City of Adak in the Aleutian Islands
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Building Resilience by Preparing for Disasters in Small Arctic Communities

May 12, 2025

A Q&A about emerging risks and how outreach can engage small communities in emergency management

Article by:
Jessica Cook, Arctic Council Secretariat

Small Arctic communities are increasingly at risk of emergency incidents as environmental changes and rising human activity impact the Arctic. To better understand preparedness and risk exposure in small and remote Arctic communities, the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group (EPPR) developed a project called Prevention, Preparedness and Response in Small Communities. With a focus on oil spills, the project seeks to meaningfully engage with small communities to raise awareness of oil spill threats, vulnerabilities and impacts, and to ensure communities have access to best practices and capacity building.

To share guidance and best practices with small communities, the Working Group produced a series of animated videos. The first video of the project, released in 2019, focused on basic oil spill response principles. The second video, published in 2020, focused on the impacts of oil spills and the challenges they may create in small communities. EPPR published the third and final video of the series in 2024, which addresses how to develop a community response plan.

In this Q&A, Ole Kristian Bjerkemo, Chair of EPPR, speaks about the project development, and Karen Pletnikoff, Environment and Safety Program Administrator at Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association and representative for Aleut International Association, speaks about risks in Arctic communities and what is needed to prepare and respond.

How did the Small Communities project come about? Why was there a need for it?

Ole Kristian Bjerkemo: The idea for this project came in 2014, stemming from a presentation in Yellowknife, Canada by Dene leaders about environmental changes to local areas including flooding, lack of habitat and changes in wildlife patterns. It was my first time chairing EPPR, and it was obvious to me that the Working Group needed to have more projects that involve small communities. It was really important for EPPR to have participation by Indigenous Permanent Participant organizations, as it's their communities that are at the frontlines of these risks.

Karen Pletnikoff: Aleut International Association had been advocating for EPPR projects that were more engaged on the issues that our communities face. One of our primary challenges as a small community is our small population. When it comes to emergency response, we've got the same qualified and willing individuals wearing multiple hats. From an incident command structure point of view, that means those individuals will be doubling up on responsibilities to cover all the different aspects of a response. That may help streamline communication requirements, but it also creates a challenge to maintain all the communication pathways to the other less trained, less experienced volunteers that will be required to be part of the response mechanism. This is why general education and outreach campaigns to our small communities are important. It offers people the chance to consider what their role would be in a response. One of the most important roles is minimizing the amount of outside help that ourselves and our families need. That, and how we can be part of that response apparatus in our own communities is the kind of education and communication that can empower and support strong community response.

Why were oil spills chosen as the focus for this project?

Ole Kristian Bjerkemo: It was obvious that we could not cover all the thematical areas of concern in one big project. Because of that, EPPR agreed to have a stepwise approach to addressing the various risks in small Arctic communities, and oil spill was decided to be the first step. My expertise is related to oil spills, so that is one reason this particular topic became a focus.

Karen Pletnikoff: From providing direct technical assistance to Tribal Environmental Programs, I saw the need for better prevention, preparedness and response capacity for oil spills in our local community, but also a better understanding of the larger regional spill possibilities. So, by starting local and understanding what those risks are, we could also build on that for the larger regional issues.

What are some examples of risks that small Arctic communities face?

Ole Kristian Bjerkemo: Now and in the near future, disasters such as wildland fires, flooding and permafrost thaw leading to infrastructure failure are important risks to consider. The ice melting and new areas with open waters can also be an issue in terms of increasing shipping activity, which leads to an increased risk for accidents at sea. Small Arctic communities must be prepared for all these incidents, as they might be the first responders, or they might have plans for evacuation, for example, in many of these scenarios. A good system for receiving support in the event of an emergency is also an issue they can prepare for.

The hope is that this project will evolve in the future to tackle other risks besides oil spills that small Arctic communities face.

"Small Arctic communities have an innate level of preparedness – they wouldn’t be in their 12,000th year of existing on their landscape without that." - Karen Pletnikoff, Environment and Safety Program Administrator at Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association

Dutch Harbor
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What are the top concerns small Arctic communities have in terms of emergency management?

Karen Pletnikoff: Local preparedness in many of our communities can mean more than just having the resources to camp out at home for three weeks in the event of an emergency. That might be adequate preparation in a larger city such as Anchorage, Alaska, but in some of our tiny communities, there’s additional complexities. For example, we need to ensure adequate medication is available, or even specialty foods for infants, elders or anyone who has special diet considerations.

Being able to discuss the anticipated changes in frequency and severity of storms and natural disasters is something that can help us understand what the worst-case scenarios are most likely to be for each of our different regions. And these risks can vary by region and time of year. So, the opportunity to work with the responsible agencies at the national level, and to work with the Permanent Participants – and through them, their connections to small communities around the Arctic – is a way to build resilience for when our small communities are in line for those limited national resources in the event of a widespread disaster.

What are some examples of emerging concerns your community has?

Karen Pletnikoff: For coastal Alaska, typhoons are a growing concern. For example, Typhoon Merbok [2022] caused widespread, significant flooding and other impacts across the West Coast of Alaska. Multiple communities lost infrastructure, housing and other essential goods. Some had freezers taken with the storm surge, causing them to lose at least three weeks of food – impacting the time frame they’re able to take care of themselves. And not only that, but they lost their entire winter store, as well as their boats so they couldn’t go out and re-stock. That was a financial, health and nutritional impact to those communities with real, legitimate outcomes. When your diet consists of marine mammals, wild salmon, berries from the land – to replace the nutrient profiles of those foods with commercially available foods is nearly impossible from an affordability and accessibility standpoint. It's very likely that those high-quality nutritious foods were replaced with less nutritious foods, and those impacts are very difficult to mitigate in many of these communities.

It’s not unusual for our communities to be hit with 100 mile-per-hour wind speeds for example, and more or less they’re prepared for that. So, the elements we need to prepare for are not entirely new, but they're at scales and frequencies that change how we need to live on a day-to-day basis. That's where education and public outreach could be effective, and how we can slowly incorporate new standards and small changes that build towards these more extreme events, and potential new events.

What do you think are the key factors that determine whether small Arctic communities can prepare for and respond effectively to emergencies?

Karen Pletnikoff: Small Arctic communities have an innate level of preparedness – they wouldn’t be in their 12,000th year of existing on their landscape without that. I think the real discussion is that the hazards – and the scale and frequency of these hazards – are shifting faster than our technology, and faster than our permanently located communities can mitigate those hazards. When you could pick up and move, then you could take a lot of the risk out of your daily life. When you could create most of your home, clothing and transportation from the materials around you, you could be more flexible and resilient in the face of disaster. Now, our reliance on technology, outside goods and permanent settlement locations have really changed the way our cultures can adapt and address these risks.

Funding also plays a role in how our small communities can prepare. But there's also a level of self-empowerment and self-preparation that's just as and sometimes more essential than larger community-scale preparations. For example, in the event of a tsunami, there should be an evacuation site ideally with equipment available for the community. But it may be more reliable and realistic for individuals and families to bring their own resources for a limited tsunami evacuation. Planning for larger-scale community investments should be part of the mix with what community members are better suited to determine for themselves and for their own needs.

The Prevention, Preparedness and Response in Small Communities videos produced by EPPR can be watched here.