Recommendations

Project	Type	#	Outcome	Report	Year
Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands (RAW)	Recommendation	12	Strengthen wetland resilience through supporting meaningful engagement of Indigenous Peoples and/or Local Communities in wetlands inventories, and management plans.	Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands: Key Findings and Recommendations	2021
Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA)	Recommendation	11	Reduce the threat of pollutants to Arctic biodiversity. a. Support and enhance international efforts and cooperation to identify, assess and reduce existing and emerging harmful contaminants. b. Support the development of appropriate prevention and clean up measures and technologies that are responsive to oil spills in the Arctic, especially in ice-filled waters, such that they are ready for implementation in advance of major oil and gas developments. c. Encourage local and national action to implement best practices for local wastes, enhance efforts to clean-up legacy contaminated sites and include contaminant reduction and reclamation plans in development projects.	Arctic Biodiversity Assessment: Report for Policy Makers	2013
Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands (RAW)	Recommendation	5	Use short-lists of known northern wetland sites in need of protection, conservation or restoration to support national-level action plans. Such actions should be targeted to the most promising sites, including those that may be located outside the Arctic. Wetland protection, conservation and restoration would be more effective if done in direct collaboration with Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and/or stakeholders and applied at the landscape level.	Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands: Key Findings and Recommendations	2021
Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA)	Recommendation	4	Require the incorporation of biodiversity objectives and provisions into all Arctic Council work and encourage the same for on-going and future international standards, agreements, plans, operations and/or other tools specific to development in the Arctic. This should include, but not be restricted to, oil and gas development, shipping, fishing, tourism and mining.	Arctic Biodiversity Assessment: Report for Policy Makers	2013
Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands (RAW)	Recommendation	14	Support development of wetland classification systems and maps specific to different Arctic Indigenous Peoples based on the words and terms traditionally used to describe wetland types, properties, and functions. Such maps would support wetland stewardship and facilitate communication of their value locally and to policy makers.	Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands: Key Findings and Recommendations	2021
Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA)	Recommendation	13	Increase and focus inventory, long-term monitoring and research efforts to address key gaps in scientific knowledge identified in this assessment to better facilitate the development and implementation of conservation and management strategies. Areas of particular concern identified through the ABA include components critical to ecosystem functions including important characteristics of invertebrates, microbes, parasites and pathogens.	Arctic Biodiversity Assessment: Report for Policy Makers	2013
Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands (RAW)	Recommendation	7	Inventory and review existing national policies relating to wetlands with an eye on using a watershed approach and identifying conflicting or inconsistent goals, overlapping or unclear responsibility among governmental departments and entities, and gaps in communication. Identifying and addressing these issues would enable more effective governance of wetlands and balancing conservation and Indigenous and other user needs to achieve more effective stewardship.	Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands: Key Findings and Recommendations	2021
Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA)	Recommendation	2	Identify measures for detecting early warnings of biodiversity change and triggering conservation actions.Move towards a stronger reliance on early warnings of ecosystem change, rather than on population trends as triggers for making decisions. Aside from catastrophic die-offs and breeding failure, impacts from changes in sea ice are often incremental, such as a reduced rate of reproduction or survival, or less energy intake from prey. Impacts may take years to be detected in population trends, especially for long-lived animals. Measures such as reduced body condition or changes in ice-dependent prey species are evidence of impacts that can be acted on before declines are detected in abundance or distribution. In some cases these earlier actions will prevent or lessen population declines. Factors to consider in selecting such measures of change include long-term costs and benefits, support by research, ability to be updated, and suitability for determining thresholds for action.	Life Linked to Ice: A guide to sea-ice-associated biodiversity in this time of rapid change	2013
Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA)	Recommendation	6	Develop guidelines and implement appropriate spatial and temporal measures where necessary to reduce human disturbance to areas critical for sensitive life stages of Arctic species that are outside protected areas, for example along transportation corridors. Such areas include calving grounds, den sites, feeding grounds, migration routes and moulting areas. This also means safeguarding important habitats such as wetlands and polynyas.	Arctic Biodiversity Assessment: Report for Policy Makers	2013
Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands (RAW)	Recommendation	16	Support long-term development of open access spatial databases for wetland data that allow interactive use, application of different classification systems and on-the-fly wetland map production.	Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands: Key Findings and Recommendations	2021