Nordic Perspectives on the Responsible Development of the Arctic: Pathways to Action

This book investigates the multifaceted nature of change in today’s Nordic Arctic and the necessary research and policy development required to address the challenges and opportunities currently faced by this region. It focuses its attention on the recent efforts of the Nordic community to create specialized Centers of Excellence in Arctic Research in order to facilitate this process of scientific inquiry and policy articulation. The volume seeks to describe both the steps that lead to this decision and the manner in which this undertaking as evolved.   

The work highlights the research efforts of the four Centers and their investigations of a variety of issues including those related to ecosystem and wildlife management, the revitalization resource dependent communities, the emergence of new climate-born diseases and the development of adequate modeling techniques to assist northern communities in their efforts at adaptation and resilience building.  Major discoveries and insights arising from these and other efforts are detailed and possible policy implications considered.

 The book also focuses attention on the challenges of creating and supporting multidisciplinary teams of researchers to investigate such concerns and the methods and means for facilitating their collaboration and the integration of their findings to form new and useful perspectives on the nature of change in the contemporary Arctic.  It also provides helpful consideration and examples of how local and indigenous communities can be engaged in the co-production of knowledge regarding the region.

 The volume discusses how such research findings can be best communicated and shared between scientists, policymakers and northern residents.  It considers the challenges of building common concern not just among different research disciplines but also between bureaucracies and the public. Only when this bridge-building effort is undertaken can true pathways to action be established.         

Professor Douglas C. Nord is an established scholar in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. His areas of specialty include the foreign and northern development policies of Canada, the Nordic states and Russia as well as the United States. He has written extensively on the relations between the countries of the circumpolar north and on the emergence of the Arctic as a central concern of contemporary international politics. Professor Nord has taught and undertaken research inquiries at various educational institutions across the region. He presently conducts his studies at the University of Umeå in Sweden where he is an associated research professor at the Arctic Research Centre (ARCUM). He has recently published two volumes on the Arctic Council: The Changing Arctic: Creating a Framework for Consensus Building within the Arctic Council (2016) and The Arctic Council: Governance within the Far North (2016).