Social-Ecological Transformations: HUMan-ANimal Relations Under Climate Change in NORthern Eurasia (HUMANOR)

HUMANOR is a transdisciplinary, international project investigating climatic and non-climatic drivers affecting human-animal relations in northern indigenous social-ecological systems over timescales of tens and hundreds of years. With field projects in Fennoscandia, the Yamal peninsula (northwestern Siberia) and Mongolia, the goal of the project is to better understand contemporary nomadic pastoralist livelihoods and their potential resilience or vulnerability to future climate change by detailing their historical trajectories in a range of different socio-economic and ecological contexts. While some indigenous social-ecological systems in the Arctic have proven resilient in space and time, most are considered at risk due to climate warming and increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather conditions. There is therefore an urgent need to increase our understanding of their response capacities today and in the future by understanding how the nexus of feedbacks between humans, animals and the environment operated in the past.