Risk Management in the Arctic Offshore: Wicked Problems Require New Paradigms

Recent project-management literature and high-profile disasters—the financial crisis, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the Fukushima nuclear accident—illustrate the flaws of traditional risk models for complex projects. This research examines how various groups with interests in the Arctic offshore define risks. The findings link the wicked problem framework and the emerging paradigm of Project Management of the Second Order (PM-2). Wicked problems are problems that are unstructured, complex, irregular, interactive, adaptive, and novel. The authors synthesize literature on the topic to offer strategies for navigating wicked problems, provide new variables to deconstruct traditional risk models, and integrate objective and subjective schools of risk analysis

Shareholder Employment at Red Dog Mine

Under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, Iñupiat of northwest Alaska organized as shareholders in the NANA1 Regional Corporation, Inc., and received title to 2,258,836 acres, including rights to the rich Red Dog zinc deposit. In 1982, NANA signed a joint-venture agreement with Teck2 to develop the mine, including provisions for preferential hire for qualified NANA shareholders. The agreement aimed for 100% shareholder hire by 2001. As of 2010, Teck had 220 NANA shareholders in full-time employment, which is 53 percent of the workforce. Other mines around the world have similar indigenous or local hire agreements with mixed success. The Voisey’s Bay mine sets the high mark for Canada with an Aboriginal hire rate of 54 percent (AETG 2008), followed by Ekati diamond mine at 50 percent (BHP Billiton 2011). So the track record for indigenous employment at Red Dog is high by global standards, although it falls short of NANA and Teck’s goal. What are the continuing barriers to increasing shareholder hire, retention and promotion

The Role of Stakeholders in Managing Arctic Ocean Resources

Presentation to the "Balancing Multiple Uses of Natural Resources in the Arctic" session of the National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment, Washington D.C

Risk Complexity: The Arctic Offshore as a Case Study

Presentation to Solutions to Coastal Disasters Conferenc

The Value of Evidence-Based Computer Simulation of Oral Health Outcomes for Management Analysis of the Alaska Dental Health Aide Program

Objectives: To create an evidence‐based research tool to inform and guide policy and program managers as they develop and deploy new service delivery models for oral disease prevention and intervention. Methods: A village‐level discrete event simulation was developed to project outcomes associated with different service delivery patterns. Evidence‐ based outcomes were associated with dental health aide activities, and projected indicators (DMFT, F+ST, T‐health, SiC, CPI, ECC) were proxy for oral health outcomes. Model runs representing the planned program implementation, a more intensive staffing scenario, and a more robust prevention scenario, generated 20‐year projections of clinical indicators; graphs and tallies were analyzed for trends and differences. Results: Outcomes associated with alternative patterns of service delivery indicate there is potential for substantial improvement in clinical outcomes with modest program changes. Not all segments of the population derive equal benefit when program variables are altered. Children benefit more from increased prevention, while adults benefit more from intensive staffing. Conclusions: Evidence‐ based simulation is a useful tool to analyze the impact of changing program variables on program outcome measures. This simulation informs dental managers of the clinical outcomes associated with policy and service delivery variables. Simulation tools can assist public health managers in analyzing and understanding the relationship between their policy decisions and long‐term clinical outcomes.The Ford Foundation

Social Indicators for Arctic Mining

This paper reviews and assesses the state of the data to describe and monitor mining trends in the pan-Arctic. It constructs a mining index and discusses its value as a social impact indicator and discusses drivers of change in Arctic mining. The widely available measures of mineral production and value are poor proxies for economic effects on Arctic communities. Trends in mining activity can be characterized as stasis or decline in mature regions of the Arctic, with strong growth in the frontier regions. World prices and the availability of large, undiscovered and untapped resources with favorable access and low political risk are the biggest drivers for Arctic mining, while climate change is a minor and locally variable factor. Historical data on mineral production and value is unavailable in electronic format for much of the Arctic, specifically Scandinavia and Russia; completing the historical record back to 1980 will require work with paper archives. The most critically needed improvement in data collection and reporting is to develop comparable measures of employment: the eight Arctic countries each use different definitions of employment, and different methodologies to collect the data. Furthermore, many countries do not report employment by county and industry, so the Arctic share of mining employment cannot be identified. More work needs to be done to develop indicator measures for ecosystem service flows. More work also needs to be done developing conceptual models of effects of mining activities on fate control, cultural continuity and ties to nature for local Arctic communities

Financing Water and Sewer Operation and Maintenance in Rural Alaska

Are existing sanitation systems simply too expensive for many Alaska villages? Or could small utilities operate in the black if they increased their charges and toughened collection policies? How much difference do village leadership and commitment to good sanitation make? Could alternative technologies provide adequate sanitation for less? To help shed some light on these questions, the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage prepared this volume. It presents seven recent analyses, by various authors, of some aspects of financing water and sewer operations and maintenance in rural Alaska. We added an introductory chapter, a final chapter drawing some conclusions from the various analyses and discussing policy issues, and an executive summary. The analyses look at methods villages use to pay for O&M; the share of small sanitation systems operating in the red; the costs of selected closed-haul systems (one alternative to piped systems); the fiscal capacity of small rural communities; and steps that might help small sanitation systems meet their costs. These studies are not comprehensive, and in some cases they raise as many questions as they answer. But they provide valuable information on a public policy issue Alaska will continue to grapple with for the foreseeable future.Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Alaska Office

Understanding Alaska State Finances: What Citizens Want to Know and How to Convey that Information Effectively

Fiscal policy is a major dilemma for this state. State oil revenues have been declining since 1982. Despite cuts in the state’s general fund spending--down from a high of $2.9 billion in FY1982 to$2.5 billion in FY2002--the state budget has been in deficit eight of the last ten years. The FY 2002 deficit constituted nearly one third of the state general fund budget. At the current rate, the Constitutional Budget Reserve—the savings account which is being drawn down to cover the deficit—will be exhausted in about two years. Political opinion is so fragmented on the question of what to do that the legislature has been unable to forge a fiscal plan to address the issue. Indeed, the very nature of the problem is contested. Results from a state wide fiscal opinion survey last year (Moore, 2001) suggest that voter attitudes are a major factor in the current policy impasse. While 80 percent feel that some kind of fiscal plan is needed, only one third are very likely to support some kind of plan involving taxes and permanent fund earnings, another one third somewhat likely to support such a plan, and one third not very or not at all likely. Analysis of the data shows that more informed voters, with a more accurate understanding of some basic facts about Alaska’s fiscal structure, are more likely to support a plan involving taxes and permanent fund earnings.University of Alaska Foundatio

Evaluation of the Alaska Native Health Board Sanitation Facility Operation and Maintenance Program: Phase II

The Alaska Native Health Board is administering a demonstration grant program intended to improve the capacity of rural Alaska communities to operate and maintain their water and sewer systems. This multi-year program began in 1996 and is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Wastewater Management. The Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage is evaluating the individual projects and the program overall. This report is the final evaluation of the 16 Phase II community projects for which data collection was substantially complete as of September 30, 1999. Phase II started in 1997. A coordinating committee for the project reviewed applications from 68 communities. It selected 18 whose proposed plans focused on improving operations and maintenance by improving utility structure and management and by educating customers about utility operations. ANHB also offered two Phase I communities continuation funding. We report here on 16 rather than 20 communities because several extended their projects past September 1999 and one was dropped from the program. There are several parts to this evaluation included with this report.Alaska Native Health Board, Office of Wastewater Management (EPA

Cross Cultural Issues in Village Administration: Observations on Water and Sanitation Operations and Management in Western Alaska

The villages of Western Alaska are in various stages of transition from hauling water and human waste by hand, to technologically sophisticated Arctic design piped systems. The transition involves not only technological change and adaptation, but also the development of new institutions and work relations appropriate to the administration and management of complex systems. The implicit norms of these new institutional relations and culture of work are based in Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture; in very many respects these norms are alien to traditional Yup'ik Eskimo people. Bi-cultural Natives are in a unique position to meet these challenges and facilitate the transition by modeling an adaptive synthesis of the two cultures, providing culturally sensitive leadership, and facilitating relations between villages and outside agencies