Interview with Rico Kongsager

You led the CliCNord project, which was recently concluded. Can you share some key takeaways from its findings?

Leading the CliCNord project was a deeply insightful experience. One of the key takeaways is that climate resilience in small and remote Nordic communities is not just about infrastructure or emergency protocols—it’s fundamentally about people, place, and relationships.

We found that place attachment—the emotional and cultural bonds people have with their environment—plays a crucial role in how communities perceive risks and respond to climate-related hazards like flooding, wildfires, and landslides. In many cases, this attachment can both motivate proactive adaptation and, paradoxically, delay necessary relocations or changes.

Another major insight was the importance of local and Indigenous knowledge. These communities often have generations of lived experience with their environment, which can complement scientific data and enhance preparedness and response strategies. However, this knowledge is at risk of being overlooked in top-down emergency planning.

We also saw that volunteerism and informal networks are vital in rural disaster response, especially where formal emergency services are limited. Strengthening these networks and integrating them into official planning can significantly boost resilience.

Finally, the project emphasized the need for tailored, context-sensitive policies. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in the Nordic region, where hazards and community capacities vary widely. Our framework aims to help policymakers and local actors co-create solutions that reflect these unique conditions.

Overall, CliCNord highlighted that building climate resilience is as much a social and cultural challenge as it is a technical one."

Congratulations on securing funding for the Addressing Unavoidable Non-Economic Losses to Climate-Induced Events for Communities in the Arctic (LostToClimate) project! Can you tell us about its focus and motivation?

Thank you! We’re incredibly excited about the LostToClimate project. Its core focus is on understanding and addressing unavoidable non-economic losses—things like cultural heritage, sense of place, identity, and community cohesion—that Arctic communities face due to climate-induced events.

While much of climate policy and adaptation funding focuses on economic damages, we saw a critical gap in how non-economic losses are recognized, measured, and addressed—especially in Indigenous and remote Arctic communities where these losses can be deeply personal and culturally significant.

The motivation behind LostToClimate stems from the realization that as climate impacts intensify—through permafrost thaw, coastal erosion, and changing ecosystems—some losses are inevitable. But that doesn’t mean they should be invisible. Our goal is to bring these losses into the spotlight, co-develop tools with communities to articulate and document them, and explore pathways for healing, memory, and justice.

Ultimately, we hope this project will help reshape how climate loss is understood globally—moving beyond dollars and infrastructure to include the lived experiences and values that truly matter to people."

The project aims to co-produce knowledge with Arctic communities that are affected by environmental degradation. Can you share some reflections on the challenges of such an approach, and best practices to safeguard equity in the research process?

Co-producing knowledge with Arctic communities is both a privilege and a responsibility. It requires a deep commitment to equity, humility, and long-term relationship-building. One of the main challenges is navigating the power dynamics that often exist between academic institutions and Indigenous or local communities. These dynamics can unintentionally reproduce extractive practices, even in well-intentioned research.

To safeguard equity, we’ve learned that trust must come before data. This means investing time in listening, being present in the community, and ensuring that research agendas are shaped by local priorities—not just academic ones. It also means recognizing that knowledge comes in many forms: oral histories, lived experiences, and cultural practices are just as valid as scientific models.

Another challenge is language and communication. Concepts like “non-economic loss” or “climate adaptation” may not translate directly into local worldviews. We work with community liaisons and translators, and we prioritize storytelling and visual methods that resonate more deeply than technical jargon.

We will follow some practices, which include: 1) Establishing community advisory boards to guide the research process, 2) Ensuring data sovereignty, where communities retain control over how their knowledge is used and shared, 3) Compensating community members fairly for their time and expertise, 4) Creating outputs that are useful locally, not just in academic journals—like educational materials, exhibitions, or policy briefs in local languages.

Ultimately, co-production is not just a method—it’s a mindset. It asks us to slow down, share power, and be accountable to the people most affected by the issues we study.

Zooming out and looking at the broader implications of this research, what sort of impact do you hope it will have?

At its core, the LostToClimate project is about expanding the global understanding of what climate loss truly means. By documenting and elevating the non-economic dimensions of loss—like cultural identity, spiritual connection to land, and community cohesion—we hope to influence how climate impacts are recognized, valued, and addressed in both policy and practice.

Our hope is that this research will shift the narrative around climate loss from one that’s purely economic to one that’s human-centered and justice-oriented, but also inform international climate negotiations, such as those under the UNFCCC, by providing grounded evidence of what’s at stake for Arctic communities. The project shall assist in empowering communities by giving them tools and language to articulate their experiences in ways that resonate with decision-makers and inspire new frameworks for climate adaptation and loss compensation that are more inclusive, culturally sensitive, and equitable. Ultimately, we want this work to serve as a bridge—between science and storytelling, between global policy and local realities, and between what is measurable and what is meaningful.