North-to-North Cooperation for Community Preparedness and Resilience
project Overview
The Enhancing Northern Connectivity project brings together municipalities, Indigenous organisations, research partners, and community leaders across the Arctic to build shared capabilities for crisis preparedness and resilience capacity to anticipate, respond to, and recover from shocks, supported by sustained cross-border knowledge exchange. It facilitates the inclusion of youth and Indigenous perspectives in preparedness and recovery efforts.
The project is supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Western Partnership Programme and runs from December 2025 to August 2027.
Project Partners
The Arctic Mayors’ Forum leads and coordinates the project.
Project partners are:
- Harvard’s Belfer Center Arctic Initiative
- KRK Inua (Greenlandic Red Cross)
- Nordregio
- North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN)
Strengthening community preparedness
Key activities
Through new platforms for cooperation, the project seeks to integrate local knowledge, Indigenous perspectives, youth voices, and scientific insight — ensuring that preparedness planning reflects the diversity of Arctic realities.
Bringing together municipalities, Indigenous organizations, and research institutions, the project will created a baseline assessment of Arctic community preparedness, convene knowledge exchanges across the Arctic and use results from those exchanges and existing resources to curate a resilience toolbox, deliver actionable policy briefs, showcase examples of community resilience, deliver psychological first aid training for youth, and create validated methods for preparedness planning. Together with an extended network of partners, a second phase of the project will be planned.
Timeline
Assessment stage: Dec 2025-May 2026
- Workshops to gather input for baseline study in Canada and Swedish Sápmi
- Refinement of community engagement method
- Baseline assessment of communities’ priorities
- Development of measurable preparedness indicators
Knowledge exchanges: June 2026-Nov 2026
- Online knowledge exchanges with local preparedness experts from municipalities and Indigenous governments (identifying challenges, sharing knowledge, co-creating solutions)
- Synthesis of findings (policy briefs, resources for toolbox, resilience storymaps)
- Preparation of psychological first aid training
Consolidation: Nov 2026-Aug 2027
- Refinement of preparedness toolbox for municipalities
- Psychological first aid training for youth in communities
- Development of Phase II application with partners
- Presentation of project results at Arctic Frontiers
- Final workshop on local-level policy recommendations for community preparedness
The need for strengthened community preparedness
The Arctic region is facing profound climatic, geopolitical, and socio-economic changes. Rates of climate warming more than three times the global average result in more and stronger wildfires, storms, and floods as well as permafrost thaw and other climate change impacts affect the livelihood, health and cultural identity of Arctic residents including Indigenous peoples. With a stronger focus on national interests and power politics, and an erosion of the rules-based order, the Arctic, as a former zone of peace and cooperation, is experiencing a period of militarization and threats. Economic and demographic change, as well as the legacy of colonialism, further affect Arctic communities which are frequently more isolated and dependent on few infrastructure links (roads, electricity cables etc.). Community preparedness and human security – encompassing health, safety and social well-being – are therefore decisive priorities for Arctic municipalities and partners.
Mayors, municipal councils and Indigenous governments already mobilise resources, train community members and draw on Indigenous knowledges to manage these events, yet there is no structured way for them to share best practices across Arctic borders. Coordination, and collaboration across the region can strengthen community preparedness and human security at a local level, and including Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge benefits the development of preparedness strategies that limit unintended consequences of crisis events by grounding preparedness in local capacities and facilitate shared regional approaches to preparedness and resilience. Young people are stakeholders in a community preparedness context and supporting youth resilience can contribute to adaptive responses and development of local solutions in face of crises.
Without cross-border learning pathways, successful local initiatives to boost community preparedness remain isolated. This project addresses this gap by strengthening preparedness at the local level and prioritising peer-to-peer knowledge exchange among local governments.
Contact
For any questions about the project or a potential collaboration on community preparedness, please contact:
Ronja Wedegärtner
ronja@arcticmayors.com
