulated shelters and energy conservation these are just ticking off a few things with how we're adapting you you let's being home being hit right now its energy its shelter its food those kind of things then Southeast Alaska where I live because we depend upon hydropower it keeps our costs down we're going to do more of that probably smaller projects wave title community gardens keeps coming up again and again around Alaska in fact they have greenhouses they're starting to build and Bethel in other places biofuels is coming back onto the plate as far as energy conservation and use it's going to be a combination of things so kind of um I'm moving up to out of time so I think I'm yeah I'm getting close here I leave with these kind of things what about Alaska and Nebraska these kind of questions what is our capacity as an individual and community to adapt I think the opportunities in a way we build capacity is the way we think are we thinking integrated Lee and systems thinking I think is really important how do we build it again small steps as mentioned in the film we take small steps innovations and we take risks we learn by doing adaptive management tells us that local knowledge open I call it open architecture when when I get around the table and I'm with different disciplines and we're doing research you got to take some leaps of faith what kind of knowledge is that you know is it words or numbers we have to start having a more open architecture of thinking and respect for other disciplines we've gotten so siloed with our belief systems and our knowledge bases we've got to start looking in a more open architecture so we're more adaptive these are some now that basically finishes the presentation but these are some research or resources I just kind of put up here the cold climate climate housing research center is doing some very innovative things for Alaskans reap or what's called renewable energy research Alaska project Alaska energy authorities then give it a lot of money and then it lease is working with at least three towns cities here in Juneau trying to put them through this five-step assessment and what are you going to do with mitigating greenhouse gases lead certifications we have more buildings up here really nice tribal governments and then the national climate assessment report that came up that has a lot of good information to these are some footnotes um that bright received got some of my information for that scientific side of that chart these are footnoted and that's it so I'm ready for questions and thank you for your time I'd appreciate any kind of feedback this the first time has really pulled together all of these things into one presentation actually that's a shot of me and an opportunity for climate change that's an ice cave it was created in a in the Mendenhall Glacier it became a tourist site this summer but it was incredible is the most incredible place I've ever been in my whole life just the way that light plays on ice and you go into this cave and it is just wonderful thank you very much okay i would like to remind everyone to get questions to Jim you simply have to put them in the chat box and you can find the chat box on it's usually either above or below gym space on your WebEx screen you're looking for anything that this chat depends how you have your view set up you could also tweet them to hashtag slps Thursday all no spaces and you should take people just a moment gym to get their questions in because if it took them out if you would or wouldn't mind going back to your references and just go through nope just let them display for a minute because this will be the only way people will be able to access your references is through the video if you can just go take a moment and go through each slide so people can see them while our first question is coming okay um that was after repeated sorry I'm really sorry okay okay okay yeah good question okay game your first question is how is the insurance agent agency is a leading yeah industry side I'm sorry me repeat again I felt some girls can't come in and I did repeatable chain was yes he what our guest is wondering if measures from the insurance industry are reflecting these changes if you've seen anything in along those lines that's a really good question I'm sorry I don't have a really good answer I have property on the ocean too and I know my rates keep going up I can tell you that and I don't know I've not heard of any different formula or measurements for increased costs or changes that are occurring and I haven't heard about the small communities that three communities that I mentioned as far as insurance that they may have had on their buildings before before they got washed away basically but it's a good really good question sorry I can get back to you on that is there a way that um that is there a way that I can post answers to questions if I don't have the answers immediately the best way would be for that individual to ask the questions identify themselves with me personally and then I can we can connect them with you or Jim if you would be okay if you could go to your slide that shows your name and email they could actually if they would like to follow up with you they can contact you directly and then then you can just correspond with them drum that way that would probably the least chaotic yeah that's a right at the end yes so is if you have questions for Jim and you can get back to you would be best if you contact him and then he'll of your further address your question okay we have some other questions that come in here Jim with the Alaska budget so dependent on revenue from oil extraction how does this impact long-term planning around infrastructure improvements and resources for sustainability planning and mitigation we're trying to figure that out right now I don't know what guys but we have a I'm trying to put it in percentage because big numbers don't mean anything but i'll give you the big number i'll try to get the percentage up we have going into this year because the drop in the oil oil the price of oil not just the production and production of oil in our state drops off at about six percent six percent a year and we've because of the price of oil going down we are short 3.5 billion dollars our total budget probably including the capital budget is probably these are old figures but probably eight billion so you can you can tell that's a huge chunk and how are we going to make up for it well as you know we have a permanent fund and there's 60 billion dollars in the Permanent Fund right now we've never tapped the Permanent Fund and up there is no written statute or guidance on how it will be tapped which is really bothersome and so we're in the new territory but this governor an independent he seems to be a moderate Republican um said you know we're going to cut government first and there is going to be at least twelve or fifteen percent cut and we're going to draw out of some savings accounts that we can access of the Permanent Fund we can get through this for the next five years but if continues this way however after five years were broke as far as enough revenues coming in then we will have to go to and you may know we don't have a sales tax statewide sales tax we don't have a statewide income tax and we get back from the government of proceeds from the Permanent Fund we get back each of us a check from the government varies from 500 to 2000 dollars a year so we are not a poor state to say how do we keep up with the adaptations that are need to occur in climate change you know we've got money it's just it we're not poor and money we're a little slow and making decisions maybe but you know I guess everybody is so answer your question um I think that uh we're going to get through it it's just because we do have we still have resources but we're gonna have to change things things are going to the public is demanding that I think the public is demanding lesser government and and so that will happen first hopefully that h
lped okay a couple more questions that come in here what organizations are most essential for helping to shift from Cairo thinking two systems thinking or how would you suggest facilitating this change in mindset oh I was just asked to be put on the governor the new governor's a policy group on doing that my clue is you get them all down and you have you you start a conversation about well in our state you you take that report that's been sitting on the desk for five years that that the in a good way lays out a lot of the science and a lot of the impacts so a lot of that work has been done now you have to implement it and the way you implement it i think that agencies there have to be leadership at the top that says we need to meet as task forces at the cabinet level and so you have sub-cabinet levels on adaptation um because if you don't start at the top most reasonable employees will not do something they're not supposed to do or they're not directed to do and that's to collaborate and to if they're not training this to get some training and and to start looking at problems with different people in the room and getting used to having different people in a room they know as a cabinet I work for as you know one attended cabinet meetings under a governor Hickel when he was governor years ago so I know a little about those cabinet meetings not a lot but I know that they collaborate on problems um as as 14 agencies but that's difficult to do with everything else pressing on you I think that we need to do is to have sub cabinet level how do we adapt those kind of things and we look at the science and we look at the locals and we and you do you if it's a local problem say a community needs to relocate you collaborate you work as a team its teams and tasks those kind of things that we don't do a lot of but government is doing more up and need to do it faster and maybe there's changes in statutes it neat we need to look at things we need to learn faster and look at those feedback loops even faster than we are now some thoughts okay another one here and I'm having a mute and unmute myself some more a little worried that I'm not getting a hottie Oh correct here is Alaska unique and having established a sub-cabinet committee or climate change adaptation or are you aware of other states also taking similar initiative there are other states and they kind of come and go with the governor's I think who's at the top I I think there are other states it is foggy in my mind right now with those states were back in two thousand eight to two thousand ten or eleven some of the more it seems like there are some states that are doing I don't think we're unique I can get that out to you guys asking great questions please email me those I'm interested in doing the research to finding out the answers um but up top my head where there's more innovation that's occurring in our country as far as climate change because it seems like there was more for whatever reason cities were on it faster um you know the big example of course is Seattle and their climate change agreement their mayor's that's all signed on to the climate change a convention or whatever it was they all got together and said she's working because they're hit directly feds aren't however the feds were moving in our state the state didn't move at all after 2010 but it started to move with palin a former governor Palin so you had cities that we're moving fast because they have to show up first and you know where I live there's no road going into Juneau so if there was bad weather you couldn't fly in and you can't get a boat in here fast enough guess who gets the cleanup stuff we do local government we're isolated and that record and that demands on self-sufficiency so isolation works both ways it makes you dependent upon yourself and if bad things hit you gotta solve it the Navy ain't going to get there tomorrow if things are if things are happening near as a state so and we had that happen in Juneau I'll give you an example real real quick our hydro is wiped out we had an avalanche it tore down or power lines and so and we're something which you we would roll or not is we privatize our electricity you guys are way ahead of us as far as having a public that's my opinion but anyway I was privatized and so the local utility said and we'll have it fixed and we don't know when you know of a couple months well they raised the rate four hundred and fifty percent overnight because we had to go to diesel four hundred and fifty percent you're paying 100 bucks a month now you're paying 400 bucks a month people were outraged so we had to we had to do something quickly and we did we got real smart on what a kilowatt could do for your house and we we did good we did good but it was a it was quite a lesson in self-sufficiency as an old there's a big story about that whole thing but we I went from I think about 50 kill I was wasting kilowatts but I got down it was like a social network worked in our town in small towns that's going to be the saving grace when things happen ok when you not asked me at the beginning if you ever get rivergate questions and they're still coming in so hang in there you're not done yet can you give us more information on ice cream Arctic's by 2020 what is the source for this you know that week two more after this so just FYI there's a lot of science on this google it just put arctic free 2020 my information comes from the University of Fairbanks because they've been doing modeling and those are some of the experts in the world they've been doing ice cores they've been doing we're there is a if you go to the International Arctic research center that's where the scientists reside and they're related to a lot of other scientists to but that's where my information that's where that source came from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and there's actually a unit I did my post back in it was called the scenarios network for Arctic and analed for Alaska and Arctic regional planning that was another that's kind of they do modeling they downsize the GCMs the gold global climate models to Alaska because we needed that information on a regional basis on you know is it going to rain more here or what's going to happen with the ice here what about permafrost those kind of things but the Arctic there's tremendous interest in the Arctic and uaf is way involved in it university of alaska surveys so I'd like to take this moment just to ask folks if you're thinking of a question please get it into the chat box or tweeted or tell it to your individual in the room that's taking questions just so we have a sense of how many more we're doing so great on time and with that I'm going to read you our next one in line what is your current consumption of wayne electricity what is the near-term target oh god another one I have to send you um I only know that we do wind Anchorage put up six as you can fly into Anchorage you'll go over this small island you fly right over the windmill ders anyways 11 or 12 windmills and or they're going to double that capacity I can't tell you that the how many megawatts they are but we have windmills and Anchorage we have windmills on Western Alaska where there's a lot of wind I don't know I don't know I can't give you the effect i can get back to you please give me an email I'd love to do the research and get it for you it's not going to be generally speaking and I've talked to the mayor about it from Kotzebue the Northwest Arctic pearl Reggie jewel he he was instrumental in as a state representative to get them in there it's not a large percentage and I don't think there's a lot of hopes that it will be anything out of the norm I think that it's going to be I don't want to guess but I bet it will be less than ten percent in villages will be maybe more they're looking at twenty-five thirty percent if they can do that that's a huge amount if they're trying to displace their dependency on oil so please get me from Twitter here looking at the economy we have an economic system that encourages excessive consumerism can we break away from this oh boy well I I think there has to be incentives and disincentives to do it it's kind of like yes I think we can but it's a long process because we have so much and there's no you know what is the necessity is the mother of invention I think that we don't there's no necessity to do it because it's so accessible so I guess we have to incentivize it it's kind of like do you buy do you take your bags into the grocery store I mean I try to do it I do it most the time but not all the time but when i go to lower 48 when they give in there's no we don't charge here in Juneau to do or not to do that and I don't think there's any place in Alaska we're trying to do that now some people trying to do something about that but I go to California they charge a five cents I bring in my bag you know so we need those incentives to do it I don't know I think it will be very slow okay I think we have another one here hang on are you mentioned adaptive man in command the strategy strategy to test innovation a great example of this at work in the basket can be found in the Platte River recovery project I think it's more of a comment but if you would like to comment on that at all I don't know about the Platte River Project but adaptive management has many aspects to it but the the cornerstone to adaptive management is experimentation not just trial and error taking risks and doing things that create a learning environment and I can tell you that that doesn't occur in agencies across the board and some it does because they have a culture of doing it like the Department of Fish and Game here we're fairly well managed as far as Fish and Game we try to learn from other examples we still have robust fish runs they are changing but we do that by science it's science first and then we make decisions so we do an escapement we count the fishes that are coming back and if there isn't enough based upon history we cut the amount that we allow fishing in some way or another so we manage it that's a scientific kind of management it's not always an ecosystem management it's by species so i would i would note that but a lot of our agencies are not set up if you're talking about institutional adaptation or government adaptation we don't do enough risk number one we have to change our risk policies and that is being rewarded for making some mistakes and going too far or taking risks I know that sounds a little counterintuitive maybe but we have to make some mistakes to find out which things work and we have to learn so we have to really apply the feedback loops and we have to do intentional expec of experimentation and and that's not done there are some models we have to extend those models into different agencies so yeah I believe in ad adaptive management and I think that's really important for climate change because things are soaring you're moving fast so we need to adapt while I use depth do you use adaptive management techniques okay so folks who are wrapping up pretty shortly so soon so Twitter or chat box for your last questions hashtag x LPS Thursday or you can take the directly into the chat box if you're watching electronically or tell your person in the room dr. Powell if you could go to slide 34 35 36 37 just school right from there and then into your next one and then your next one will just make sure people will be able to get access to these later if they want to see them 37 and then one more and that's great I can go just allow folks to pause the video if they want to look at any of those references when the video gets posted while we're waiting for our other questions coming in I just want to try to report our viewership so you know and other folks know how many people watched we never get all of our viewership numbers but I have 122 of confirmed heads electronically and I had all of our different sites I always tell us because there's anything over 100 is just excellent for Nebraska our population is not New York so I think that's just wonderful where that many people tuned in and that actually without our Hastings campus because they lost power laterz to over quite at the early part so maybe some of those folks are unable to get connected and then sit where that's my paws so I'm going to hook our questions here one more time anybody else is your chance if I miss one alert me to it now dr. Mary fertig is asked me to connect you with her and she's very interested in the question responses so I will see see yuh I will connect you guys by email following this presentation joseline joseline their watch parties looking good they've given me giving you a thank you I think it's a great great presentation i'm still looking for any other last questions let me check the twitter okay with that I think we're we are great it's right on time too just perfect we're going to a class in Grand Island for you since you can't get the other hundred people clapping thank you thanks for the opportunity to really appreciate it and please the questions that are wasn't able to answer on the spot please hand me because you you I'm also interested in the answer and i can probably access the find the answers quickly yeah that's very good I think we are talking over each other hopefully people got that but yes we dmail him and and he would love to be in contact with you and with that thank you very very much folks our next presentation is March 5th at three-thirty from wait cat Nebraska you can get information on their website or any of the partner websites which is central Metro Community College and Jocelyn the title the presentation a sustainability advocacy leverage your emotions avoid burnout and influence for good you hope to see you then with that thank you dr. Powell very much we will be in contact you and I thank you thanks for the opportunity
