research

The separation between humans and nature is the root cause of the global ecological crisis. This approach can be found in the Arctic water-society relations. Research is dominated by a particular "hydro-hegemony" of anthropocentricity, state-centricity and human intentionality.

The project develops an alternative post-anthropocentric approach to investigate water-society relations as complex entanglements of human/non-human relations. In the project, multidisciplinary, qualitative case-based research will be conducted, and multisite, ethnographic data will be collected and analyzed with the Grounded theory-based Situational analysis. The research will focus on both the past and current relations to the sea, rivers and islands; diverse cross-border interactions; multiple meanings of water and ice; multi-level governance and transformations in the environment in the Bothnian Bay.

Climate Responsibility as a Normative Cornerstone of Multilateral Cooperation? project will develop International Relations theorisation that will take the norm of climate responsibility at the centre of politics. Drawing insights from an Arctic case study with a backcasting scenario approach of Futures Studies, the project aims to identify what kind of development trajectories would plausibly bring climate responsibility as the 'grund norm' of the international society by 2035.

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CHARTER is an ambitious effort to advance adaptive capacity of Arctic communities to climatic and biodiversity changes through state-of-the-art synthesis based on thorough data collection, analysis and modelling of Arctic change with major socio-economic implications and feedbacks.

To achieve this goal, we will combine expertise from Earth System sciences and biodiversity studies within the social-ecological system framework and strongly participatory approach. Strategies co-developed in CHARTER with indigenous and local communities will comprise synergies between their ambitions for adaptation actions with novel forms of land management geared towards climate mitigation and sustainable development.

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The project will merge justice theories with sustainable development goals to enable EU policy coherence toward just transitions. This will be integrated with an investigation of the empirical realities of existing Arctic economic activities in 18 case studies using innovative research methodology, through conceptual, comparative, descriptive, correlation, policy, legal and interview-based analysis techniques.

Though this, JUSTNORTH will offer policy, legal and regulatory pathway recommendations, by developing a frameworks from the reconciliation of the various ethics and value systems present in the Arctic, which can serve as a cornerstone for determining the viability of economic activities in the Arctic in line with the goals of sustainable development.

JustNorth homepage. 

This research aims to revise our understanding of human-animal relations: we will study the diversity of ways in which people perceive the domesticity, wildness, hybridity and ferality of northern animals, which are fundamental to local cultures in our case sites in Finland and Russia.

The project team will re-think human-animal sustainability through ethnographic documentation (anthropology), analysis of past human-animal partnerships (history), gene expressions (genetics), and comparative analysis of norms (law).

Perspectivist approaches will be used for showing that the reality of 'what is an animal' is not static but depends on the standpoint. With participatory research, we shall integrate these perspectives to contribute to theoretical renewal in the field of human-animal sustainability, advance perspectivism as a theoretical direction in interdisciplinary research, and raise awareness in society of the diversity of understandings of domestic and wild animals in our environment.

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