Lost to Climate

Lost to Climate: Addressing Unavoidable Non-Economic Losses to Climate-Induced Events for Communities in the Arctic

The Arctic is warming faster than most other parts of the world. Communities are already experiencing changes such as coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, wildfires, sea-ice loss, changing precipitation patterns and more frequent extreme weather events. These changes can cause obvious economic losses, for example when roads, buildings or other infrastructure are damaged. But they can also lead to losses that are much harder to measure.

What happens when a landscape changes, a traditional livelihood disappears, or people lose practices, knowledge and places that have been important to their community for generations? These are often described as non-economic losses and damages. They can include the loss of cultural heritage, identity, sense of place, community ties, traditional knowledge and well-being.

LostToClimate investigates these less visible consequences of climate change and asks how Arctic communities can respond to them in fair and meaningful ways. Adaptation can help reduce losses, but not everything can necessarily be protected forever. Communities may therefore face difficult choices about what should be protected, what can be adapted, and what may ultimately be lost.

The project brings together researchers and rural communities across Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States, including several Indigenous communities. Rather than studying communities only from the outside, LostToClimate is based on knowledge co-production. Researchers work together with local people through interviews, surveys, workshops, creative methods and community dialogues.

The Icelandic case: What if sheep farming disappears from some regions?

The Icelandic team consists of Matthias Kokorsch and Jóhanna Gísladóttir, together with several master’s students whose theses will be linked to the project.

Our case study focuses on sheep farming in Iceland. At first sight, sheep farming may not seem like the most obvious example of climate-related loss. Climate change will not simply make sheep farming disappear. But farming communities are already exposed to changing environmental conditions, and these pressures are likely to increase. More variable weather, changing precipitation patterns, extreme weather events, and changing risks of landslides and avalanches can all affect farms, infrastructure, access to land and the everyday lives of farming communities.

We are therefore interested not only in whether sheep farming remains economically viable, but in a broader question: What would be lost if sheep farming came to an end in some parts of Iceland?

The answer may include much more than jobs or agricultural production. Sheep farming is connected to landscapes, family histories, local knowledge, traditions, social networks, food culture and ideas about rural Iceland itself. We want to understand what these connections mean to farmers, rural communities and Icelandic society more broadly.

During 2026 and 2027, we will carry out a large survey among farming communities, alongside interviews and student research projects. By speaking directly with people involved in sheep farming, we hope to better understand which values are considered most important, what kinds of changes people are already experiencing, and what they believe should be protected for future generations.