The Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation (TCC) has gathered a large amount of climate monitoring data through the Tuktoyaktuk Community Climate Change Resilience Project. The TCC has taken steps to safeguard its data to ensure the knowledge remains protected and under the control of the community.
 

The Inuvialuit community of Tuktoyaktuk is located north of the Arctic Circle on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Climate change impacts such as rising sea levels, coastal erosion and permafrost thaw threaten the safety of homes and buildings in the community. Changes in snow and ice conditions are also affecting the day-to-day realities of community members, such as when they can safely travel on the ice.
 

In 2018, the TCC launched the Tuktoyaktuk Community Climate Change Resilience Project to better understand these changes and their impacts on the community and the environment they depend on to sustain their livelihoods and culture. The program includes community-based monitoring, where community members lead data collection activities and participate in training with researchers to build their scientific monitoring skills. The program looks at and assesses climate change indicators that reflect the values and concerns of the community, such as ice thickness, turbidity (cloudiness) of water, permafrost depth, and the leaf and bloom dates of edible plants. The project is designed to act as a knowledge-sharing platform to bridge Indigenous Knowledge and scientific knowledge, although to date the program has focused on collecting scientific data.
 

The TCC has gathered a large amount of climate monitoring knowledge through the project. As the project moves toward the collection of Indigenous Knowledge, one of its key principles is the protection of knowledge shared, ensuring its use remains under the control of the community and that it will not be shared or accessed without permission. For example, community monitors use a digital app to collect monitoring data in the field. The app is password protected, and the data is only accessible to the community. Some data is also collected using field data sheets, which are stored as physical data in the TCC office and are not handled by a third party. The TCC also plans to store digital data in servers on site in the future. 

 

At the discretion of the TCC, selected data may be shared with external partners to enable those partners to be part of community-driven monitoring and research and to advance the interests of the community. The TCC also actively shares knowledge about environmental monitoring internally with community members to promote community interest and involvement in the program. Sharing knowledge also helps build awareness in the community of the impacts of environmental change.