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This article develops an approach to identifying preferences of residents for alternative strategies of service provision, given a limited budget for the supply of services. Using a game format, the approach requires residents to indicate the services they would improve and the services they would trade off given the available financial resources. The method is demonstrated for a rural municipality in sourthern Ontario, Canada. The results provide an indication of the way in which the residents would like to see their taxes apportioned for service provision and are analyzed for differences in constrained preferences within the community.

Under the auspices of International Polar Year (IPY), the CAVIAR consortium was formed with partners from all eight Arctic countries. The aim of the interdisciplinary CAVIAR project is to increase understanding of the vulnerability of Arctic communities to changing environmental conditions, including climate change, and to contribute to the development of adaptive strategies and policies. In partnership with local collaborators in over two dozen communities, researchers have documented the conditions and forces that contribute to vulnerabilities, identified adaptive strategies and attempted to assess the prospects for adaptation in the future.

Tropical forests have a central role to play in a new mechanism designed to mitigate climate change, known as REDD+ (Reduced Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Through semistructured interviews and content analysis of relevant documents, the perceptions of the opportunities and challenges of REDD+ of institutions, who may be directly implicated in or affected by its implementation are investigated. Research takes place in three Central African countries, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Democratic Republic of Congo, which contain the Congo Basin forest. Perception of opportunities include economic development and poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, network building, and governance reform. Challenges identified include REDD+'s complexity, lack of technical capacity for implementation, opportunities for participation, benefit sharing, and the traditional system of shifting cultivation. Those involved in designing REDD+ internationally need to understand developing-country perspectives, and institutions at all levels need to work together to develop concrete strategies to improve overall outcomes.

Climate change in the Canadian north is, and will be, managed by communities that are already experiencing social, political, economic and other environmental changes. Hence, there is a need to understand vulnerability to climate change in the context of multiple exposure-sensitivities at the community level. This paper responds to this perceived knowledge need based on a case study of the community of Kugluktuk in Nunavut, Canada. An established approach for vulnerability assessment is used to identify current climatic and non-climatic exposure-sensitivities along with their associated contemporary adaptation strategies. This assessment of current vulnerability is used as a basis to consider Kugluktuk's possible vulnerability to climatic change in the future. Current climate-related exposure-sensitivities in Kugluktuk relate primarily to subsistence harvesting and community infrastructure. Thinner and less stable ice conditions and unpredictable weather patterns are making travel and harvesting more dangerous, and some community infrastructure is sensitive to permafrost melt and extreme weather events (e.g., flash floods). The ability of individuals and households to adapt to these and other climatic exposure-sensitivities is influenced by non-climatic factors which condition adaptive capacity, including substance abuse, the erosion of traditional knowledge and youth suicide. These and other non-climatic factors often underpin adaptive capacity to deal with and adapt to changing conditions and must be considered in an assessment of vulnerability. This research argues that Northern communities are challenged by multiple exposure-sensitivities, beyond just those posed by climate, and effective adaptation to climate change requires consideration if not resolution of socio-economic and other issues in communities. Keywords: Climate change; Arctic; community vulnerability; adaptation; Inuit (Published: 27 July 2011) Citation: Polar Research 2011, 30, 7363, DOI:10.3402/polar.v30i0.7363