Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Biocultural Heritage in Arctic Cities as a Potential Resource for Climate Adaptation

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries. The teams will develop transdisciplinary and convergent research approaches on cultural heritage and climate change, foster collaboration among the research community across several regions, and contribute to knowledge advances at the global level. The project focuses on the concept of bicultural heritage which combines elements of the natural environment and cultural heritage, including language, cultural memory, and traditional ecological knowledge to investigate the complex interactions between natural and social systems and the ability of Arctic urban communities to adapt to climate-induced changes. The project team will work with local and indigenous communities to evaluate climate and environmental changes affecting natural components of biocultural heritage and to assess transformations in local and Indigenous perspectives on elements of biocultural heritage such as, traditional ecological knowledge, environmental ethics, and human-animal relations in response to climate and environmental changes. The project will investigate role the arts and culture in representing and imagining biocultural heritage by reflecting environmental change and social transformations and analyze community specific interactions between nature, culture, and urban life in Arctic cities that constitute biocultural heritage and examine its role in climate change adaptation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.