Quantitative Description of Potential Impacts of OCS Activities on Bowhead Whale Hunting Activities in the Beaufort Sea

摘要

The origins of this study may be traced to a March 2000 memorandum from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) and the North Slope Borough (NSB) to the Minerals Management Service (MMS) describing the need for additional research regarding cultural, social, and economic impacts to Alaska Eskimo subsistence communities from ongoing arctic oil and gas exploration and production. A central point of the memo was that residents of the communities of Barrow, Nuiqsut, and Kaktovik perceive that oil and gas development-related activities have resulted in positive and negative social, economic, and cultural impacts. The memo cited the need to quantify perceptions of both positive and negative impacts in those communities. As it was felt that traditional economic analysis was not adequate, an interdisciplinary approach to such a study was recommended. Specifically, the memorandum urged that a survey be conducted in these three communities to identify and quantify perceived impacts in such a manner that a comparative analysis could be done on the prevalence and distribution of different types of perceived impacts.