New Paper on Cultural Consensus Published in Open Access Sustainability Journal

April 1, 2020

CAPS Staff

Eight people standing or sitting around a table consult on work.
Dr. Berill Blair (back row, right) consults with colleagues and community participants during a NASP workshop in 2016.

A new paper, "Risks Without Borders: A Cultural Consensus Model of Risks to Sustainability in Rapidly Changing Social–Ecological Systems," by Dr. Berill Blair and CAPS Director Amy Lauren Lovecraft appears in the open-access journal Sustainability as part of a Special Issue on Socio-Ecological Systems Sustainability. The paper builds on research undertaken as part of the Northern Alaska Scenarios Project (NASP), and explores consensus about risks and uncertainties in Arctic boroughs grappling with rapid social–ecological transformations in northern Alaska.

Dr. Blair, who worked with Dr. Lovecraft at the University of Alaska Fairbanks during her PhD, is currently a sustainability scientist, futurist and Arctic researcher at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She specializes in climate change adaptation and resilience issues relevant to the future of Arctic coastal communities and sectors. Berill incorporates futures perspectives and foresight tools into her projects, most recently for the SALIENSEAS project (http://salienseas.com/), in which Berill works to enhance climate services for Arctic marine transport sectors using scenario methods and serious games, in partnership with the Norwegian and Danish Meteorological Institutes and with the partial support of CAPS. Berill has worked extensively in Alaska and Norway and is currently embarking on a Greenland-focused project.