Siri Veland

I am Senior Researcher at NORCE Norwegian Research Institute, as well as at Nordland Research Institute (20%). I have honorary affiliation at Brown University (USA) and at Macquarie University (Australia).

I am involved in research on  Svalbard through four connected projects: a Svalbard Strategic Grant on navigation in the ocean near Svalbard, the project “Modeling risk from black carbon in a coupled natural-human system at the Arctic ice edge (CNH)” funded by the National Science Foundation (USA), and “Enbling positive tipping points towards clean-energy transitions in Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions (Tipping+)” funded by the Horizon2020. In addition, I co-lead the proposal “Tourism on Svalbard: a balancing act” funded by RCN. Each of these involve social science field work in Longyearbyen.

The shared focus of each of my projects is on the long-term societal and environmental sustainability of Svalbard, and on the internal and external factors that influence this sustainability. The projects examine how Svalbard balances the competing demands for economic, societal, and economic sustainability in various ways. The Svalbard Strategic Grant has focused on interdisciplinary collaboration for mariners in the Svalbard region. In CNH, the focus is on black carbon as a climate forcer, and how the shipping industry considers risks both from black carbon emissions, and from policies to reduce emissions. In Tipping+, the focus is on coal mining, how the decision to phase out coal was made and implemented, its impacts on the Longyearbyen community, and on the ability to find viable alternatives for electricity generation in this Arctic community. In BalancingAct, my contribution was to consider the challenges of balancing multiple demands as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals, and while I was unable to bring this project to NORCE I continue to pursue this challenge in these, and other related projects.