“It depends…”: Inuit-led identification and interpretation of land-based observations for climate change adaptation in Nunatsiavut, Labrador

Climate change impacts on population health and wellbeing are spatially and socially distributed, and shape place-based capacities, constraints, and priorities for climate change adaptation. Inuit across the Circumpolar North have called for public health monitoring and response systems that integrate environmental and human health data, and provide localized information to support place-based adaptation strategies. The goal of this research was to qualitatively characterize how Inuit in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, identify, interpret, and use environmental and climatic observations to make decisions that will protect and promote their health and wellbeing in the context of climate change. Inuit community research leads conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Rigolet Inuit to identify and contextualize environmental and climatic observations that were important for monitoring. Under the direction of community research leads, qualitative data from interviews were analyzed by the core research team using constant-comparative thematic analysis methods to ensure emergent findings were grounded in the voices and perspectives of Rigolet Inuit. Rigolet Inuit considered all climatic and environmental observations to be connected and emphasized the importance of collective, intergenerational knowledge in understanding and adapting to current and future climate change. The ways that Rigolet Inuit interpreted and used these observations for making decisions depended on perceived relevance and importance of observations, trustworthiness of information, and personal thresholds for risks. Knowledge shared by Rigolet Inuit demonstrated the nuanced, relational nature of how climatic and environmental observations are identified, interpreted, and used in decision-making for place-based climate change adaptation. It is important to prioritize these place-based and locally validated ways of knowing and learning about the land in the development of integrated monitoring systems to inform adaptation strategies that are based on a community’s existing resilience and creativity, and premised on relationships among people and places. In so doing, we can identify entry points for improving the ways in which monitoring systems function to link environment and health data, and inform robust, evidence-based adaptation strategies and policies.